Wendall Berry champions mountains

I grew up always wanting to be a poet and practiced in hushed whispers in my room, painfully hiding aspirations. Even as I a grew older writing in my many journals, I bemoaned what I imagined to be the poet's requisite isolation and distance from the world. Romanticizing Frost's austere hermitage on Bread Loaf mountain, but also fearing it. WHAT WAS I THINKING? I'm always thrilled to hear of poets like Wendall Berry using their exquisite voices and integrity in the community and serving as the compassionate champion of nature. See the recent Center for Eco-literacy blog post "Wendall Berry joins anti-mountaintop removal sit."

What Business Do American K-12 teachers Have in Rwanda?

What business do American K-12 teachers have in Rwanda? Serious business, says SEVEN, the social equity fund that is sponsoring me and seven other K-12 teachers to learn from Rwanda's amazing seventeen year growth story and how enterprise business solutions to poverty have been core to Rwanda's development strategy. As the curriculum coordinator for the fellowship, I am developing curriculum that will help the teaching fellows write an op-ed about their experiences. We will visit schools, the mountain gorilla reserve, go on safari and meet with the Minister of Education and President Paul Kagame. My hope is that I will begin to understand global partnerships in education and the teaching of global citizenship to my American students. I'm especially interested in capturing photos of environmental sustainability and sustainable agriculture in Africa that I can post here. And Mark Bittman's Tuesday Opinator blog post "Sustainable farming could feed the world?" could be a great tie-in. Here's dreaming of sustainable design and food security, but this time with Rwanda as the backdrop. Stay tuned.