Humane Edge E-News July 2009

• TERRIFIC TIPS FOR HELPING YOUR KIDS CONNECT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD
• GET MORE SOCIAL WITH IHE
  
• SPARKING A SENSE OF WONDER
  
• SUMMER READS FOR YOUR HUMANE NEEDS
  
• HUMANE EDUCATION IN ACTION: LAYING A FOUNDATION FOR A HUMANE WORLD
  
• ECO-BRIEFS: QUICK GUIDES FOR THE ECO-CONSCIOUS
  
• FEATURED STUDENT: CAROLINE CRANE
  

TERRIFIC TIPS FOR HELPING YOUR KIDS CONNECT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

Summer is a great time to help your kids (and yourself) reconnect with the natural world, and there have been some great ideas and suggestions on the web lately.

Just want to get your family out and about? The National Wildlife Federation’s “Be Out There” campaign offers information and tips for getting your kids outside to learn, explore and just appreciate. They also have a whole slew of suggested activities for engaging your kids with the natural world. The Daily Green has collected 30 of these activities into a nice little slideshow.

Looking for something a bit more scientific? The Daily Green recently posted 16 “citizen science” projects that help kids learn about nature while also helping collect data that actually helps scientists in their research. For example, you can observe frogs, fireflies, Monarch butterflies, flowers or bird nests and report on them. If you’re a city kid with not much wild around, there’s even a Project PigeonWatch.

Of course, you can find several activities in our Resource Center for helping spark a sense of wonder, such as Scavenger Hunt, Smell Teas, the Wonder Walk, Everything is Beautiful and Find Your Tree.

Our two featured activities for this month, Natural Treasures and Night Watchers, could easily be modified for a fun adventure with your family.

In her book, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times, IHE President Zoe Weil has a variety of suggestions for helping inspire reverence and respect for the natural world. Here are just a few for younger kids:

• Make outdoor activities routine rather than rare.
• Plant a garden. Your toddler will enjoy being by your side, looking at bugs and worms, feeling and smelling the soil and flowers, and eating the fruits of your labor. If you don’t have a backyard or access to a community garden, you can still plant herbs in window boxes.
• Check out books by Joseph Cornell and others who describe fun and inspiring outdoor activities you can do with children.
• Bring reverence for nature inside, too, by doing projects with natural materials. Pine needles, sea glass and shells, leaves and pieces of bark, dried beans, fragrant herbs and silky milkweed can all become the raw ingredients for your children’s imagination and creativity. (Be careful not to move living things such as moss, bark that is still on live trees, animals, etc.)

Older kids and teens may even want to manifest their appreciation for the environment by volunteering for nature parks or taking on projects to help clean up trash. Look for such opportunities you can engage in as a family.

“When we revere the magnificent earth and its creatures, the earth reveals itself ever more to our senses and to our hearts and souls. Our children’s spirits will soar when they watch the vermillion sun sink below a pink sky as it sets in the west. They will marvel at the speed and agility of a bat hunting for insects at dusk, and their own eyes will light up, as if in reflection, when they witness the light of a thousand fireflies at twilight.” (From Above All, Be Kind, p. 101)

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GET MORE SOCIAL WITH IHE

Sharing insights and getting support when working toward a humane world is essential. It’s great to be able to do that in person, but when that’s not possible, social media can be a helpful tool for connecting with others. IHE has had its own social media sites for awhile (see our Facebook, Twitter, Change.org, Flickr pages and our Humane Connection bog), but now you can also connect with IHE President Zoe Weil on her Facebook and Twitter pages, and Khalif Williams, our Executive Director, on his Twitter account. We’d love to connect with you and your work toward a better world (whether it's your personal choices or your work for systemic change), so we invite you to get more social with us!

