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| Fourth grader Grace Kubiak, left, and fifth grader Megan Hintz, students at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Waterford, show off the painted trash bins they helped design at the school. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Lucero) |
Every spring, students in Nancy Willing’s science classes at St. John Nepomuk Elementary School in Racine make North Beach their classroom while studying ecology. The beach, on the city’s northeast side, is sandwiched between the Racine Park Zoo and the Racine Yacht Club in a scenic slice of Lake Michigan shoreline, but the lessons can be messy, dirty, and sometimes downright daunting.
Resources for parents, educators
Educators who are interested in learning more about environmental programs, events and resources for their students may want to visit some of these Web sites:
Department of Natural Resources: Provides information on Wisconsin Green and Healthy Schools program, promoting a healthier school environment. <www.earthday.net> Helps educators find Earth Day observances and celebrations worldwide.
Clearn Air Wisconsin: Offers educators ideas and activities for students, including a clean air poster contest.
Camp Gray: Allows students and educators an opportunity to learn about the environment while reflecting on the spiritual aspect of ecology.
Remember, parents can be excellent educators in helping their children learn about the spiritual aspect of the environment, too, said Fr. Eschweiler, whose 1999 book, “Observe, Judge and Act,” offered a wealth of activities and reflections on the environment. He urged families to talk about and follow the message of “reduce, reuse and recycle” in their lives.
Many passages of Scripture are related to the sacredness of creation, he said. He encouraged parents to look for them, discuss them with their kids, and tie them in to the environment, whether in a state park or a simple vegetable garden.
“By taking children out to nature — even just the backyard — (parents can) cultivate a sense of wonder and awe at a leaf, a bug, or wildlife,” he said. “In the creation story in Genesis, the original Aramaic word translated as ‘good’ also means ‘beautiful.’ Help children sense this.” |
Students pick up litter along the beach, and the amount of fast food wrappers, soda cans and beer bottles adds up quickly. One year, Willing recalled, the group collected enough garbage to create a small mountain of trash bags.
“We (clean up the beach) periodically, so that helps, but it was just an incredible amount of garbage we picked up that year,” she said.
“When you see all that, you realize it’s just stuff people throw away and it can end up in the lake. It’s just disgusting, really.”
Willing coordinates her class trips to North Beach with a local environmental organization, the Racine Earth Service Corps Youth United, which also works with her students on other activities during the year, such as a science fair with an ecological bent, featuring student projects that examine the impact of air pollution or research the effectiveness of earth-friendly cleaning products.
Each year Willing also invites Racine businesses to the school so employees can explain how their companies are helping the environment.
Additionally, she and her students participate in statewide programs, such as a poster contest sponsored by Clean Air Wisconsin.
Teacher practices what she preaches
Passionate about the environment, Willing and her husband share one car, and she usually walks to work. She strives for a simple life, and urges her students to reduce, reuse and recycle whenever possible. It’s a philosophy that she says is supported by her employer as well.
St. John Nepomuk is working with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on a program that helps schools become “greener” — more environmentally conscious in their use of natural resources, energy and chemicals. Large bins in the building already hold used glass, plastic, and even toner cartridges from copy machines and printers.
Eighth-graders collect used paper from all the classrooms each day and take it to a special school Dumpster for recycling. Middle-school students wash and reuse their partitioned aluminum lunch trays.
These actions show children how small, positive steps — from curbing pollution to cutting down on the garbage going to landfills — can help the health of the planet, said Willing, who also teaches religion. She tries to take the message further. She wants students to see the link between the environment and their responsibility as stewards of creation.
“We need to take care of each other and we need to take care of the earth,” she said. “Wherever there’s a little opening, I try to incorporate that. Part of our religious requirement is that each student must do community service, so some of our activities are even environmental, although it’s not limited to that.”
Environmental awareness complements Catholic theology
Making environmental awareness part of Catholic theology is fitting, said Fr. Ed Eschweiler, a retired Milwaukee diocesan priest, author and environmental activist.
“A Christian environmental sense should be a ‘natural’ for Catholics, because it is so sacramental: ‘The heavens proclaim the glory of God…’” he wrote in an e-mail interview. “A Christian environmental consciousness recognizes that all of creation, and all of life especially, is sacred.”
Fr. Eschweiler said the bishops of the Philippines illustrated the connection well in their 1998 pastoral letter, “What is Happening to Our Beautiful Land?” by calling the environment “the ultimate pro-life issue” for the church community, and indeed, all the world.
“Our (school’s) mission calls us to proclaim the Gospel, serve others and praise God,” said Mike Sternig, principal at Holy Angels Elementary School, West Bend. “By being good caretakers of our environment, we not only give praise to God for creation, but also pass it along as a gift to other generations.”
Being frugal provides opportunities for others
In an e-mail response to questions, Sternig wrote, “When students are frugal and non-wasteful, they are really providing opportunities for those in need to have more. Wasting and destroying even a small part of the environment takes away from the natural resources which are available for all to share.”
At Holy Angels, Sternig said, staff and students have recycled paper products for years, and maintenance workers are gradually replacing old lighting fixtures with newer, more efficient ones. Even some service projects have an environmental edge. During Lent, for instance, children are collecting aluminum cans for cash to support missionary work in Honduras, where, Sternig noted, a Holy Angels graduate is working. Third-graders have been collecting soda can tabs to recycle for a local Ronald McDonald House.
