Zara always says like, asks, ambition hopefully no kids run through and scream so might happen
okay, so I want to you know, we'll just start off with just, you know, like basic just like, like You're like the program, which is, which is
which is
learning by meeting No, yeah, yeah, I'm, like, I know, like, it's just like, like a, like a new
program that's, you know, like, my kids have a what's the point of the college? So if you you know, could could you explain like if I'm like, in depth about
yeah about the learning value? Sure. It's great that you're asking about this today because like I mentioned before we started so learning by leading is a service learning program, set up three universities set up in at UC Davis, and the organizers and the creators are actually here right now, which is pretty cool. There are taking a tour and just kind of seeing how we've implemented it through UGA. So it's described as a leadership ladder where basically, students can come and earn service learning credits by working on a team and at the garden, I think we have, we've changed. We've done this for a while I started in 2020. And I think they had just started doing it here. So we've done it for about three years. And I think there are maybe six teams right now. There's conservation horticulture, there's visitor services, and the Children's Garden team. And then I co mentor, the Environmental Education team. And so I'm the Children's Program Coordinator. So I do field trips through for grades K through 12. My counterpart, Shawn Cameron, he's the adult education coordinator. And he does programs for our lifelong learners, as we call them, so adults earning certificates. He brings in professionals in all different fields to teach classes and courses. So we call them come into our environmental education team where students can get experience, leading programs, assisting with programs learning how to coordinate and communicate with professionals how to proctor things. But that's just our team specifically, so let me back up. But the learning believing program as a whole is basically a way for students to make connections with professionals in the field, they're interested in and get experience not only for a class, but just networking and learning professional development skills. And it's kind of set up so that they start as a team member, if they're really interested and have the skill set. They can then become the student leader, which we passed my student leaders in that classroom right there when we walked in.
So Hannah serve
Oh, she was my previous she has Okay, yeah, yeah. Previous to Hannah or Siochana. She, she was my student leader in 20. Let's see. What year is it? 2021 to 2022. Okay, and then she is gearing up for med school. So, she couldn't make the commitment to work. She was wonderful. She started out as a team member became my student leader. And then now we have Mackenzie Leatherwood and Armando Gomez
and like one want to ask about, like, like, what the role that like, like, a gear my team does. So, so from like, like, like, like, like, like, what looks like the summary, right? You might have, like the team said, or like or like, like, like quick, you know? Like what? Like the site said that it like said, you know, like, Y'all tend to like to like to like to plan like trips and hikes for a grey zone pre K through 12. Right? Yes. What? What's like the planning that right? That how like is like the planning process for that?
Sure. So I as the education the children's education coordinator, my job is to set the schedule and coordinate with teachers. So we serve students from Clark County and surrounding counties, really anyone who wants to come visit the garden is able to, we are free and open to the public. But to do a guided program, we do charge a fee, and that goes to fund our other free outreach programs. So it's kind of like a self sustaining system. Maybe that's not the correct word. But um, so basically, at the beginning of each semester, we do fall and spring field trips, I sit down with my coworkers and the other departments and look at what dates we can open up. So as long as there's not like a big garden event happening, or a rental that's using a space or something will open that date. And then teachers just reach or principals or organizers, homeschool groups, they'll reach out to me, and we'll set up a field trip. So these bins over here are some of our field trip ends. So we have like freckles, garden stream ecology, medicinal plants, remarkable rainforests, they all, we offer nine different themes, but they're all of course nature based. And I just give them a description of what we offer, they all adhere to the Georgia state standards. So for instance, second graders, or let me think, I believe maybe third graders are talking about like the ego regions, so I'll steer them towards our Georgia discovery quest program, because we talk about that, and we talk about the natural resources of Georgia. So it's a great way for them to bring what they're learning in class, to an outdoor experience to really solidify the message. But to answer your question, that's my role. And then our team is really great, because they, I train them to lead the programs. And so our backpacks that you see back here, they have all of the teaching materials in them. So the students can be responsible for, like planning their own lesson as it adheres to our curriculum, they, you know, prepare all the stuff, we don't use a lot of worksheets, but they'll like things like that, like, they'll prepare the worksheets, they'll prepare the teaching materials, they'll set up, what we have the signs back here, we have puppet characters that relate to some of our activities. So they'll set those out in the morning. But basically, you know, set up breakdown leading the activities. They don't really communicate with the teachers as far as our field trip programs, but we have other things like outreach events, so we'll go to schools, stem nights, and I'll put them in contact with our students. So they get the experience of kind of, you know, working with outside organizations, and they learn communication skills and making contacts and things like that. So while I kind of do the big picture, things, it's really great that I get to give them the opportunity to kind of learn those skills as they as they get more comfortable with it.
