Planting Seeds

Planting Seeds: Empowering our Children with Ways to Protect the Environment while Cultivating the Earth

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Reflections

Our stewardship project is done and our final paper has been submitted. The EELA course has come to an official close, yet I am still relective of the experience that we have shared together. Environmental stewardship never ends; it is a life-long endeavor to learn, care, and educate for socio-environmental progress.

This course has given us the tools to do so. I look back on the past 15 weeks and am amazed at all we have accomplished. We have read insightful and empowering studies and memoirs and we have discussed issues that are close to our hearts. Suzanne, Amanda, Melissa, and I met every Monday night at 11 PM at Barnard's Macintosh building to strategize, restrategize, plan, and rethink (many times) our stewardship project. And even have a couple of laughs along the way. We visited the St. Thomas Choir School and interacted with very intelligent and receptive students, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Seeing their shining faces made all of our hard work worthwhile. We have had countless phone conversations and email exchanges with Diane and we have appreciated the love and support she has given us in our endeavors.

But most of all, I feel that we are walking away from this experience having made some new friends. We have met people who are different than we are in some respects, and yet have seen that we share common values. I think we have seen diversity, teamwork, and respect at its finest. This is the humanitarian side of environmentalism and as I see it, this element is crucial to our success as environmental educators. What an impact we can have on society if we take this outlook with us as we enter the world!

Thank you for interest, bloggers. May much grow from the seeds we have all planted!

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