Growing up I would call myself a summer camp junkie. My parents started taking us camping when we were toddlers and we attended a week long family camp every summer in Minnesota's northwoods. When I hit third grade, my parents packed me off to Girl Scout camp for a week and while the friend I went with cried all week from homesickness I reveled in the freedom, the campfires, the wild edible talks and starlit nights. My camp adventures grew longer and more intense as I grew older, I volunteered as junior counselor at family camp, and the summer after my senior year of high school I went on a 45 day canoe trip in Canada's Arctic. I had no trouble knowing what job I wanted to do in my summers during college. The nine months of the year not spent at camp, were essentially a long countdown. It was also during college that I realized that my love for camp, and more specifically the wild places I had the opportunity to explore and get to know, were essentially linked to science and education.

There is no question that camp and the unique individuals that were my camp counselors and mentors, were what inspired me to enter environmental education. It is because of this, that I was saddened to read Mary Beth Mccauley' article in The Christian Science Monitor, Summer camp:  Sunset for an American tradition? The article details how it is increasingly difficult for camps to cater to the life of the modern child and today's parents.  School years are longer, there is more concern about still focusing on academics in the summer, and the idea of "unplugging" from modern technology is becoming so foreign to parents and kids that it is hard to sell.  Mccauley writes;..."there are other places where young people can learn the stout virtues of confidence, teamwork, and resilience; of independence and friendship; of love of nature. But few disguise the lessons quite the way summer camp does – as pure fun."

As an environmental educator, the loss of these intense experiences in the natural world are what concerns me most.  Author Richard Louv labelled this Nature Deficit Disorder, others call this a loss of a sense of place.  Regardless of its name, the less positive experiences in the natural world that children have, the less connection they have and the less likely they are to feel real concern for threats to the environment.  There is in fact an entire field of research in environmental education called Significant Life Experience Research that looks at how, why, when and where experiences in the outdoors are important.  The results are pretty clear.  The more you get people outside, the more likely they are to show an affinity for the environment.

The importance of this is obvious from the standpoint of us at the Will Steger Foundation.  Without a real concern for the environment, how are we supposed to get people concerned for the effects of climate change?  In the next blog I will begin to outline some of the ways we will be addressing this in our new curriculum project, Minnesota's Changing Climate, as well as discuss the possibility of integrating technology with experiences in the natural world in a way that doesn't take away from the experience, but enhances it.

April 11-17 is National Environmental Education Week , the nation's largest environmental education event held each year the week before Earth Day. EE Week connects educators with environmental resources to promote K-12 students’ understanding of the environment, and is a program of the National Environmental Education Foundation . So how does climate change education fit in with environmental education? A recent 40th Anniversary edition of the Journal of Environmental Education features reflections on where the field of EE has been and where it should be headed. One article, "Contemporary Challenges and Opportunities in Environmental Education: Where are we Headed and What Deserves Our Attention?" (Marcinowski, 2010 ), describes climate change as one of the top challenges to the field of environmental education. Additionally, a recent report, Environmental Education Professional Needs and Priorities Study (Fleming, 2009 ) showed that 43% of environmental educators from around the nation ranked climate change as "very important" to their professional development needs. Clearly we think climate change is important, but we also think it is a natural topic for environmental educators to address. Harold Hungerford, a long-time expert in EE describes it as “an interdisciplinary effort aimed at helping learners gain the knowledge and skills that would allow them to understand the complex environmental issues facing society as well as the ability to deal effectively and responsibly with them.” (Hungerford, 2010 ) Climate change effects all levels of society, as well as biological, chemical and physical systems. Not only is it the perfect interdisciplinary topic, when taught in this way it becomes much more relevant to students. In addition, it is topic that if taught without including problem solving, students, or "learners," as Hungerford calls them, are left feeling hopeless and disempowered. Therefore not only is climate change, THE important topic, and challenge, for today's environmental educators, it is imperative that it be taught with environmental education principles in mind. It must be interdisciplinary, and it must emphasize problem solving skills and issues resolution; fundamentals of environmental education.

To learn more about National Environmental Education Week, watch this video from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.