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SPARKING A SENSE OF WONDER

There are great year-round opportunities to help nurture a sense of reverence and appreciation for the natural world, but with its often sunnier days and warmer nights, summer time can be extra special. Natural Treasures sends participants (grades 2-7) on a treasure hunt – complete with map and clues – to discover and observe the treasures of the natural world. Night Watchers (grades 3-7, or older with modifications) capitalizes on the wonders of the night to stage an adventurous night hike that ends with an exploration of the night sky. Both activities (created by the same teacher) sparkle with magic, mystery and adventure, while cultivating a sense of wonder.

Download a copy of Natural Treasures.

Download a copy of Night Watchers.

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SUMMER READS FOR YOUR HUMANE NEEDS

Summer offers a great chance to spend time reading to your kids – or catching up on some of the newest titles of interest. Here is just a smattering of suggested new-ish titles for kids and adults -- that can help inspire your mind and soul.

Books for Younger Kids:

Gus is a Tree by Claire Babin. 2008 (32 pgs) Gr. Pre-K – 2.
Gus falls asleep under a tree and dreams of becoming one of them, experiencing life through the lens of a tree. Great for building reverence.

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola. 2008 (32 pgs) Gr. K-6.
Tells the story of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, and her creation of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya to help the health and well-being of her fellow citizens.
Winner – 2009 Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (for great books about peace, social justice, etc., for kids)

It’s Raining Cats and Cats by Jean Prevost. 2008 (32 pgs) Gr. 2-5.
When Jim asks his mom “Why did we keep Molly from having kittens?” she takes Jim on an imaginary journey of what would have happened if Molly had kittens and her kittens had kittens.

That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians and All Living Things by Ruby Roth. 2009 (48 pgs) Gr. 2-5.
The author contrasts animal behavior in the wild with that of those on factory farms to help illustrate why some people choose to respect animals by not eating them.

Too Many Toys by David Shannon. 2008 (32 pgs) Gr. PreK-3.
Spencer’s house is a minefield of toys that his parents are always tripping over. When his mom decides it’s time to give some away, Spencer has to make some tough decisions.

Don’t Lick the Dog: Making Friends with Dogs by Wendy Wahman. 2009 (32 pgs) Gr. Pre-K – 2.
A colorful and entertaining rhyming guide for younger kids to help them learn how to properly meet and interact with dogs.

Books for Older Kids & Teens:

Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French. 2009 (368 pgs) Gr. 4-7.
When Julian intercepts an angry email meant for his uncle, it sets him on a journey to try to stop the destruction of a redwood forest.

Scat by Carl Hiaasen. 2009 (371 pgs) Gr. 5-9.
Nick and his friend Marta decide to investigate when a mysterious fire starts near a Florida wildlife preserve and a teacher goes missing. 

Every Human Has Rights by National Geographic. 2008 (48 pgs) Gr. 3-9.
Photography illustrating each of the 30 human rights set down by the United Nations in 1948 is accompanied by a list of each right, as well as powerful words from children around the world.

Animal Investigators by Laurel Abrams Neme. 2009 (230 pgs) Gr. 4-9.
Follows the “CSI of the animal world” – U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigators who use their skills to try to solve animal trafficking and wildlife exploitation cases.

After Gandhi: One Hundred Years of Nonviolent Resistance by Anne Sibley O’Brien. 2009  (181 pgs) Gr. 5-10.
Traces the history of non-violent resistance, using several examples around the world, from Nelson Mandela to Cesar Chavez to Aung San Suu Kyi to Vaclav Havel.

Books for Older Teens & Adults:

The Animal Activist’s Handbook: Maximizing Our Positive Impact in Today’s World by Matt Ball & Bruce Friedrich. 2009 (128 pgs).
“The authors build a ground-up case for reasoned, impassioned, and joyous activism that makes the most difference possible, and suggest a variety of ways to live a meaningful life through effective and efficient advocacy.”

PeaceJam: A Billion Simple Acts of Peace by Dawn Gifford Engle. 2008 (197 pgs).
Profiles Nobel Peace Prize laureates and the work they’ve done with teens to help create a better world. The book also shares tales of the lives and work of the youth involved and gives suggestions on how readers can become involved.

