Why Wildly Curious?

I knew I wanted to be in education a little later than anticipated. As I finished creating a book on aquatic invasive species for New York State as part of our senior capstone, I began to realize that my true passion was helping connect the community to valuable information about their natural environment. I spent hours fixing hyperlinks and formatting informational pages. Still, all the while, I was thinking of this book as something helpful for water-based communities concerned about their lake’s health. I had a very hands-on education in college, going out to do tree surveys and collect frog calls, but one story always stuck with me. The story of the vultures.

In my conservation biology class, our professor shared a captivating conservation story about restoring vulture populations in a densely populated area of Southeast Asia. The village members were superstitious and believed the vultures brought death, so they began to poison the carcasses of their livestock to wipe out the population. Instead, quite the opposite happened. Without the vultures, decomposition processes take longer, leading to larger disease outbreaks. Over time, this began to affect the human population, resulting in a significant epidemic. A group of scientists and food chain experts arrived to educate on the importance of vultures and their essential role in the ecosystem, including their contribution to disease prevention. However, instead of visiting the farmers, these experts went to the schools. In teaching the community’s children, they knew that the kids would go home and tell their parents about saving the vultures, and what parent wants to disappoint their kids? And it worked. The farmers stopped poisoning the livestock, and the vulture population rose back to healthy levels. And I knew I wanted to be that kind of inspiration.

So I transitioned into education, and I haven’t looked back. I’ve worked in schools and out-of-school settings, and I’ve gathered numerous insights to understand the challenges of education. I have enjoyed working with students, adult learners, and everyone in between, providing them with an enjoyable experience while also learning something new. Throughout this time, I have learned about the nuances in different learning spaces and the challenges that hinder effective curriculum development. In schools, this can manifest as feeling overwhelmed by the load of students, the pressures of testing, and the challenges of demonstrating leadership on why learning should look different. In out-of-school spaces, there are a multitude of responsibilities beyond the job title, with limited resources and support. From all my experiences, I have felt a calling to build a bridge between educational spaces, making learning feel manageable, fun, relevant, and culminating in a call to action. Learners should leave feeling inspired to learn more and contribute more to their local community, and I hope to build that bridge to make education feel meaningful and inspiring.