Right. And, you know, like, it's like, a great way like for you know, like, like for our students, you know, depending like those, like skills for you know, yeah, absolutely, you know, positions and how to get in contact with, yeah, what people that could, you know, go like to,
to architecture for sure, yeah, we have one of our student leaders, Armando, he wanted to go pre med, and then if I can brag about him for a minute, his experience at the garden, he's now pursuing a master's in child education. So it's kind of like, you know, given him the opportunity to see a different thing that he's really good at and really enjoys, and it's kind of changed his future plans, in a way we kind of sucked Him into the world. So it's really nice to see.
So I want to change the topic. So climate change, that's been like, like a big a topic that you know, I feel like has been right, and we'd like to talk for, you know, like a while now. What are your thoughts on climate change, just like as you know, like, just like as you know, like A topic or just yeah, why a teachable? You know? Yeah, especially as an education coordinator.
So it's big questions. So I'm, I'm obviously passionate about environmental issues. My, you know, I think anyone that works for anyone, but most people that work in environmental studies, they have a desire to make a positive impact on the planet. Because we, as humans, have generally throughout history not had always had a positive impact on our environment. And so I think one of the most important things and challenges to overcome is a lack of education in different issues. So I'm biased, I work in education. But for me, what's fulfilling about my job is the fact that I get to reach students about something I'm passionate about. So I give all the respect to classroom teachers, but it couldn't, could not be me, I could I don't have the patience. So I'm fortunate enough to I get to welcome students in talk about what I care about, which is nature and environmental studies. And then send them back to the classroom with the hopes that it kind of pun intended plants, the seed for them to continue caring about these issues. So while we don't specifically have any curriculum based on climate change, specifically, I mean, you can talk about it when you talk about anything environmental, anything social and with human interactions. So we, for instance, our medicinal plants, field trip talks about the collection of native species, and we do an activity where they learn about the harmful effects of over collection, and what human actions can do to endangered or threatened species. So, you know, in little ways, we start to talk to them about what your individual even if you don't think you have an individual impact what it might do, if you just go out and pick a flower that you don't really think about. So, like I said, we you know, I don't talk specifically about climate change, but I definitely want to educate our next generation in ways that they can care about these things and continue to seek these out. So like, if you come on a field trip, and you learn, like, Oh, I didn't realize that I can't just go pick things from botanical garden, and then maybe that will carry on to deepen their knowledge as they go along. And whether they come back here or just in their own lives, that kind of answer your
question. Yeah, that makes sense. Because like, there's like a study done in 2021, though, it gives a sample around it 10,000 People there
like, like, teenagers, and well, it said that there was roughly like Catholic of like, the sample felt, you know, like sad or you want to be felt like a dread like, I told the girl you know, climate change, and
45% of the sample even said that, you know, it like had like, a like a, like, a, like effect right? on there, you know, like, on the wicked day to like, right, like a day like life. So, I want to ask, though, what, or has there hazard like a been, you know, like a student or even like maybe, you know, like, a teenager, you know, just like a child that has, like when they do bring it up like like it their
their concerns, like about
So, because we, we see students for like an hour and a half. I don't always get to have like the in depth conversation with him that I might like to about the subjects we're talking about. But I will say in the summertime, we do camp, so we get students for a whole week and we definitely get to go more in depth with our lessons. And we have one week in particular that's ages 11 to 14 its environmental sciences camp, and it is aimed at kind of introducing them to professions. that they could pursue. So not only do we talk about like botany and horticulture and environmental education, but we talk about like, climate archaeology, not climate archaeology, environmental archaeology. And we have this really wonderful guest speaker and Dorland. She works with New South associates. It's an archeological company. And she was able to come in and talk about how, you know, one aspect you might not think a lot about archaeology is that we're losing archaeological sites, to coastal coastal line changes, and things like that, and different environmental degradation, and how that can affect, you know, the history that we get to explore. And so in those kinds of programs, we have more time with students, we get to open up to more conversations, and I can't think of a specific time. But I definitely know, you know, I'll have kids comment all the time, I ask a lot of leading questions when I teach. So if I'll talk about like, oh, you know, what would happen if you know, all of the, if all of the invasive plants killed out all of our native plants, and then something didn't have something to eat kids all the time, like, it would all die, you know, they, even if they're kind of being silly, even though that's not a silly thing. They are able to conceptualize what that would mean, and how things are changing and how we affect them. But I definitely think with those teenagers, you know, that's a time of awakening. And you're kind of realizing, well, I've heard about this, but I didn't really think how that's gonna affect my life. And they're starting to think more about how that's going to impact their future. And so that's what I love. What I do, because, you know, if I can quote Jane Goodall, who I just love, she says something like, you know, no matter what, you're going to have an effect on the world and the environment. And it's up to you, whether that's positive or negative effect, which I just love that because I think for some people, it might be tempting to say, well, it's too late is too far gone? I can't change it, why should I recycle? The world is ending, you know, which I, you know, I get, I don't fully get it, but I do understand that, you know, sometimes it feels hopeless. But in my mind, and when I try to teach students and kind of pass on is that, you know, even if it is too late, you really want to add to the badness, you know, even if we are going down this bad path, you want to be a part of that, like, even if you one as one person making your choices isn't able to counteract all the bad. If we all think that way. It is too late, you know, if we each think of ourselves as well, you know, I might not change the world, but at least I'm not going to, I'm not going to make it worse. I mean, if we all think that way, it could get better.
