Jeanine Silversmith, the executive director of the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association, speaks to ecoRI News reporter and Blab Lab host Rob Smith about the state of environmental education in the Ocean State today and the ways in which her organization supports it.

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This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Rob Smith

Welcome to Blab Lab, a monthly podcast from the reporters at ecoRI news. I’m Rob Smith, and today I thought we’d do something a little different.

It’s September, and that means fall, but also means across Rhode Island, hundreds, if not thousands, of students are going back to school, whether it’s kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school or college, the kids are going back to school. And I thought, I haven’t been in college or high school or middle school in a very long time. I want to find out what’s going on with environmental education today.

When I was coming up, it was not taught, probably, as it’s getting taught today, climate change was an issue, but it was not, shall we say, as dire as it was 20, 25 years ago when I was coming up. Today, I’m talking to Jeanine Silversmith, executive director of the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association, or RIEEA, as we’ll refer to it throughout the conversation. Jeanine, thanks for joining us in the studio today.

Jeanine Silversmith

Thank you for having me.

Rob Smith

You’ve been executive director of RIEEA for a couple of years now. For our listeners who may not have heard of you before, what does RIEEA do for environmental education in Rhode Island?

Jeanine Silversmith

Thank you. So RIEEA is a, we like to say we’re a support or a backbone organization, and our mission is to promote and support environmental education in the state of Rhode Island. We do this in a number of ways. We have networking and social events so educators can meet each other and learn from each other, share resources, and build partnerships.

We also do professional development workshops, and we’re also at the Statehouse a little bit, testifying and supporting any kind of bills that have environmental education or outdoor access built into them.

And we also work directly with our members and with community members to support them. So, depending on the environmental education that they’re doing, we craft our programs and support them for their purposes.

Rob Smith 

Do you have to be an environmental teacher to take advantage of it, or does it also include science teachers or even other fields of classroom education outside of maybe STEM?

Jeanine Silversmith

We take a really broad definition of environmental education, and our membership is open to all. So when we say environmental education, we’re really referring to any kind of participatory learning process that helps build an individual’s understanding of the environment, and then also to be able to think critically about how to tackle local and global issues.

And that can take place indoors and outdoors, that can take place in a formal classroom, that can also take place in non-formal space. So outdoors, you know, on the Bay, in a forest, or in your backyard or on a city street. So like I said, our membership is open to all. You don’t have to be a teacher to plug into RIEEA and get the support you need.

You can be a non-formal educator. You can be an environmental advocate. You can just be a community member who’s really passionate about the environment and thinks environmental education should happen more often. And you can also be a young person who’s maybe worried about the environment or really passionate and wants to do something about it.

Rob Smith

I think, as you said to me before we started recording, you really are “pre-K to gray.” It’s not just that the classroom part is not the important part. It’s the education wherever you can get it.

Jeanine Silversmith 

We really do love that term, and I’m glad you brought it up, pre-K through gray. Everyone is learning their whole life long, and so we believe that learning about the environment and learning how to make decisions about what is important for and to you for your own health and the health of your community is important.

Rob Smith 

Keep talking like that. We may be in competition, Jeanine.

Jeanine Silversmith 

We are all about partnership and working together and really love to connect folks out there that are doing this work. It’s actually and personally what I love to do most in my job.

Rob Smith 

What is, to use a buzz word, the state of environmental education today? How is the environment getting taught in schools today?

Jeanine Silversmith 

Yeah, great question. So in Rhode Island, we are a next generation science standards state. So those are our science standards.

Rob Smith 

What does that mean for people who may not know?

Jeanine Silversmith 

Every content area for K-12 education, there are a set of standards, and those are basically the goal for students to reach in their time in a class. So whether that be a seventh-grade science class or second-grade elementary school class doing math or high school chemistry, there are standards that determine what is taught and what the students need to understand at the end of that course.

For our science standards in the state of Rhode Island, we use the Next Generation Science Standards, and built into the NGSS are concepts around climate, ecology, environmental issues and so on. And standards basically determine how and what teachers teach, right? So there is a good amount of learning around the environment, from K through 12, and then, obviously, in undergraduate and associate programs, there are more specific science concepts being taught.

