Green Routes to Nature
By Miguel Luna - Originally published by THE NATURE OF CITIES (2013)
Words like watersheds, climate change, and sustainability are part of lessons and quizzes in our classrooms today. Some charter schools have even made the environment and sustainability the focus of their studies. The Law has even stepped in to ensure that all children in our state (California) have a chance at being exposed to environmental curricula. In 2003, a California legislator authored legislation that required the state to develop an environment-based Kindergarten through 12-grade curriculum to all California public schools, The Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI) Curriculum. However, while some schools have had success in implementing this curriculum, many struggle to incorporate the lesson plans. Standardized testing under the No Child Left Behind Act, a system that determines how much federal funding a school gets based on test scores, makes high-score-testing the priority leaving very little time and incentive for teachers to supplement or add anything new to the norm established curriculum.
My respect goes out to those wonderful educators in the system that take on the challenge and find creative ways to incorporate environmental learning in the classroom. But nature lessons must also be approached from outside the school system, absent of objectives, standards, and a letter grade. These lessons must be advanced through life experiences. Our local communities represent an opportunity to provide our youth with such learning experiences and nature portals that will create a shift in the way we perceive conservation and appreciate nature.
City planning can play a very important role in exposing our children to nature. By addressing access to nature from a city planning lens, we can also make our communities the classroom. Our cities are transforming, and before us is an opportunity to shape the way our children see their city and interact with it. If a child grows up walking on a sidewalk that uses parkway swales to capture water when it rains rather than having to jump over flooded streets on their way to school, they grow up appreciating stormwater and not seeing it as a nuisance. A simple walk to the grocery store can become a learning experience by exposing a child to hummingbirds suckling on salvias and bees and butterflies interacting with CA poppy’s and coyotebush (plants native to our local region).
We can design our sidewalks to have destinations. Our front doors can lead us to local parks and these can link with each other via green routes. We can utilize our local parks as portals for children and their parents to be shuttled, as a family, from inner sections of the city to a national park for the day: “Green Routes to Nature”. There is a need for these routes. An article by High Country News “Parks for All?” points to a 2011 National Park survey reporting that Hispanics accounted for fewer than 10 percent of American visitors, African-Americans made up just seven percent, and Asian-Americans only three percent. During that same year, President Barack Obama announced the American Great Outdoors Initiative Report. The report outlined the combined efforts of 15 federals agencies that, amongst its six broad goals, would result in: “accessible parks or green space for our children and create a new generation of great urban parks and community spaces.”
If we seek to foster future generations that will not only care for nature but also vote for measures that protect natural spaces, then our children must visit these places and establish a connection. If we are to see a shift in culture around conservation and nature, then our environmental educational goals should expand beyond the school classroom, not siloed from the communities they are surrounded by. Our practices must be geared by life experiences that encompass the child’s day-to-day activities and includes the family.
