History of Earth Day

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day. 

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself. 


Source: http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html

What day is Earth Day 2015?

When is Earth Day 2015? This observance perpetually falls on Apr twenty two. On Earth Day, fancy the tonic of contemporary air, contact with the soil, and friendly relationship with nature! practise the woods in search of rising wildflowers and inexperienced bryophyte. Go outside, regardless of what the weather!





Earth Day History

Ever puzzled however Earth Day started? This observance arose from Associate in Nursing interest in gathering national support for environmental problems. In 1970, point of entry activist John McConnell and Wisconsin legislator Gaylord admiral one by one asked Americans to affix in a very grassroots demonstration. McConnell selected the equinox (March twenty one, 1970) and admiral selected Apr twenty two. numerous individuals participated, and nowadays Earth Day continues to be wide celebrated with events on each dates. the foremost common follow of celebration is to plant new trees for Earth Day.

Earth Day Calendar

Year	Earth Day
2014	Tuesday, April 22
2015	Wednesday, April 22

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
The plants suck in the earth and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.
–Abraham Cowley, English poet (1618–67)

 

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Earth Day Ideas for Schools

Earth Day is widely known by schools, communities and organizations, which honored the primary Earth Day in April of 1970.  It reminds U.S.A. to be higher stewards of our earth. Please contact Kathleen Rocco at 216-443-3731 if you'd sort of a speaker for your Earth Day celebration. Please book many month beforehand. daily should be Earth Day, thus have Kathleen come back to your room for a presentation.  For more information about Earth Day, please visit the planet Day Network.

For information on Earthfest at the Cuyahoga County Fairground, a celebration in honor of Earth Day for Northeast Ohio, visit the planet Day Coalition.

Earth day idea

 

Here square measure some fun and academic project ideas:

• Plan an Earth Day Celebration and invite guest speakers.
• Do the Earth Day Coffee Jacket Project.
• Develop an environmental day at school.
• Do a zero waste lunch day or week.
• Conserve resources day by reducing the use of water and energy. For example, turn off the lights when students are out of room or when it is a sunny day, carry a water bottle, etc...
• Organize a bike or walk to school that day with the help of parents.
• Organize an anti-litter campaign for your community.
• Start an environmental club at your school.
• Feed a Tree. Each classroom or science class creates a bucket or bag of compost. Trees and plants can be planted with a special ceremony. Each classroom contributes a bucket of soil/compost.
• Growing worms:
  1. Materials: Plastic tub or bucket with lid, drill, bedding: shredded newpaper, cardboard, leaves, dried grass cuttings, dead plants, manure or peat moss; sand and soil, shovel, red worms called red wigglers; food waste: fruits and vegetables, coffee grounds, tea leaved, bread, eggshells.
  2. 1 square foot equals 1 pound of food wastes.
  3. Drill holes every 2 inches at top and bottom of container for air and water exchange.  You'll need something to catch the liquid called worm tea. 
  4. Add worms and food. Worms need to be kept in a warm place.
• Plant Bulbs: Each student plants a bulb around the school grounds. Get bulbs donated. Each classroom or grade should have special section around the school. Add signs for recognition.
• Speak out. Write your legislator asking your representatives to support environmental legislation. Tell companies to put their products in containers and bottles that can be recycled.
• Do a can-can. Raise money and recycle aluminum by holding a can drive. Fundraisers with recycling include ink cartridges, cell phones, paper and much more through TerraCycle.   
• Save trees by participating in a paperretriever or river valley recycling program for paper, phone books and cardboard. 
• Beautify your school. Maintain an adopt-a-spot for litter pickup or plantings around school and the neighborhood.  Funding for bags and gloves can come from Cleanup Cuyahoga. 
• Entertain others. Present an environmental play or puppet show to students in other grades.
• Go on a field trip to a nature center, landfill, recycling center, composting site, wastewater treatment plant, etc..
• Monitor a stream near your school.
• Inventory the trees trees in your school yard and other plant more.
• Hang buy recycled signs on items made from recycled materials or products that are recyclable in your local grocery store.
• Conduct a waste audit at your school. Start a school recycling program.
• Build blue bird, bat or butterfly boxes.
• Raise native fish and release in area ponds or rivers. Raise native plants and sell them.
• Create a rain garden at your school.
• Raise money and donate it to an environmental cause.
• Decorate a cloth shopping bag for your parents to take with them whenever they go to the grocery store.
• Attend EARTHfest and other environmental festivals around the region. Link to earth day coalition.
• Visit a green store like Earthfair, Nature's Bin, Wholefoods, Furry Nation, Revive, etc...

Earth Day Ideas From My School to Yours

"Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart." ― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods

At The Park faculty in Brookline, MA, wherever I teach fourth grade, we have a tendency to do the items most faculties do, however we have a tendency to conjointly work to attach with and shield the surroundings. we attempt to try and do this through comes that inspire, empower, and educate youngsters whereas conjointly serving to the community. With April being Earth Month, perhaps you're sorting out inexperienced activities for your school?

Although there's additional my faculty might be doing and this work isn't done, i'm proud to share many concepts below. maybe your faculty may wish to strive one?
1. 1st of all, if we would like children (and adults, as well!) to understand and defend the flora and fauna, they need to bind and so savor the out of doors setting. As David Sobel says, "We got to offer [kids] time to attach with nature and love the world before we have a tendency to raise them to avoid wasting it." samples of this area unit taking children on nature walks, camping, learning field ecology, or different such active experiences. This should return 1st, particularly at younger ages. for several years, our community has seen our 1st-3rd grade instructor, Brian sweet acacia, taking students outside for such connections and explorations on an everyday basis numeration butterflies, listening for birds, composting, and different activities. I want i used to be in his class! Our sixth graders go encampment and hike Mt. Monadnock every fall. 1st comes "connecting," then comes "protecting," then again after all, back to "connecting," hopefully beginning a cycle for a period of time.