Ecology has become part of the curriculum here, too.
“Students learn a variety of topics, from natural resources, the water cycle, weather, climate, biomes, ecosystems, botany, food chains and recycling, just to name a few,” wrote Holy Angels sixth-grade science teacher, Melissa Trepte, in an e-mail.
Sometimes the lessons are personal, like the week-long activity that had older students carrying their own trash bags throughout the school day, then analyzing just what — and how much — they’d thrown away in that time.
“At the eighth-grade level, we review and try to involve the students in a more hands-on experience with the environment and the role that they play in protecting and using God’s gifts wisely,” Trepte said.
“When possible, we construct a Youth Service Learning Project that addresses an environmental need within the community and provides the students with an opportunity to apply what they have learned throughout their studies at Holy Angels.”
In one such project, eighth-graders chose to work with community members and local groups in picking up litter, weeding community flower beds, and cleaning up public spots around West Bend. In the process, they learned that litter and neglect can have an impact not only upon the aesthetics of a neighborhood, but upon its natural balance, Trepte said.
‘Motivation’ is essential part of teaching ecology
She sees motivation as an essential part of teaching ecology.
“Many of the junior high classes have weekly and monthly current event reports that allow students to keep on top of these issues and discuss them with their classmates,” she said. “The struggle is not getting students to understand and be aware of the information. The struggle lies in getting them to consider being active and involved in what is happening to the environment. Being well-informed and knowledgeable is only the first step.”
Every year, Holy Angels’ sixth-graders greet the environment up-close in an overnight retreat in the Environmental Stewardship Program at Camp Gray in the Baraboo Hills near the central part of the state.
Camp highlights religious connection to environment
Owned and operated by the Diocese of Madison, Camp Gray has offered its Environmental Stewardship Program to schools for six years. Its busiest retreats take place during fall and spring, and the program annually draws students from 40 to 50 schools — most of them Catholic — around southeastern Wisconsin, according to program director Kelly Haddock.
Students learn about forest management, stream ecology and invasive species in a camp setting that typically includes hikes and picnic lunches. But student campers also reflect on the spiritual side of creation through environmental vespers, a candlelight prayer service that mixes creation readings from Genesis with facts about how humans have harmed the environment.
“From the very beginning, God called us to be stewards of the Earth, caretakers of the environment,” Haddock said. “The retreat at Camp Gray teaches kids ways that they can help. Whether it’s hiking, cleaning up after meals, or the way we compost our garbage — everything is tied directly into our faith and our walk with God because God wants us to be taking care of the environment.”
Many of the students she sees know how human actions affect the environment, Haddock said, but fewer are aware of the religious connection of stewardship.
“When they come here, they really begin to connect it with faith and God,” she said. “We let kids’ curiosity run wild, and we run with that. We go on a hike and we let kids see and touch things. We put on these big water boots and just go hiking through a stream with them.
“Many have never had that experience. Or we have them sit and be quiet and listen to nature for five minutes, something that not a lot of them get to do. So by giving them those experiences, it really helps them think about that connection between taking care of the earth and their call as Catholic Christians.”
Spiritual aspect not being preached
Fr. Eschweiler isn’t surprised that more children — or adults — aren’t as aware of the spiritual side of ecology. Lower enrollment in Catholic schools today and parents who didn’t have such integrated courses are two reasons, he said. But far more telling might be that, beyond a few recycling bins in church, the environment isn’t generally touched on in parishes, whether at committee meetings or in homilies.
“I am afraid it is not being addressed, especially at Sunday liturgies,” Fr. Eschweiler said. “I have had people tell me that they have never heard mention of the spiritual aspect. Of course, sadly, this is true of most Catholic social thought — sometimes called the church’s best kept secret.”
Even among Catholic schools in the Milwaukee Archdiocese, emphasis on the spiritual side of ecology is mixed. Two years ago at St. Thomas Aquinas Elementary School in Waterford, a former principal founded the EarthSavers Club, an extra-curricular student activity that focused on environmental education and hands-on activities.
Megan Hintz, a fifth grader at the school, said that although joining the club last year was her mom’s idea, she’s enjoyed activities like painting birdhouses that she’s hung in her backyard.
When EarthSavers’ founder — who was also the club advisor — recently resigned as principal, the group stopped meeting. Acting principal Joan Sippel is trying to get EarthSavers going again, assigning a parent as the new club advisor, but she admitted the reorganization takes time.
For many schools, Catholic ecology is a subject they tackle independently. Trepte, who has taught at Holy Angels for two years, hasn’t yet paired with another school on any environmental projects, although she said that is one of her goals.
At St. John Nepomuk, while Willing finds ample resources to use in her science classes, she, too, hasn’t had much luck finding another school with which to work. She referred to an e-mail she’d recently received from Clean Air Wisconsin about deadline dates for a statewide poster competition; the e-mail was sent to only a dozen schools.
“I don’t think some teachers are as aware as I feel they need to be,” she said. “You see some of this material and it is extra work, there’s no question about it. Maybe teachers feel they don’t have time to include it in the curriculum because there’s plenty to teach that’s already there — no question about that — but this is important and definitely worth the effort.” |
