My presentations to this group have been focused on music in education. This is where Earth Mama began, working in my son's classrooms, with his peers and his teachers, advocating an understanding of our human impact on the Planet Earth. This week I've met many teachers who are continuing that work, creating programs and curriculum in diverse environments, covering a multitude of issues, facing the challenges of budget cuts, apathy and outright opposition to the realities of climate change.
For all those teachers who are working to connect with young minds and raise awareness in those communities, here are some tools that use today's media of choice, video.
YouTube Teachers is a collection of videos and tools created just for teachers by the developers at YouTube along with a global network of contributors. There are over 700,000 videos collected on a wide variety of topics, along with instructional videos on how to create a YouTube channel of your own.
And that brings me back to music, which has been my teaching tool of choice. I'm involved in the efforts of Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (M.U.S.E.) to create and continually expand a database of environmental music. This is a daunting project and we need volunteers for all aspects of this effort! Recently, Stan Slaughter covered our efforts in a Mother Earth News article, detailing how the collection of eco-audio is available 24/7 on EarthDayFM, an online radio station. Encouraging today's youth to learn through music, listening to the songs telling stories of history and science, sharing life experience in a memorable context, this is how I use music as an education tool.
As I return home to the mountains of Virginia after this week in California, it is my intention to share what I've experienced here with this energized group of educators. Thank you, for your ideas, your determination, your creativity and your enthusiasm to honor our Planet Earth.
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Joyce Rouse AKA Earth Mama creates blog posts on timely topics in collaboration with her communications manager, Bonnie Cranmer. Please refer any questions or requests for permission to use any material contained on this blog to earthmamaoffice@gmail.com.
