Paul
Steury
K-12 Education Coordinator at Merry Lea
B.A. in Sociology, Goshen College, 1988
M.S.
in Outdoor Resources Management with emphasis in Environmental
Education, Indiana University, 1997
Contact
info
Office: Merry Lea
Phone: (260) 799-5869
E-mail: paulds@goshen.edu
How I became an environmental educator
I was living in Lake Hughes, California, as a case manager for
men with autism who lived in the San Fernando Valley. Daily, I
would leave my mountain home that had blue skies almost continuously
and descend to the brown, smoggy skies of Los Angeles. It would
leave me constantly fed up with a society that allowed the environment
to degrade so much that you couldn't see the mountains due to pollution. I
asked myself, "What can I do to change this life?"
My response was, "Teach the children and hopefully
that generation can make the change." So I moved to Bloomington,
IN, to acquire my degree.
Ideas that matter to me
- Issue investigation
- Activism / Education and how to wake people up without getting them defensive
- Stewardship
- Politics
- Local Food, Local Economy
- Slow Food Movement
- Media and it's power
- Definitions of Citizenry, Religion, Spirituality
The classes I teach and how I teach them
I teach an undergraduate course called Field Experience in Environmental
Biology (Biol 340), which many elementary education majors take.
I like to teach this course as a seminar with lots of discussion.
We read about natural history, ecophilosophy and environmental issues
and then apply these learnings outdoors. Students gain practical
experience teaching the groups who come to us for school field trips.
My role in ML's new graduate program in EE
I will teach Principles of Environmental Education and History and
Issues in Environmental Education.
Research Interests
- Education for Sustainable Development
- Environmental Justice
- Pro-Environmental Behavior Change
- What invigorates learning?
Readings I Recommend
Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawkin
Biomimicry by Janine M. Benyus
Earth in Mind by David Orr
Beyond Ecophobia by David Sobel
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays
by Wendell Berry
Orion Magazine
Presentation topics
- Do We Really Need GMOs?
- Wild Edibles of Northern Indiana
- Environmental Issues of Northern Indiana
- Leopold Education Project
- Project WET
- Hoosier Riverwatch
- Sages in the Environmental World
Favorite Quotes
I hope I never become so used to the
world that it no longer seems wonderful. -Unknown
The chief aim of Interpretation is
not instruction, but provocation.
- Freeman Tilden
It is inconceivable to me that an
ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration
for land and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean
something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the
philosophical sense.
-Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac
D.H. Lawrence once said that "Water
is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third
thing that makes it water and nobody knows what it is." It is
magic, the kind that can only be found in nature, life, and human
possibilities once we are open to them. [We need] the kind of education
that takes young people out of the classroom to encounter the mystery
of the third thing. In that encounter they discover what Rachel Carson
once called the "sense of wonder." And that is the start
of a real education.
-David Orr