Rob Smith

What does it look like on the ground? What might an elementary school student be learning when it comes to the environment? I remember when I was in elementary school, I think they called it earth science, and all the science experiments came in, like, this plastic tote box. But what are students going through today?

Jeanine Silversmith 

Yeah, so it depends. It depends on the school, it depends on the teacher, it depends on the class. And it’s really exciting. So there are teachers in, let’s say, first grade, who are teaching their students how to observe the world around them. Maybe it’s the weather. So each day, the students look outside, or hopefully go outside and observe the weather of the day, and then over the course of whether it be weeks or months, they’re looking for patterns.

And these are skills that we all need to learn, right? We need to learn how to observe the world around us, and we need to learn how to look for patterns and so on. So one teacher is going to do that very differently than another teacher, but that’s the beauty of teaching, right? Each teacher brings their own way of doing that, and then we have all the way through elementary. I mean, it could be something like they’re learning about poetry, so a teacher could take their students outside and use the world around them to teach about poetry instead of just being in the classroom, right?

And then you move on to middle school or secondary school, you know, middle school and high school, and depending on the content area, there are opportunities to learn, not just in the classroom, but out on the school yard. If you can have a field experience, you know, if you can find, I’m sorry to say, but if you can find the funds for transportation, you can do a lot in this state.

And then I’m seeing wonderful things happen between the formal teachers and the non-formal educators, or the community organizations that are at our disposal in Rhode Island, and there are so many of them. I mean, really, I hate to use the term army, but I always like to think of environmental education, experiences and opportunities in the state being so rich and so diverse.

You know, there are organizations like Movement Education Outdoors that are introducing their young people to aquaculture and getting out on the water. And then there’s organizations like Audubon Society [of Rhode Island] that’s doing more than just birds, but because they’re Audubon, I’ll talk about using observation of common birds to learn how to compare different animals to each other, and I can go on and on, but on our website, we do have a long list of our organizational members.

I would just suggest anyone who’s listening to go check that out. And also, we have an environmental education directory that you can search by, whether it’s audience or topic or type of program. You can find all the organizations in Rhode Island that are doing these great programs that you might be able to partner with.

Rob Smith 

There’s also some, like, really great locations for field trips.

Jeanine Silversmith

So many of them are, you know, I mentioned before. You know transportation is always an issue, but especially in our cities, there are a lot of walkable field experiences, whether that’s going to an actual park or wooded area or going to the water, but also just around your school building, like you can learn anywhere.

So whether you’re looking up in the sky, looking down at weeds, you know, growing through the sidewalk. And I know some people out there will think weeds is a dirty word, but I happen to like wet weeds, but there are opportunities to learn right around your school building, and also, you know, in a in your classroom, you can do water testing, you can do lots of different activities where you’re learning about the environment.

Rob Smith

As students are getting an environmental education, whether it’s in school or outside of school at some of these nonprofits, what’s your overarching goal for students to walk away with? What do you want them to walk away with as they learn about the environment? What’s the takeaway for them as they go through this?

Jeanine Silversmith 

To understand how the environment is both impacting us and we are impacting it so that we are a part of nature. I know sometimes we forget we are. We are as much part of nature as, you know, worms and clouds and water and everything in between. It doesn’t stop at the city line.

Basically, yes, it doesn’t, and you don’t need to be in wilderness to learn about the environment, and what we really want is for people to know enough about the environment to be able to make healthy choices for their own selves and bodies and their community, so that we can live.

We can survive, so that we can have a healthy Rhode Island, and I will say, when we learn about the environment and nature, then we are able to advocate for good legislation and policies and regulations that create a sustainable and healthy world for all of us. I am certainly a tree hugger. I’m a ‘90s hippie, right? I am. I’m a tree hugger, and I do want trees to exist, and I also know that people are dying because they don’t have clean air, and trees make the air more healthy,

Rob Smith 

And stuff like the benefits we get from trees, we don’t need to invent on our own. It’s already been invented, per se, right? We don’t need to invent a machine that cleans the air and provides shade. We have resources for this already that are infinitely easier to use.