The Face on Your Plate by Jeffrey Masson. 2009 (288 pgs).
The author of When Elephants Weep and The Pig Who Sang to the Moon focuses on the impact of our food choices and advocates for a plant-based diet.

The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai. 2009 (336 pgs).
The Nobel Peace Prize winner offers a new and unique perspective on Africa and its challenges and offers a vision and realistic suggestions for positive change.

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End Poverty by Peter Singer. 2009 (224 pgs).
Singer provides a compelling moral argument for how we can all make poverty history be outlining why people in affluent countries should donate money to help the poorest of the poor and how much they should give.

Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life by Zoe Weil. 2009 (224 pgs).
IHE President Zoe Weil outlines the MOGO principle and provides insights and strategies for living a life of inner and outer peace by making choices that do the most good and least harm for ourselves, other people, nonhuman animals and the earth.

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HUMANE EDUCATION IN ACTION: LAYING A FOUNDATION FOR A HUMANE WORLD

When asked to sum himself up in a few words, Michel Estopinan called himself a “Cuban, progressive Christian, Humane Educator, dreamer, visionary, idealist.” Michel’s passion for educating students and creating a compassionate, sustainable world has melded into a powerful combination of humane education programs and projects, including an award-winning Humane School Initiative. Read about Michel’s work.

Quick Facts:

Current hometown: Miami, Florida
IHE fan since: 2003
Current job: High School Teacher at Hialeah Senior High School
Your hero: People and children like Mattie Stepanek
Book/movie that changed your life: Pay it Forward
Guilty pleasure: Chocolate
Inspired by: Jesus' command to “Love one another”; Mother Teresa's work with the outcasts; Mahatma Gandhi for his message of change, peace and simplicity; Native American Indian's connection with Mother Earth; Zoe Weil for the most inspiring and comprehensive line of thoughts I have completely identified with.
Love about yourself: Perseverance and patience.
One of your strengths: My sense of justice and compassion.
Desired epitaph or tagline:  “…I was not perfect, I did not have extraordinary abilities, I was not famous or popular but I did what I could to make the world a better place for all people, all animals, and the environment.”

IHE: What led you to the path of humane education?

ME: Education was not my career of choice. Back in Cuba, the government asked high school seniors to consider a career in education to solve the always-growing demand for teachers. I would have chosen architecture, graphic design, psychology, or natural sciences, but I ended up responding to my sense of social responsibility, and that's how I landed in the classroom. Once there I saw the opportunity I was given to be an instrument of change, and soon in my career, I realized teaching was my mission in life, and I had to do it in a responsible way.

As a TESOL (Teacher of English as a Second Language) I have always had the flexibility to cover a wide variety of topics, so that my students used the language in different life situations. The best topics to spark a good debate were always the ones we consider controversial, so through TESOL I was able to bring up for discussion topics that covered most of the global challenges we face today in the world.

Soon after I began working in American public schools in 2005, I started to find out what the new demands of my work as an educator were: classrooms packed with culturally diverse students coming from different parts of the world adapting to the new American culture and way of life. By observing the students and their social interactions, I saw a lot of prejudices, discrimination, bullying -- all related to ethnic differences, skin color, spoken language accent, academic capacity, etc.; the most evident and widespread of all were the cases of homophobia. I used to hear more than 80 times a day how students referred to something they did not like as “gay” -- for example: “That pencil is gay.” “That's so gay!” “I don't do this, this is gay!” The fact that I also witnessed many cases of bullying during the passing times in the halls against students who were perceived as gay made me think there were a lot of social justice issues in the school that needed to be resolved; so I had a lot of work to do.

An announcement on the teacher’s bulletin board led me to a professional development conference about “School Safety and Sexual Minority Issues.” The teachers who attended were exposed to a group of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, inquiring) students who explained how they felt everyday at school. They talked about how difficult it was for them to be able to concentrate on their academic progress when they had to deal with daily acts of bullying, name calling, manifestations of hate, etc.

