<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Patricia-Fagg-small.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 292px; float: right; " />This Summer, Au Sable&rsquo;s founding Environmental Education Coordinator Trish Fagg received a surprise package in the mail. &nbsp;Students from her first job as a high school biology teacher in New York compiled a scrapbook of pictures from their class and accompanied it with notes. &nbsp;The pictures were fun, bringing back memories about old times, old jokes, and old projects. &nbsp;But there was note in particular that stood out. &nbsp;A former student wrote, &ldquo;Ms. Fagg, you taught me how to love the Earth. &nbsp;You made me realize it&rsquo;s worth my time to preserve it.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>
<p>
	Like any good program, the Au Sable Environmental Education Program has five goals and prioritizes 12 major environmental concepts for its students. &nbsp;But if you asked Trish what she would count as success, it would be that each of the 120,000 K-12th grade students she&rsquo;s encountered over the years would have those words on their lips. &nbsp;Love the Earth. &nbsp;Preserve it.</p>
<h2>
	The &ldquo;Heart Connection&rdquo;</h2>
<p>
	There&rsquo;s a term Trish uses to describe the attachment the environmental education program strives to achieve between student and natural world: a &ldquo;heart connection.&rdquo; It starts with what she describes as the most gratifying part of her job (besides serving as Rocky the Raccoon during the puppet show), &ldquo;I love seeing when the little light bulb goes on, when there&rsquo;s that &lsquo;oh wow&rsquo; moment that leads to a sense of wonder.&rdquo; &nbsp;</p>
<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}kid-microscope.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 299px; float: left; " />Encounter... leads to wonder... leads to love. &nbsp;Dipping a net into the pond to pull out tadpoles, staring intensely through a microscope at a butterfly&rsquo;s wings, seeing grouse snuggle down into the snow for insulation, these experiences at Au Sable are about forging that connection. &nbsp;Trish created the program to do that.</p>
<p>
	Trish&rsquo;s own &ldquo;heart connection&rdquo; developed during her family&rsquo;s weekend ritual of traveling from her city home to her grandparents&rsquo; farms in rural Ohio.</p>
<p>
	Trish says, &ldquo;My grandparents conveyed a love for the land and a stewardship ethic that was profound and left a lasting impression. &nbsp;They gave me the opportunity to see how life advances through the seasons.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
	In many ways, under Trish, student field trips to Au Sable became weekend trips to the farm. &nbsp;Much like her experience at Au Sable, it was the physical place suffused with community that led Trish towards a deep love for the outdoors and the means to care for it.</p>
<p>
	Trish explains, &ldquo;At Au Sable, I wanted to give children both the opportunity to experience what I had when I was their age [on the farm] as well as what I wish I had when I was their age.&rdquo;</p>
<h2>
	&ldquo;Protecting Northern Michigan&rdquo;</h2>
<p>
	But while Trish made her &ldquo;heart connection&rdquo; with her grandparents&rsquo; farms, she also felt the cruel sting that this land she loved could be taken away. &nbsp;When she was still young, a coal company stripped her paternal grandparents&rsquo; farm for coal. &nbsp;Her grandparents owned all of their land except for the mineral rights. &nbsp;</p>
<p>
	Trish says, &ldquo;This experience had a profound impact on my life and what I chose to do with it.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
	The tragic loss of this place she loved and the place where she learned to love guided her life course. &nbsp;It also deepened the connection she wanted her students at Au Sable to make with the natural world: protect it because you love it.</p>
<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}kids-water.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 206px; float: left; " />This opportunity came to bear in a very tangible way in the early 1990s. &nbsp;Au Sable received a Kellogg Foundation Grant to teach groundwater education. &nbsp;With the oil and gas industry playing a growing role in Northern Michigan, it provided the opportunity to teach children about ground water and how it can become contaminated.</p>
<p>
	Trish says, &quot;I was most proud of this program. &nbsp;The Kellogg Foundation told us that of the money they distributed for ground water education, this program got the most out of the money they gave. &nbsp;And in addition, the program didn&rsquo;t just educate the children, it educated our teachers and chaperones as well. &nbsp;They would keep coming to me and saying, &#39;We never knew this!&#39;&quot;</p>
