Nurturing Environmental Action Through Art and Gardening
Carla Halstead is an art teacher at an elementary school in Rochester where she has created and fundraised for a school garden as part of her Cornell Climate Stewards (CCS) volunteer project in 2022. This project will be accompanied by a school gardening club that will be forming this year. Ms. Halstead will lead the gardening club and workshops, such as composting, to help educate the students and inspire them to take environmental action.
Ms. Halstead completed the CCS Training in Fall 2021. During the last two years of COVID, she felt as though there was always so much negativity but, as a CCS steward, she felt like she could do something positive for the world through her volunteer projects.
Through the CCS training, she was able to gain a variety of knowledge and meet a diverse group of people, such as scientists and community leaders. Ms. Halstead loved learning and meeting all of these people, which inspired her into further action in her community. After the training, Ms. Halstead felt more empowered to get involved in the local community and government to fight for climate change legislation and to inspire the new generation to help fight climate change.
Ms. Halstead chose this garden project because as a Climate Steward she felt that it was important to spread as much knowledge as possible about this climate crisis and knew that being an art teacher granted her access to spread this critical knowledge to the next generation.
Through this project, the kids will learn about the importance of the environment and see it in action. From the start of the project, the children seem to be very excited about the garden and have even suggested making a cookbook based on the vegetables and fruits that will grow in the garden. This garden gives the children a chance to make a difference in the world, even if it is a small one, and might inspire them into action in the future.
Read the full story (again!) here: https://climatestewards.cornell.edu/files/2024/10/Carla-Halstead.pdf