I decided to survey the LGBTI students at my own school and determine if they felt the same pressures I had learned about in the workshop. The results were pretty much as expected. The students asked me to serve as the sponsor for a Gay Straight Alliance club they wanted to start. I have to admit I hesitated for a moment, thinking on the possible ramifications that it might have for me as a teacher, but I finally accepted the challenge -- deciding that, if I wanted to change the world, I had to face the world, and speak out for what I think is right.

Since I did not feel comfortable helping only one particular group of students fight for their rights, knowing there were so many other forms of discrimination and hate in the school, I invited the GSA students to not only fight for the rights of LGBTI students, but also for the rights of all the students who were victims of social injustice. That's how the GSA turned into a club for Social Justice and Human Rights.

Later on, in my TESOL classes, after being shocked and angered about what we learned while exploring the use of animals in different industries and the environmental destruction of the planet, my students asked that we start a club on Animal Rights and Environmental Responsibility. As a place to begin, we decided to focus on educating the rest of our school community, and on evaluating how we participate as consumers in practices that support animal suffering and environmental degradation. We implemented a variety of initiatives.

At this point I was running and sponsoring two clubs, one club oriented towards social justice, and the other to animal rights and the environment. Since both clubs were focused on different kinds of social justice issues, I suggested that the two clubs merge into a holistic club that deals with global issues in general. That’s how our current club, known as The Humane Honor Society, was born.

In looking for resources and connections, I found the Institute for Humane Education; to my surprise, I found that the work I’d been doing was known as Humane Education. From that day on I have identified myself professionally as a Teacher and Humane Educator.

IHE: Tell us about how you’re currently manifesting humane education. What are your challenges? Successes?

ME: The Humane Honor Society is just one of the Humane Education projects I have implemented. Another project has been to bring Humane Education to my classroom through a variety of means, including a green-humane classroom materials list; a class website to help reduce our paper consumption; and readings focused on global issues. As part of our explorations, I've invited students to create possible solutions or available alternatives that could provide a MOGO (most good) solution to the issues discussed.

On Fridays, the day when teachers and students are drained from the intense week of work, I have implemented Humane Education Fridays, a fresh and relaxed educational window where we mostly have popcorn and organic lemonade to accompany watching thought-provoking videos. We later debate and analyze them through the Humane Education lens. As part of Humane Education Fridays students are assigned research projects at the end of each grading period and a final project where they have to create a video where they expose the issues, explain them, and offer available alternatives. They also present slide shows and create posters and a variety of art projects.

Many parents have been intrigued to learn about these new topics their children are exposed to. Some friends of mine, as well as my adult students, wanted to get involved, so we created a Humane Living Community Night, where we meet once a month as a community in a public location. Students make presentations about the work they have been doing and the issues they have learned. We offer light vegan snacks and drinks, we invite guest speakers, etc.

I also helped bring IHE’s Sowing Seeds workshop to our district; I won a National Environmental Education Foundation grant, which allowed me to take a class called “Fundamentals of Environmental Education.” Most recently I completed IHE’s first Sowing Seeds Online course.

All these trainings have inspired me to expand my projects to reach the entire school, and that's how I came up with The Humane School Initiative (HSI). HSI’s purpose is to bring Humane Education to the entire school by creating an HSI committee -- including at least one administrator, the head custodian, the school cafeteria manager, the head of security, and a representative from each of the school academic departments. Through the committee we analyze how we can work together to create a safer, more peaceful, environmentally-friendly, sustainable and humane school environment. Recently The Humane School Initiative was awarded a 2009 Best Practices in Character Education by The Partnership in Character Education Program.