But I cannot make a student you know, like, like, from from, like the team, right? Oh, well, bio team would bring up for like anything like around that like a question.
I mean, I definitely think we talk about, you know, their, the way they feel and how they want to make an impact. I can't say that I've had a conversation where they have talked about like, their, their fear necessarily of climate change and how it's affecting the world. Because I think that we our team typically attracts students that because it's environment education, they're kind of already thinking like, okay, how am I going to help this? So we definitely have those conversations where it's like, yeah, this is really sad and such and such as, this is terrible, this is happening and can you believe that this is happening, but just being a part of this team, I think they're already looking for ways that they can counteract that anxiety and put some momentum forward to not feel stuck and, you know, all the bad things.
Like I had sort of my question, just add on to that. What I'd like to take away from my, to the, you know, my two right, like people, right, you might be like a who, like, my car, you know, I do like having, you know, or like or like, like argument kind of like a struggle with with, you know, like, with climate change, and just,
you know, like, my sense of, you know, like a drought or what would be like, like a takeaway or just like a general like, way like to help people?
That's a great question. I have to think about it a little bit. I
think I think the maybe the best way I could say to think about it is that fear is a necessary instinct, right? If we had no fear, we probably wouldn't survive very long. You know, if we weren't scared of heights, we would probably jump off heights that were too dangerous for us to survive. And I think that while it's uncomfortable, and it's upsetting, I think fear is what? It's a driving force, right? If we didn't know, we had these issues, and we weren't worried about them, then what would be our motivation to do anything about it? So I hope that's not cliche, but I feel like, you know, it's good that you're worried and not to say it should consume you, because then you know, you can't really do anything to fix it, if you let it just kind of push you down and make you feel like there's, it's not worth trying anything, right. So like, I was saying, you're gonna add to this world in some way. And so if you're feeling, you know, anxiety about it, and you're feeling, you know, I guess, hope people don't feel hopeless, you know, if, if nothing's gonna, nothing's gonna help, then I think there's still a point in trying, you know, cuz, then why are we here? You know, that's how I feel if if you're not here to to make things better than Why are you here?
Right? That makes sense.
And so, you know, we got to get off, you know, like, like, I'm looking forward to climate change topic. Do you have any recently like, advanced that? That right, I'm like, like a helped, you know, like to put on? Or like, like, any like
E right, and when events that you get helped, that you liked, like the most?
Oh, just in general.
So how's your time, as you know, oh, shoot coordinator,
man. I mean, I love my job. I. You know, do I wake up every day super psyched to work with kids? Maybe not. It's a tiring job. But as soon as I'm actually with them, I'm like, Yeah, I love this. I think I've always said I've been in environmental education for maybe 10 years now. And I think I've always said, my favorite thing is helping someone get past the fear of the unknown. And so I do have not to freak you out. But there's a snake in here. He's hiding in his enclosure.
