Exploring Connections: From California Redwoods to Garrison, New York
By Casey Stachelski, Head of School Programs
Last May, while making my way through security at SFO, I was stopped by TSA when the x-ray scan of my carry-on stumped the folks behind the machine. My cheeks blushed as the woman on the other side of the TSA conveyor belt asked me to step off to the side and dug through my bright-blue travel backpack. She gave me a curious look as she pulled six, foot-long redwood logs out of my bag. I was filled with equal parts discomposure, playfulness and enthusiasm, “Oh right that… I’m heading to New York to teach students about nature!”.
Thus, my journey began. Redwood needles, logs and cones in tow, I set out to join a mosaic of other naturalists, environmental educators, climate scientists and students at the Garrison Youth Climate Summit (YCS).
THE SUMMIT
Casey talking to participants at the YCS in Garrison, New York
The YCS is an event that brings together professionals in the environmental field as well as students from across New York and Connecticut with the aim of empowering young people to turn their climate anxiety into climate action. Throughout the summit, I was offered both the chance to share knowledge that I brought with me from the redwood forest and the opportunity to soak up inspiration and wisdom from fellow leaders in climate education, especially the students, who went above and beyond to bring sustainable environmental change to their home communities.
The morning started off with the keynote address, given by 11 students whose yearlong climate action projects each made a significant, positive impact on their wider community. Each of these students gave an incredible effort to their project, skipping free time, eating lunch in their science classroom, taking on additional homework, volunteering their time on the weekends. These initiatives, rooted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, local environmental issues and civic action cover such topics as providing free consultations for renewable home-energy, providing templates for community members to contact local legislators to address point-source pollution in the Hudson River & founding a soft-plastic recycling program in local schools. The hopefulness and impact of these students genuinely brought tears to my eyes. It was a powerful reminder of the potential that we have when we let ourselves care enough to be moved into action. As well as a poignant example of just how capable young people are of making positive change in the world.
After hearing directly from the students, we dispersed into workshops and then it was my time to shine (actually, truthfully, the redwood samples I brought along we’re the real stars of show)! My role at the summit was primarily to facilitate a workshop on redwood forest ecology. By comparing the costal redwoods to the trees that we could see around us in Garrison we gained a deeper understanding of each of those entities.
CASEY’S WORKSHOP: COMPARATIVE BOTANY
Casey’s booth at the YCS including the redwood logs that traveled all the way from california!
As someone who has only ever formally taught about the redwoods under the canopy of the redwood forest, I was skeptical about the efficacy of teaching redwood forest ecology without a literal redwood forest nearby. Especially in this world, where students have immediate access to all of the information that exists and can visit just about any place they can think of virtually, I felt that there was a high chance that many wouldn’t care about an imagination trip to the coast of California.
And so, I went into the first workshop of the day with both hopeful optimism that the subject would connect to students and a quiet yet persistent idea that the they would be much more fascinated by other things.
All of that in mind, we began by discussing two simple questions; does it matter to learn about the trees in California when we’re here in New York? Why? These questions invited students to share in their own words the connections that they already felt between those two worlds. And those connections were more thoughtful, deep and expansive than my considerably hopeful optimism (seriously, ask anyone who knows me about the immense power of my rose-colored glasses), could’ve predicted. Students said things like,
“The redwood trees are sequestering carbon from the air”
“I want to go with my family to visit the redwoods”
“Redwoods make oxygen”
“They’re beautiful”
“They’re the tallest trees on earth and we need to protect them because otherwise they’ll disappear”
“Everything is connected”
I was pleasantly surprised that these students already seemed to be masters of interconnection. I was also shocked that the second graders in attendance had such a firm grasp of the concept of carbon sequestering (I was later informed that their class had been conducting a year-long experiment, measuring the growth rate and thereby the sequestering rate of various trees in the area). With these self-defined ideas about why it matters to learn about trees that are more than 1,000 miles away, we embarked.
Our botany lesson had us comparing the heights of the students’ local maple trees to the heights of our redwoods by walking the distance of both. I have to say, even for a person who lives under the redwoods, walking 350 ft and considering the towering nature of the tallest trees on earth was astounding. We also had a chance to squeeze the bark of the redwood samples and compare that to the texture nearby barks. Redwood trees, if you haven’t had the joy of feeling them, have quite spongy, thick bark which helps protect them from fire. Each comparison that we made between different tree species, whether bark, height, color, texture, leaf/needle shape or seed dispersal method was dutifully recorded in the students’ journals.
Over the course of the day, I led five workshops, each with a different grade level. A shared thread across different groups of students was that they absolutely marveled at the redwood logs placed in their hands. And they treated the redwood cones that were given to them as preciously as they might if they were made out of gold. Across the day, my worries about whether students would care melted into appreciation for the obvious depth of care and intrinsic reverence that lives strong in the youth.
LESSON’S LEARNED AND THE PATH FORWARD
Once the workshops wrapped up for the day, the YCS transitioned into an evening of laughter, bonding and resource-sharing with an event that showcased a collective art project as well as dozens of booths hosted by students and environmental organizations alike. At those booths, we shared our resources, projects, initiatives, enthusiasm, questions and hopes with anybody who stopped by. Several members of the New York state government, such as Stare Senator Pete Harckham and Assemblywoman Dana Levenberg wandered through the crowd. Upbeat, happy, music played in the background. A food truck served up gigantic, rainbow-sprinkled and marshmallowed ice-cream cones. In the midst of this delight, it hit me that this event is literally centered around global tragedy.
We understand that climate change is devastating our planet. Students have grown up in a world where that conversation around human impact, climate, plastic pollution and beyond is ever-present. I see it each week with the young people that come to Westminster Woods. It can manifest as both anxiety and apathy but in either case, there seems to be a growing hopelessness.
So then, what happened at the Youth Climate Summit? At an event where students literally spent the entire day discussing climate catastrophe, we ended the day by dancing to pop music and playing tag? How did such lightness and pure joy permeate such a devastating event?
My two cents? This is the power of understanding what we’re up against and believing that our actions DO make a difference. Instead of focusing on just the tragedy, we were pragmatic with that reality and celebrating the real potential for change. We celebrated the literal strides forward that these students worked hard for over the course of the school year. We were giddy with possibility! Oh what a gift to experience!
I left the YCS with a renewed sense of belief in the power of environmental education. It’s my hope that every student who leaves Westminster Woods has a deeper understanding of the profound impact that they make on the world. A deeper understanding of how their actions DO make a difference and that through this understanding students are driven to affect positive change in their communities.
Even closer to home, being steeped in the world of the YCS reminded me of my own impact. In addition to all of the shared responsibilities that most of us adults have (interacting with other humans, remembering to turn off the lights when I leave home, keeping myself from littering, etc.) I also find myself in an incredible position to help shape the experience of hundreds of students annually in our School Programs Department. This work is hard. We’re up against a mountain and we’ve got teaspoons to move the soil with. On my worst days, I find caring impractical. Vulnerable. Exhausting. Risky. My biggest personal takeaway from the YCS is that the only way forward is with the inspiration brought by caring deeply, profoundly and bravely.
It's hard. Yes. But, I’m ready to care. I hope you join me.
You can learn more about our School Programs Department here and read more about the Garrison Youth Summit here.