So! January!

I returned home from vacation feeling a bit homesick. But, Education Season is just kicking into high gear!

My TP (joking name for Teaching Partner) James and I went to work constantly planning like crazy for our series on Environmental Ed, and our After School Program (Nature Club). For the First grade, we've been teaching them about all sorts of things, from Solstice to Winter Adaptations, Cultural Types (Agricultural, Hunter Gatherer, etc), and human rights. Lots of songs. My GODDESS they are ADORABLE! But then, we give them back after a mere 1/2 hour! ;-) For second grade, we've been rocking the HABITAT lessons, playing lots of fun games, and learning all sorts of things about animals, plants, and how we all live! Third grade is SHARP! We're teaching them about natural resources and conservation. They've been learning intensely about preserving water, soil, food and fossil fuels! Fourth grade is one of our favorites. We've been studying the basics of CONSUMER ETHICS, and why there's no such place as "away". Fifth grade are our most responsive. We've been discussing cultural attitudes towards the land, and learning debate over environmental issues! Sixth grade has been studying intense consumer ethics, voting with your dollar, etc. They're a tough room. But we get through to some of them. 5th and 6th are doing a poster contest right now through us! Good stuff, and I'll be sure to post the winning entries!

Nature Club is alot of fun. Tuesdays from 3:15 to 5pm. We've had fun with... track ID, tree ID, nature journaling, camping skills, knots, outdoor skills and ethics, camouflage, and coming up we have Hopi pottery, a field trip to the Bog, Nature Art and more! There are a few tough ones, but we manage. It's mostly a blast!

When we aren't teaching Tuesday through Thursday all day, we have various things to keep us busy. Mondays go:
8AM - Community Meeting
9AM - Community Chores (the good stuff! Deep cleaning the whole place!)
10AM - Usually some sort of training or working in our Leadership Team (see below)
12PM - LUNCH!
1PM - Lesson Planning
5PM - Done for the day

Fridays are a bit more free-form, but usually some combo of Leadership teams, lesson planning, special projects (I'm heading up a poster campaign for the MA Dep't of Conservation!) and special Manual Labor projects! We clear trails for local land trusts, work at a farm, or do carpentry around camp! Good times!

My Leadership Team is the "Pond Loop Trail" group. We're in charge of designing, signing, mapping and interpreting a really cool trail that is about 1 mile, and goes all around the pond here in Hallockville. Other teams are PR, Hawley Nature Camp (a 4-day camp for about 200 kids we do here), and The Green-Up Team (improving our eco-footprint). We rock.

To clarify, we live in the town of Hawley. Our little camp used to be its own town, Hallockville. Our mailing address in Plainfield because they're closer and will drop off our mail to a box here instead of down the road a mile or so. Yuppers.

Highlights of January include getting lost snowshoeing at Mt. Greylock and stumbling on an old abandoned ski lift that never got built...
and that's about it. Work, work, work. I promise to put up more pics tomorrow of me and where I live, and write about the first half of February. Sorry for the delay, folks!