KAEE 2024 Conference

Environmental stewardship with opportunities for community involvement abound, but urban, community-based stewardship projects also experience high failure rates. Labor requirements, lack of appropriate experience, resources, and lack of long-term planning leads to low quality implementation and lack of continued interest. This session will describe two successful environmental stewardship projects with different levels of community involvement. Participants will be asked to describe their own experiences, and presenters will provide their formula for improving environmental stewardship projects.

The Frankfort/Franklin County Joint Task Force on Invasives was formed in 2021 with a goal to develop a structured invasive species plan and framework for regular community and agency activity on the issue. This community led initiative has resulted in an approved city plan, mapping of county-wide priority areas, fundraising, and planning for paid positions with partnering agencies to address task force needs.

Olmsted Parks Conservancy in partnership with Kentucky State University began a brush management demonstration trail in 2022 in Louisville, KY to address citizen and agency questions about whether using small ruminant livestock (goats) can be an efficient, sustainable habitat management tool compared to traditional, herbicide-based methods. Preliminary results and the methods used to address community interest have generated additional support toward expanding natural areas management while also addressing community concerns.

Successful, long-term environmental stewardship requires experience, evidence-based methods, and a structured process. Sustainable community engagement requires persistent efforts, immersive opportunities, and a focus on community needs. Although these two can be at odds, they can be effectively combined with a structured approach.

Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) "explores sustainability and its educational responses in Early Childhood Education (ECE [Davis, 2022]). Through Environmental Education and incorporating nature in classroom learning, teachers enable children to have positive experiences in nature and encourage respect for our planet. Sustainability is an abstract concept for young children. How do we implement classroom practices that are meaningful to children and encourage them to engage in sustainability practices? This prospect becomes complex as Early Childhood Educators work with with children from increasingly diverse cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds. Participants in this session will engage in dialogue about what ECEfS looks like in practice for teachers of young children and in teacher preparation programs. We will engage in activities that can be easily replicated in classrooms with young children.

This session will focus on multiple approaches to creating meaningful, engaging, purposeful, and joyful programs or lessons. Building off of the basic "fundamentals" of a quality lesson, attendees will think about ways to bring their lessons to the next level of success. Utilizing song and dance, rhythm and rhyme, kinesthetics and earworms, we'll approach topics from a joy building view with the final goal of attaining a higher level of comprehension, retention, and action from lessons.