<p>
	Once Trish was meeting with a board member who asked, &quot;What do you see as the overarching goal of your program?&quot;</p>
<p>
	She answered, &quot;To protect the environment of Northern Michigan.&quot;</p>
<h2>
	Food Webs, Knowledge Webs</h2>
<p>
	When Trish started out, she found that forging these connections for child can be immensely difficult and deeply troubling. &nbsp;A story she often tells is about going to a 3rd grade class one day to prep them for their visit to Au Sable. &nbsp;The Au Sable lesson was on food webs, and seeing as she had just come from the grocery store, she decided to bring her groceries to class to use as a demonstration. &nbsp;</p>
<p>
	She started by holding up a loaf of bread, asking, &quot;Can you tell me where this bread came from?&quot;</p>
<p>
	Hands shot up in the air, and a child responded, &quot;From the grocery store.&quot;</p>
<p>
	Trish said, &quot;That&rsquo;s right. &nbsp;But how about before the grocery store. &nbsp;Where did this bread come from?&quot;</p>
<p>
	There was a long pause, students&rsquo; wheels turning, until one boy raised his hand and said, &quot;Well I went to the store once with my mom and saw a truck, and in the back, it had loaves of bread. &nbsp;So it must have come on the bread truck.&quot;</p>
<p>
	Trish responded, &ldquo;Well, how about before it came on the bread truck? &nbsp;Where did it come from?&rdquo;</p>
<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Michigan-history.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 213px; float: right; " />The class went silent for a long time, so Trish used a different tact, saying, &ldquo;Bread is made up of flour. &nbsp;What makes up the flour we use in our bread?&rdquo;</p>
<div>
	<div>
		<p>
			After a long silence, one child responded, &ldquo;Is it ground up rocks?&rdquo;</p>
		<p>
			Astonished, Trish changed course again. &nbsp;She asked, &ldquo;Where does the water in our houses come from?&rdquo;</p>
		<p>
			No one knew.</p>
		<p>
			On the ride home, the image of her grandparent&rsquo;s farm was vivid in her mind. &nbsp;She knew where bread and water came from when she was their age because she saw it. &nbsp;It was plain before her eyes each weekend. &nbsp;Flour ground from wheat, water from the well. &nbsp;</p>
		<p>
			When she returned to Au Sable, she formulated a program to take students back to the early 1900s when it was impossible to be ignorant of the sources of human subsistence. &nbsp;It was called Michigan History, and quickly became one of the most popular programs at Au Sable. &nbsp;Students interacted with historical characters from the 1900s. &nbsp;With no light bulbs, automobiles, or grocery stores to keep students comfortable, the dependence on the natural world to meet these needs became strikingly obvious. &nbsp;It produced &ldquo;oh wow&rdquo; moments. &nbsp;They stepped onto the family farm.</p>
		<h2>
			Serve the School</h2>
		<p>
			<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Trish-teaching-small.jpg" style="width: 239px; height: 166px; float: left; " />While teaching children is the goal of education, new administrative policies and guidelines created an ever-changing education environment during Trish&rsquo;s 34 years. &nbsp;But it also gave rise to the environmental education program in the first place. &nbsp;In March of 1977, Trish ran the first environmental education program at Au Sable with the Mancelona school system. &nbsp;The program was a success, and she loved the work, but questions remained about future support for the program. &nbsp;Two events in particular led the program to swell and become the environmental education program it is today. &nbsp;First, she received strong administrative support. &nbsp;Both Kalkaska and Mancelona principals felt that environmental education should be a part of each child&rsquo;s learning experience. &nbsp;Second, in 1976-1977, the Michigan Department of Education felt the same way and required that every school needed to teach environmental concepts by the 1978 school year. &nbsp;Trish was ready to meet the challenge. &nbsp;Seizing on this opportunity, she invited schools to participate in Au Sable&rsquo;s programs to fulfill their requirements. &nbsp;By 1978, the curriculum at Au Sable expanded to fill their environmental concepts requirement, and Au Sable&rsquo;s environmental education program became a fixture in the school system.&nbsp;</p>
		<p>
			Over the next thirty years, these requirements changed repeatedly. &nbsp;With each progression, Trish folded the environmental ed program into the new Michigan standardized test (MEAPs) and grade level content expectations (GLCEs). &nbsp;The bottom line was making sure that she did everything possible to support teachers in helping them do what they were tasked to do.</p>
		<p>
