Choices, Choosing, Debating, Life

I know I know, it has been far too long since I updated last. I cannot believe how busy I am up here! A full course load of grad classes along with 24 hours of teaching a week! This is just crazy...and I am using far too many exclamation points.

I find myself wondering today if where I am is really the right place for me in the long run. Not, physically where I am, but what I am doing. Educating children is a commendable profession, of course, but is it what my heart is screaming for? I don’t think so. I want to protect this planet, to fight for it with every breath I have, and I don’t think that non-chalantly hinting at children (while working with all my might to avoid the dreaded word ‘advocacy) that the world might be being killed is going to cut it for me, or for the planet. If you saw your mother being murdered in front of you would you go and tell people why murder is wrong without naming the murderer, or would you take them on teeth barred? Why is it that humanity has had all of the animal instincts drained from them and that we are so afraid to win them back? I read articles when I am done teaching about historical things each day and I wonder why I’m not teaching the children about tomorrow instead of yesterday. Yesterday was beautiful, the voyageurs and the Ojibwe loved the land up here as I do...but the land isn’t the same anymore. It was clear cut in the early 1900s and it is being mined to this day...I feel like I am sitting way too passively considering a profession that won’t help the planet fast enough.

I want to write, it’s true, but I don’t want to write about environmental education as I have been claiming to want to do. I am just saying that to justify where I am right now, to justify the fact that I didn’t jump quite far enough when I left the city and my office and a 9-5 predictability. Then again, I did jump, and maybe this is just a shoving off point for bigger and better things next year.

Once I know the lesson plans up here front and back I am allowed to start throwing some of me in with the teachings. I can talk about current events impacting the planet, the truths of what is happening, and try to foster a spark in children somewhat like what I have shimmering within me. A spark that knows to question the norms of this society and one that sees clear cuts not as ‘forest management’ but as homicidal insanity on ecosystems.

We are each pushed to make our own evening programs of about an hour to educate children about something this year. I want to make mine on what it would look like here if the land had never been clear cut. There is an area in Minnesota called ‘The Lost 40’ that due to a surveying error was never logged that I am going to visit. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/snas/sna01063/index.html I am going to talk about the giant white pines that used to grace the ridge here and the woodland caribou that evacuated once their pine friends were gone. I’ll talk about the beaver weighing nearly 100 pounds that populated the rivers before they were killed, nearly to extinction, for their furs to grace felt hats of the elite in Europe. With pictures, poetry, and possibly music I hope to make the children see what this planet used to look like, the drastic changes that are taking place today. Perhaps a segment within the slide show to talk about clear cutting that is happening right now?

This will be a productive year, for sure. I am unsure and really shaky about making a career of it though. The planet cannot wait for these children to grow into adults for people to start fighting for it.