One of our bigger challenges today is to find the resources to implement all these programs; this need has brought me to consider consolidating all these programs as a nonprofit organization. So, some of the students who were co-founders of the Humane Alternative Club (today Humane Honor Society), who are now back in town for the summer from Yale, MIT, Princeton, and the University of New York – as well as other members of The Humane Foundation and I -- are in the process of filing for nonprofit status. Most recently, we began working with a recently-founded Eco Center in the city of North Miami, where we started our first Humane Foundation Chapter to service the North Miami Schools and community with our programs.

IHE: What are your thoughts about the power of humane education to positively transform the world?

ME: Because of my personal purpose and commitment to be a world changer, I have learned of many organizations that are fighting to achieve the same goal; during these years learning, teaching, and growing to the light of Humane Education and the MOGO principle, I haven't found a more effective way to transform the world than through Humane Education. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Humane Education is the most powerful and effective tool to prepare the next generation to face the challenges our world presents and find the solutions we need in order to bring the world back to its natural order and balance. To bring people back to a sense of responsibility for our global community, to mutual respect, to collaboration, and to peaceful coexistence. To bring animals back to their natural habitat, to treat them with kindness and compassion as fellow earthlings with the same rights that we have to enjoy their lives to the fullest.

IHE: Any future plans, dreams or projects?

ME: One of my biggest professional development goals is to enroll in the Masters Program in Humane Education at the Institute for Humane Education.
I want to turn the Humane Foundation into a Humane Education provider that can reach every community of the world.

I want to materialize my dream concept of “The High Performance School of Humane Education.”

But above all, I want to witness in my lifetime, at least the eve of the result of the work of all the changemakers who dedicate every day their free time, their efforts, their energy, their actions, and their resources to change the world.

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ECO-BRIEFS: QUICK GUIDES FOR THE ECO-CONSCIOUS

There are so many global challenges we must contend with -– poverty, pollution, cruelty, injustice -– that it can be difficult to get a grasp on them or know where to begin to take positive action. As part of his work helping individuals, businesses and other organizations make more socially responsible choices, IHE HECP graduate Roberto Giannicola has created a series of Eco-Briefs, 30-40 page ebooks that serve as “quick guides for the aspiring eco-conscious.”

Each Eco-Brief offers an overview of the issues surrounding the topic of focus, as well as quotes, factoids, graphs and charts, and other useful elements that help draw a clear picture of the topic and what concerned citizens can do to enact change. The tips and strategies given include ideas not only for the home, but for positive changes that businesses can make. The Eco-Briefs also include recommended books, websites and other resources. Because Roberto’s company, Provokare, is based in California, some of the resources provided are specific to that area. But, there are plenty of useful suggestions.

So far Roberto has created Eco-Briefs on the following topics:

• Consumerism
• Factory Farming: Health & Environment
• Greening the Workplace
• School Lunch Waste
• Toxic Chemicals: Health & Environment  
• Water
  

and he is in the process of creating ebooks focused on topics such as human suffering, the oceans, population, and prejudices and privileges.

I think my favorite Eco-Brief is the one on School Lunch Waste, for which Roberto did a detailed survey of waste generated by the school lunches in his daughter’s elementary school. The images and charts that outline his analysis of the amounts and types of waste generated really illuminated the amount of food waste that occurs in nearly every school in the U.S.

The Eco-Briefs offer a nice combination of information, images and tips that educate and inspire, but don’t overwhelm. Even though, as a humane educator, I already know quite a bit about these issues, I was able to learn more and was inspired to make additional changes in my daily choices.

The Eco-Briefs come as PDF files that are easily downloadable from Roberto’s website for a reasonable price of $5. A sample PDF of each is available to view.

Note: IHE will also be offering these Eco-Briefs for sale in the near future.

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FEATURED STUDENT: CAROLINE CRANE

“Because of IHE, I’m continually changing the way I live to be compassionate to animals, people and the environment.”

Caroline’s desire to give her dad a special gift for Christmas led her to the local humane society, which led to a pivotal moment in her life. When her discovery inspired her to seek out ways to do more, she discovered IHE…and experienced another pivotal change.

Read about Caroline.

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