			She also went above and beyond to make sure that the program not only met science requirements but also connected with the other subjects students were learning: math, language arts, social studies. &nbsp;Trish also convened roundtable meetings with teachers to discuss how the program could best meet their needs. &nbsp;It kept the program relevant and cutting edge. &nbsp;</p>
		<p>
			It was this level of commitment to high quality standards and content that built the program from a single school, Mancelona Public, to 36 school districts and 11 counties throughout the Grand Traverse Bay area.</p>
		<h2>
			Future Leaders</h2>
		<p>
			<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Trish-Interns.jpg" style="float: right; width: 250px; height: 214px; " />The opportunity to spread the program&#39;s influence beyond the Grand Traverse Bay area arose in 1982 when the environmental education program&#39;s growth coincided with the birth of the college program. &nbsp;Au Sable became classified as a &quot;vocational institution&quot; when the college program began, and in 1982, Trish taught her first college course on &#39;The Foundations of Environmental Education.&#39; &nbsp;The course taught hands-on, applied, skill-based lessons and assignments for her students in environmental education. &nbsp;This course soon morphed into the internship program. &nbsp;</p>
		<p>
			Trish never strayed from teaching vocationally over the next 30 years, saying, &quot;With the internship, one of the things I stressed is looking at each one&#39;s giftedness and seeing that they use that giftedness in service, to children, teachers, chaperones. &nbsp;The internship moved interns out of their comfort zone, and seeing them gain confidence and shine was a blessing. &nbsp;We&#39;d think through career goals, and later I would hear about how students had found their dream job because of the internship, or received a teaching assistantship in graduate school, or be better prepared for their first year of teaching because they knew how to make lesson plans. &nbsp;The internship program was an eye opener.&quot;</p>
		<p>
			An eye-opener for 230 interns over 30 years.</p>
		<p>
			As a former intern put it,&nbsp;&quot;It was the seasons spent as an environmental education intern...that had the greatest impact on my life. &nbsp;It was through these internships that I gained a greater knowledge and passion for the creation and the means to more effectively convey the message of stewardship with those of the next generation.&quot;</p>
		<p>
			The internship had a profound impact on one of Trish&#39;s former interns in particular, Paul Wiemerslage, Trish&#39;s successor. &nbsp;The internship led Paul into a Master&#39;s program in Environmental Education at Western Washington University and ultimately back to Au Sable.</p>
		<h2>
			Generations to Come</h2>
		<p>
			<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Paul-Harold-Trish.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 265px; float: right; " />Starting in the fall, Paul will inherit the environmental education program, and Trish couldn&rsquo;t be more thrilled.</p>
		<p>
			&ldquo;We just started our 3rd generation of students coming to Au Sable. &nbsp;I think that signals a time to step down!&rdquo; she laughs. &nbsp;&ldquo;I see grandmothers in the grocery store who came to Au Sable. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s exciting to think about how teaching generation after generation can make an impact. &nbsp;I&rsquo;m so happy Paul is picking up the torch, finishing the third generation, then the fourth.... &nbsp;That&rsquo;s how we make change.&rdquo; &nbsp;</p>
		<p>
			As for Trish, during the environmental internship, she challenges students to step outside of their comfort zone, to identify their giftedness, and to be persistent.</p>
		<p>
			When asked about thinking to the future, she sounds a lot like many of the interns, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure where my path will take me.&rdquo; &nbsp;And then, &ldquo;It seems like wherever I go, my giftedness is in environmental education.&rdquo;</p>
		<p>
			(As if we didn&rsquo;t know.)</p>
		<hr />
		<p>
			To honor Trish and to continue critical environmental education for our children, Au Sable established an Environmental Education Fund to ensure that this important work, and Trish&rsquo;s legacy, endures. Make a donation in Trish&rsquo;s honor to the Environmental Education Fund online (<a href="http://www.ausable.org/donate" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 204); " target="_blank">www.ausable.org/donate</a>) or send a check to &lsquo;Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies,&rsquo; 7526 Sunset Trail NE, Mancelona, MI 49659.&nbsp;</p>
	</div>
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