Tag Archives: environmental education

Environmental programs in corrections, near and far

by

in Replication of the model SPP Network

In an Oregon prison, butterfly technicians pose with their larvae, growing in cups under energy-efficient LED bulbs. From left to right: Marisol, Carolyn, Mary, Sarah. Photo by Tom Kaye or Chad Naugle.

By Kelli Bush, SPP Acting Director for Evergreen, and Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP Education and Outreach Manager

Our summer newsletter highlights a selection of environmental programs in corrections. Most of these programs have been replicated across the country, and we have included a few international examples. Beyond these examples, environmental and sustainability programs are operating in prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities nationwide and around the world. Many extend the SPP-style model of ensuring benefits for everyone involved—these are not just cost saving measures.

In these articles, we share perspectives from inmates, corrections staff, and outside-prison partners, demonstrating the collaborative nature of the work. Connections with allied environmental programs have strengthened a growing movement to offer environmental education, access to nature, and sustainable living skills to incarcerated people. We get to continually learn from each other to improve and expand programs, collaborate on new initiatives and evaluate impacts.

Dog handlers of Freedom Tails at Stafford Creek Corrections Center pose for Atsuko Otsuka, freelance journalist and author, consultant for the Guide Dog Puppy-Raising Program and the Horse Program at Shimane Asahi Rehabilitation Program Center in Japan.

Together we are inviting people who are incarcerated to recognize the significance and relevance of their skills, talents, and contributions to the environmental movement. Honoring their creativity, experience, and resilience and adding the power of education creates potential for positive shifts in self-perceptions and agency. At the same time, we are working to add diverse and talented stewards to the environmental movement.

As a result of this growing movement, beekeeping is thriving in multiple states. Environmental education in correctional facilities is no longer so uncommon. Countless prisons are creating new standards for reclaiming and revaluing resources the rest of us are too likely to throw away. In Washington, we can barely keep up with the excitement and demands for sustainability programs in prisons. It is wonderful to be part of something big-hearted, socially inclusive, and life affirming!

Environmental Ed for Juveniles in Detention

by

in Education Outreach Partners Prison Life Roots of Success Science

By Sadie Gilliom, SPP Turtle Rehabilitation Program Coordinator

When Rachel Stendahl started work with the Sustainability in Prisons Project in 2013, her dream was to become a marine ecology professor. However, something about her experience as an SPP Roots of Success Coordinator must have stuck: in the years since she left SPP, she figured out how to bring environmental education to juvenile detention centers!

Rachel Stendahl talks with a Roots of Success instructor during a graduation celebration for students of the environmental curriculum. Photo by Joslyn Rose Trivett.

After researching the relationship between paths of whale migration and shipping, Rachel graduated from The Evergreen State College with a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies. Rachel was hired by Educational Service District 113 to be their Regional Science Coordinator. She took over the job of running a watershed education program called the Chehalis Basin Education Consortium. This program supports stewardship of the Chehalis Basin watershed by providing environmental education resources to educators. Through this program, hundreds of youth throughout the Chehalis Basin watershed learn how their watershed works, how to test the water quality of their streams, rivers, and lakes, and how to present their water quality data.

After getting into the swing of things, Rachel realized that not all of the students in the Chehalis Basin were being provided these same hands-on learning opportunities. In particular, she was concerned with the students inside of juvenile detention centers. With the help of another previous SPP employee, Bri Morningred, Rachel successfully completed, submitted, and was awarded the No Child Left Inside grant. Rachel began to implement a new environmental education program at the Lewis County Juvenile Detention Center.

SPP shared Rachel’s internship opportunity on their listserv and I applied for the job. We worked together to coordinate the first-ever environmental education program provided to the youth at the detention center. It has been a great success! Rachel plans to continue the program and hopes to expand to Green Hill Juvenile Detention Center. Go Rachel!

Erica Turnbull, an SPP intern from Western Washington University, and Rachel studied reentry together during the summer of 2013. Photo by SPP staff.

Adding Salt to Popcorn: Gaining a taste for sustainability

by

in Education Environmental Justice Inmate Voices Partners Prison Life Roots of Success

by Grady Mitchell, Roots of Success Instructor and Master Trainer, Stafford Creek Corrections Center.

Grady-Mitchell-portrait

Grady Mitchell speaks to a graduating class. He has taught the Roots of Success curriculum twelve times, and was certified as a Master Instructor in 2015.

A few years ago, prior to Roots of Success (ROS) someone could have held a conversation on sustainability and I’m sure it would have been as interesting to me as popcorn without the salt. Today I am not only able to present the curriculum to students, but also have a variety of discussions with them on the subject. In a sense my own experience has given me even more material to share with students (myself and my colleagues like to refer to our classes as peer to peer education) because most of them had no idea the impact of their habits and choices have on the environment, any more than I.

Sustainability in simple terms means being able to meet our needs now without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. However, this term has been taken hostage so to speak because manufacturers use it for their own selfish gain. We as consumers have to take sustainability back and know that sustainability is survivability. By adding the word ‘Just’ before Sustainability, makes it fair and equal.

This is significant to me because in order for the future generations to be sustained, an interest on the matter needs to prevail now. Failure can’t be an option because to do so could literally mean the extinction of those we love dearly and plan on leaving our legacy to. Sustainability is a built in feature of all natural environmental systems provided that human interference is absent or minimized.

Roots-Class-Photo-2-Photo-by-DOC

Grady Mitchell sits with his fellow instructors a graduating class of Roots of Success. Photo by DOC staff.

To get to a more sustainable lifestyle is going to require, inevitably, some radical changes in attitudes, values and behavior. The answer to creating global values and actions is blurred for now. How we get to less pollutants and more sustainable reliances and reuse may depend on generations yet to come (if we make it that far), because as it stands, we haven’t been doing too good of a job. Changing our personal habits; reducing the carbon footprint; our practices being altered for the benefit of sustainability is ‘just.’ In the book “Last Child in the Woods,” a phrase was coined called Nature Deficit Disorder. All it takes to cure this disorder is to get outside and enjoy nature. With seven billion people in the world, imagine the impact from just being sustainable or creating nature. Imagine a society where our lives are as immersed in nature as they are technology.

turtle-release-techs-and-piliponis

Turtle technicians x and x hold healthy western pond turtles prior to releasing them. The turtle program staff sponsor, Shaun Piliponis, stands with them. Photo by Sadie Gilliom.

In order to make sustainability more inclusive takes education and a willingness to embrace lifestyle changes. The guerrilla gardener of South Central Los Angeles, Ron Finley stated, “If kids grow kale, kids eat kale.” If the inspiration was focused on making sustainability hip, cool, the thing to do, then we have a cure for Nature Deficit Disorder. Allowing our generation to see with their own eyes and then pass it on to the next is “just.” César Chavez stated:

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”

One of the videos available to our students in our Roots of Success class tells us, in 1915 a Canadian commission on conservation made an interesting proclamation, they said “each generation is entitled to the Interest on the Natural Capital, but the Principal should be handed on unimpaired.” We enjoy the fruit (the interest) from the tree (the principal), but if we cut the trees down both the principal and the interest will be gone forever. So in the end, Just Sustainability could really mean we all take responsibility not only for ourselves, but for community, the planet and most important, the ones who come after us.