There was a time where like, every like, I've had like a snake. Crawl. Like to my shirt. Oh, oh. constrictors. Yeah. And
so he's not that big. But yeah. Okay. Good to know. So you know, well, I
say that, you know, yeah, aggressive,
right. Good. Yeah. No, he's not aggressive. He's very sweet. But I say that, because, you know, we also have a tarantula, these things. It's totally normal. That's bigger. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And, you know, I teach with these animals. And I always tell kids, you know, I am not here to scare you. And I'm not here to push you past your comfort zone. But I am here to educate you so that you understand even if you don't like these animals, why they're important to the environment. We go out and we catch worms with students, and we look for bugs and we catch salamanders. And a lot of times, it's students first time doing anything like that, or even being in the woods. Surprisingly enough, as someone who grew up in the woods, not everyone gets to do that, or wants to do that. But um, so my favorite part about environmental education is always getting that student you know, I love the students who come with a love of nature already. Because then I get to, you know, vibe with them and talk about things we both love. But I also love the students who come in are like, I'm not touching that snake. And I'm like, that's fine. You do not have such that snake. But I'm going to give you multiple opportunities to get comfortable with the snake so that if you do get to the point where you want to, you can make that decision and I'd say 95% of the time, someone will get to that point because once they start to get to understand more about it, the less scary it becomes. And that's that's always my favorite experience, but that's more general. So a specific my favorite. I mean, I love our field trips. We do them every day, my favorite time of the year summer camp, because I do get to make those You get to spend a lot more time I spend more time Yeah, more time more, it's less. You know, outdoor education is definitely less rigid than indoor education in general, just because we, we don't have as much pressure on us as like a classroom teacher does for like, we don't do tests, we don't have to go, you know, do test scores and worry about hitting certain milestones, we just get to do our little bit, and hope that it helps them in whatever they're studying. And so summer camp is even less is even more flexible. Because it is. It's not school, you know, it's it's educational. It's educational, fun. But it's always super fun to get to have more of a relationship and have those more in depth conversations, like we were talking about. So that that's always my favorite time here. But it's hard. I love everything. I love it all.
No. And like it like I went that's, you know, a great thing to have is, you know, where your passion? Yeah, before, right?
Very fortunate?
Yeah. That's a great thing. I wish a lot of people have like that. Passion. Yeah. Um, and then. So, so you've been like getting like the role for three years? So, so. So like, let's, what's it like doing your travel? Back to that time? It just write I take, you know, like a look at it. And then No, I do. And fast forward now. How has your role in what evolved like, because, like, when we draft drastic changes,
I started in 2020. So you can guess what those changes were. I started in March of 2020. So I think I saw maybe our field trip season goes through May. And then summer camp starts in June. And I'm probably saw for field trips before everything shut down. And then we kind of transitioned to working from home, I started to come in and take care of the animals a couple times a week, and we kind of rotated through days in the office. So we weren't really crossing paths with anyone else. And so my first like, eight months, I didn't get to do a huge part of my job, which is interacting with students. Because one, the school systems stopped doing field trips, and two, we weren't able to offer summer camp. Because everything was still you know, as it was. And so I got it was, I would never say you know, the pandemic was a good thing. But it did provide me with different opportunities to get to know my job, because instead of immediately having to go in and do programs, I had a lot of time to just read through things, you know, I'm all over the place all over the garden every single day, and I am on my computer a good bit, but at that time, I was just only on my computer. So I just did, I did my best to learn as much behind the scenes stuff, and get everything organized. Because you know, when you start a new job, everybody kind of puts their own spin on things. And I will not say things were not organized. When I came in, I have a wonderful team and a very long history of education here and programming way before me. But you know, you always want to organize things your own way. So the beginning of my job was a lot of just learning how things were done here and how I kind of wanted to do them. And then now I've done every single program many, many times with all different kinds of students. I don't have to, like when I would teach everything for the first time I would come in super early and read through everything again and just make sure I had everything going and now I've done them so many times. I'm like oh yeah, we're doing this program. I got this like, I know my mesh feels really big. Yeah, it's definitely much more able to do things on the fly because I am very comfortable with what we have and can can pull from a lot of things that I've learned here from the garden and learn from my co workers to
write and just you know, like a waiter last question Where do you see your role evolving and you know, like the next few years and
so me personally or my job here,
your job?
You know, I think so in the three years that I've been here the garden so much has already changed. We have a new entrance we have a new building with that comes new programs and new opportunities, we have a light show now that we've just finished our two, like our winter wonder lights show that two years in the making. And I think being a part of the university is awesome, because we, you know, are always being asked to, to grow and expand and reach more people. And so I think my job will be different going forward every single year, because we're always trying to reach me personally, we're always trying to meet reach more kids, but then, you know, my counterparts are trying to reach more adults and more partners and more, you know, sister organizations, and I think it's just going to keep getting bigger because we have more capacity to do things. Right.