Next month, you guys are having a banquet. You’re honoring some educators in Rhode Island. I don’t have the names in front of me. I’m sorry, but I wanted to ask when you choose to honor an educator or a district or whomever, what are the kind of things you’re looking for, an environmental education to honor? What’s sort of the criteria, like, what’s a really good gold standard that you’d like teachers and others involved in this space to copy or imitate.

Jeanine Silversmith 

Each year we accept nominations for a formal educator, so whether that’s pre-K all the way through undergraduate and graduate programs, and non-formal educator, a student or youth, and then an organization, and an organization can also be a school or a district. And this year’s winners are Natalie Tarr for Teacher of the Year, James Tzul Pastor for Student Youth of the Year, Eli Nixon for environmental educator of the year, and the Chariho School District for organization of the year.

These four people and organizations were chosen because of not only how passionate and committed to environmental education they are, but also how innovative they are in that delivery, how community minded they are.

We’re looking for nominees who don’t only work within their school or their organization, that they’re looking to connect as many people as possible, and also that they’re trying to involve as many different groups, especially marginalized groups, as possible, so folks who are disabled, low-income individuals, BIPOC individuals, you know, how equitable is the environmental education that they’re delivering to Rhode Island. How accessible is it?

They’re really on the cutting edge of showing us how environmental education can look in so many different ways in the state. You know, as many environmental educators as there are, there are that many ways to do this type of work. And so we’re going to be celebrating them on Oct. 9.

Rob Smith 

Beautiful. What are some of the errors when it comes to the environment education that you think Rhode Island could improve in? Is it more resources and schools? Is it maybe changing the curriculum? Where’s Rhode Island lacking when it comes to this?

Jeanine Silversmith 

I think where Rhode Island is lacking is the same issues that are lacking across the board, across this country, at least, and possibly in other countries, but I’m not as versed in that. Number one, even though the environment and climate features in our next generation science standards and also in some of the other content areas, there isn’t a lot of attention in the standards to climate change and solutions-based thinking.

There is a lot of anxiety around climate change in particular, and other environmental issues, but we have all of the resources we need to make a difference. So I’d love to see more thinking around more time spent on how we could be doing things to solve the issues.

I also think it has to be student-led and student-driven, especially with the middle school and high school students. So thinking about, what are the issues that surround us, and letting students choose the topic that they’re going to focus on, because we all know like we had, I think it’s fair to say that you’re more excited to learn and more invested in it, and will do better if it’s a topic that you care about personally.

So letting students choose the projects that they will work on, the concepts that they will learn about. And then, of course, I know, it’s always this way. It’s money. It’s money, not just for environmental education, but for education in general. We need so much more invested in education and money invested in education, and specifically environmental education, has impacts far beyond the students that receive that education.

Rob Smith 

So at the start we said RIEEA focuses on “pre-K to gray;” if you’re not in school, what’s the best way to get an environmental education?

Jeanine Silversmith 

I guess I would want to ask, who’s asking? Because there’s so many different ways to do that. So if you’re an outdoorsy person, I’d say, check out your local land trusts and see what trails they have, and check out the organizations that you might be inspired by to see what kind of public programs they have. I know that the Metcalf Institute has a lecture series about the environment, and, you know, we also have Save The Bay has seal tours, and those are about to start up again in the fall, so just find ways to plug in.

There are enough free and accessible programs, I think, for anyone to be able to find something, and then if you have a specific if you have a specific interest or passion for a current issue, I’d say, connect with RIEEA or one of our many member organizations to see how you can get involved with advocating for environmental education and join us at an event. I mean, if you’re not a member yet, then you can, you know, we have plenty of events that are open to everyone. So plug in, see who you meet, see which you get excited about, and we’ll find a way for you to to learn some more

Rob Smith

Awesome. Jeanine, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Jeanine Silversmith 

Thank you for having me. This has been great.

Rob Smith 

Thank you for listening to Blab Lab. This has been an ecoRI News production. I’d like to thank LitArts RI for allowing me to come in and record this today. I’d like to thank Vanessa Carlton for allowing us to use her song that you hear in the intro on every episode. I’d also like to thank our wonderful, amazing podcast editor and producer, Avery Brookins, who fixes all of my mistakes when I talk into the microphone. If you want to check out more of Rhode Island environmental news, you can check out our website: ecori.org.