No Child Left Indoors

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Comment by Mat Paulson on May 20, 2008 at 9:09am

Here is the letter I sent out to government officials, educators and local press this morning after having a very productive volunteer meeting last night.

My name is Mat Paulson as you may know already I am heading up the
Moorhead Community Habitat Program in cooperation with the City of
Moorhead and the National Wildlife Federation.

Our Habitat Team just had our first organizational meeting last night and
one of our main goals we have determined to be is to educate and involve
the younger generations with our program.

I have recently become involved with the No Child Left Indoors
Organization. This organization relates to all the environmental work that
I am doing just for the fact that to save the Our Green Earth We need to
Educate and get our children involved. By getting the younger generations
Outside and Learning about Natiure we are ensuring the future of what we
all should hold dear.

We need your Help. Your support is crucial in getting this campaign of
bringing nature back into our communities. The Moorhead Community Habitat
Team hopes more than anything, even more than adding Habitats to
Backyards, that Schoolyard Habitats along with Park Habitats should be our
main focus.

We have the start of something wonderful to devlop change in the
Fargo/Moorhead area. Please contact me to answer any of your questions on
how you can help support this change and add more life and respect to our
environment. To the educators reading this the National Wildlife
Federation has curriculum already in place and ready to be taught in every
subject, science, math, art, social sciences and english. Let the
outdoors be your classroom.

Here is a link to the No Child Left Indoors website and a short video
about the organization.

http://www.nclicoalition.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRR1feHqZPY

Comment by Richard on May 16, 2008 at 8:52am

Some of us were fortunate to grow up in a natural setting. However, I suspect that a huge percentage of those that do come from such places end up spoiling the natural landscape anywayl. But it takes other factors to tip the scales in the favor of jealousy defending the forest, desert or oceans. My entire life has been in the pursuit of what it will get young people support for the natural world.

Eight years ago I protected land under my control yet so far I have received not one good-for-you from a fellow conservationist. I do get good-for-yous from high school age youth and adults pursuing careers that have nothing to do with the environment. Strange times we live in don’t you think?

I believe that criticism by example is the best way. Yet this is not accepted even by so-called fellow conservationists who say “Preserve the natural landscape? Well, yes, but I didn’t mean that I should actually do it”.

Dick Stafursky
(802) 257-9158

Comment by Mat Paulson on April 30, 2008 at 2:58pm

I am working with the City of Moorhead, MN and their Community Habitat Program. We as a group plan to design and install Schoolyard Habitats at all of the schools in Moorhead and will get kids of all ages involved. The Habitat Program is sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and has some wonderful curriculum to get students of all ages involved with nature.

On a more personal note, my family and I are starting a non-profit organization called Birds For Brains which will recycle old discarded fence panels to make bird feeders. We then plan to set them up at nursing and assisted living homes around the area. My 8 year old daughter and 7 year old son are recruiting friends from school, local scout and 4H groups to help build the feeders and keep them filled throughout the year. We have had quite a response and the program hasn't even been launched yet. A local Seed store has donated all of the seed to keep our program running and we can get all the wood we want from a local fencing company.

Comment by Steven Corso on April 13, 2008 at 6:26pm

Hi there,

I invented and am constantly re-inventing a high school course called Ecology and the Environment. Not AP Enviro Sci, I have tried to make the class project-based. I look forward to talking more about it and, more importantly, learning from all of you how to make it better. I will add here though that the admin of my school is not very supportive of the course, especially as it has become more popular than AP Bio (with two full sections this year as opposed to no AP Bio). This implied cause is my own hypothesis but this year I was told that if there was a conflict between AP Bio and Ecology (in terms of scheduling) that AP Bio got priority. This despite the fact that about 28 students expressed interest in taking Ecology next year as opposed to about 10 interested in AP Bio. How to make the case that a in-depth, focused and field-based course is really more valuable than a survey course without the appropriate time to complete the curriculum? Seems self-evident to me.

Comment by Kerry on April 11, 2008 at 8:13am

As an urban child, I know firsthand how little students in big cities are exposed to nature. Thankfully, my parents took me to the woods all the time and instilled my love for the outdoors but many others don't have the same opportunities. Furthermore, many biology courses in high school shorten their ecology sections which brings all of the smaller concepts together into the bigger picture. One beneficial program I worked with was the Regional Math and Science center (RMSC) at Frostburg which had high school students working on ecology-based science projects for 6 weeks out of the summer. It was great to see inner-city kids out in the woods enjoying ethnobotany or live-trapping small mammals, and really they just needed the exposure to heighten their interest. I think targeting more urban areas with hands-on environmental education will really open a lot of people's eyes. At the moment, many of them are so far-removed from nature that there is no wonder in my mind why they don't care.

Comment by Bob Pohlad on April 10, 2008 at 12:08pm

Please join this group to share your ideas on how we are and how we can reconnect youth with nature. Read Richard Louv's book "Last Child in the Woods" for motivation.