By Phil Salter
Cedar Crest Camp’s Environmental Education program launched in 2018 with a vision of supporting students, families, and teachers in place-specific day and residential field programs. Our mission—to join with lifelong learners in education, justice, and advocacy with and for the earth—is rooted in a desire for more embodied participation in our immediate surroundings and communities.
What does the land offer as a co-teacher in environmental education programs and experiences? As an environmental educator, I see this inquiry as one of the first questions we should ask of ourselves and our programs. It is also a question that we would hopefully turn towards ourselves too: What should we offer our land? Ecological restoration could be defined as managing and assisting ecosystems to sustain ecosystem resilience and promote biodiversity. Botanist Robin Kimmerer would add that restoration efforts should have a biocultural approach because, if we cannot connect our ecological efforts to our culture and communities, then what are we actually doing? Robin Kimmerer also states that “restoration is a powerful antidote to despair.” The work of environmental education, ecological restoration, and justice is the work of relationships.
At Cedar Crest, it did not take too long to realize that there is a great deal of work inviting us to participate in the ecosystems that we call home. We have made incredibly small steps to begin feeling out what these restorative efforts ask of us. At this moment in time—
- It looks like a 5-year (and counting) meadow restoration project on a couple of >1 acre areas that were formerly mowed grass spaces.
- It sounds like goldfinches singing while hanging on to the stalks of native grasses.
- It feels like the high heat of prescribed burns on these plots in late winter.
- It feels like native grass and flower seeds in your hand.
- It looks like minor streambank restoration projects and plantings to mitigate erosion in severe winter season flooding.
- It tastes like produce grown from our garden, just a few paces from our dining hall, cleaned and served raw or cooked and shared in playful programs by campers ages 8–18.
- It smells like milkweed, cut flowers, beeswax, and compost.
- It looks like monarch chrysalises hanging from grasses and garden fencing as ornaments of a holiday that is now among our favorites.
- It sounds like students investigating organisms along and within creeks exclaiming about new (to them) discoveries and talking science with one another.
- It looks like deepened partnerships with forestry professionals and regional scientists as we consider larger-scale restoration projects in the coming years.
- It also will soon sound like preservice teachers in dialogue with one another about experiential learning, science, and justice—and how we can celebrate school yards and neighborhoods as important spaces to be curious about.
In the future, it could look like senior high students engaging with an environmental education curriculum explicitly designed to bridge and support project learning from ecological restoration and environmental justice perspectives.
There is responsibility, shared history, hardships, and joy in this sensemaking. And as we explore our own places and build our particular senses of the world around us, we find that we are building relationships too. The late bell hooks said, “The important lesson that we learn together, the lesson that allows us to move together within and beyond the classroom, is one of mutual engagement.” What an antidote, indeed.
Phil Salter is the Environmental Education Director at Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference’s camp and retreat center, Cedar Crest. A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and Drew University Theological School, Phil is interested in linking our affinities and connections to the earth with practical avenues towards justice and has led college groups on trips to take part in service-learning and community engagement surrounding issues like mountaintop removal.