Program on the Environment

This project expands upon a growing body of research on environmental education, urban environmental education, and outdoor education. During summer 2016, I spent 10 weeks teaching with InterIm CDA’s Wilderness Inner-City Leadership Development (WILD) youth program. I was interested in exploring urban environmental youth education, and how programs like WILD empower students to be catalysts for change within their communities. I used WILD as a case study, and combined free-response survey data with a literature review and anecdotal evidence from my teaching experiences to see how program place and curriculum structure influenced student knowledge and empowerment to become active in environmental justice issues. Post-program, students’ understanding of the depth and complexity of the issues covered had increased, and they were able to identify more solutions for widespread change. Students identified outdoor and social activities, particularly the week-long camping trip, as the most impactful curriculum components to their learning with WILD. This can inform future curriculum structure, and studies like this validate the continuation of informal education settings like WILD.