2. 9 years agone, we have a tendency to started our school's in style exercise program. Fourth graders collect twenty,000 pounds of paper and cardboard annually in little groups at recess. youngsters crave such useful, "real" work. Also, they dress up like super heroes that makes it doubly cool! Third grade students collect bottles and cans. That 1st year we have a tendency to created this video to assist educate our community. Such reach and study improves and transforms "community service" into "service learning."

3. Eight years agone, we have a tendency to started our college and employees inexperienced committee known as the  "Green suppose Tank" to arrange inexperienced comes and to figure with a parents' inexperienced Committee. These teams support one another and our kids! Is there a inexperienced Committee at your school? If not, try and establish one. you'll would like the support of a team to induce the foremost out of this work. make sure AN administrator is enclosed within the committee. return up with a mission statement, and so a strategic set up. Magic can happen, however it'll be laborious. Support one another.

4. Seven years agone, Park faculty helped lead a Step It Up Rally in Boston that was one among several across the country line for climate action (later this movement become 350.org). many Park oldsters and academics helped organize the event with Boston Climate Action Network. Park students marched and herb. Click here to check the Park student Freedom Choir singing at the rally! are you able to get your teacher to seem into songs concerning the setting or inexperienced work? are you able to notice similar rallies to affix in your community? (Any such "activism" should be optional  for youths, obviously.)

5. Six years agone, we have a tendency to started our Catalog Canceling Challenge project! once a live interview on the nowadays Show with Ann Curry and anon Opera's OWN network, at the side of the building of the cardinal web site, almost 10,000 youngsters have joined the project! maybe you'll host a month long catalog canceling drive at your school?

6. 5 years agone, LED by teacher Arabian tea Callard and parent Nancy Pinchera, we have a tendency to started a Student Garden Club. within the fall and spring on Fri mornings from 7:15-8:00a.m. Kids, parents, and school get their hands dirty and learn the way to boost their own food. faculty gardens have a lot of potential, not only for learning to grow food, except for connections to nature, improved Science programme, and community building.

7. Four years agone, Raine Miller's Kindergarteners engineered a turbine with the assistance of our Head of Maintenance, microphone Massaro! Watch this video concerning their project. It's still processing to the current day! Building is such an interesting and vital a part of learning. whereas learning Hellenic language design, my students set to create a temple to the god "Recycleus" out of many hundred previous plastic bottles. They learned a lot of within the method concerning analysis, math, teamwork, writing, art, design, and reusing!

8. 3 years agone, our recess "Paper Club" tried to induce our city of Brookline, MA, to make a law wherever voters might opt-out of receiving unwanted phone books. although not successful , students researched, surveyed interest, wrote letters, and browse them before the Board of elected official. we have a tendency to learned a lot!

9. 2 years agone, a fourth grade category started a modification.org petition asking Universal Studios to place environmental education data and links into their Lorax motion picture web site. once stacking up fifty seven,000 signatures, it worked! Universal Studios modified their web site. Some Park faculty children were Dianne Sawyer and rudiment News' "Persons of the Week." additionally, Nicholas Kristof applauded their efforts recognizing the capability of fourth graders to alter the planet within the big apple Times! They even won AN "EPA Environmental benefit Award. Amazing! Petition comes have a lot of chance for researching, planning, persuasive essay writing, motion picture creating, and selling. Oh ... and that they work. they provide power to those typically while not. As Thomas economic expert has determined, the planet is currently flat.

10. Last year, several Park fourth graders motor-assisted Land Wilson and therefore the Sun natural depression School's "Kids WHO Care" in American state with their petition to Crayola to line up a marker take-back program for wiped out markers. It worked! it had been empowering to affix with different students in CA and PA to make positive modification through cooperation.

This Crayola project still because the Catalog Canceling Challenge have American state thinking, "How might we have a tendency to improve this world if voluminous youngsters might connect, brainstorm, drawback solve, and tell the planet what they suppose has to happen to guard their future from challenges like climate change?" Would those in power listen if children raised their voices loud enough? Or if their academics and fogeys did? right away, my concern relates as to whether several leaders' drive for election or sturdy quarterly earnings takes precedence over their own children's future well-being. Such ametropia frightens American state. however during this vital work of teaching, we have a tendency to should stay hopeful and excited for consequent nice breakthrough from atomic fusion to first grade schoolroom red wiggler vermicomposting. The solutions area unit out there! As Richard Louv writes, "Progress doesn't need to be proprietary to be worthy. Progress may also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. will we have a tendency to teach youngsters to seem at a flower and see all the items it represents: beauty, the health of AN scheme, and therefore the potential for healing?"

11. One year agone, we have a tendency to started this petition geared toward 3 catalog corporations. Here's a video we have a tendency to created wherever our Paper Club custom-made AN Alicia Keys' song. though the petition has not been successful , Alicia Keys liked  the thought and therefore the kids' song after we asked for permission to place it on-line. She even sent United States of America a video!! As you'll see here and on top of, schools' "green work" isn't solely vital, however exalting to others within the media and on the far side. children seizing serious, inventive work and not being stuck feeling overpowered or numb within the daily grind is actually special. I want additional adults felt such power. Real environmental study and action is that the spark for such passion. it's my hope that it'd be a long line.

Photo via Park School Community

12. We have a pre-K through 4th grade Earth Day Assembly each April for 250 kids. We pick a theme or a book for all the classrooms to read and do projects around. Then we come together and celebrate Earth! Some themes of the past few years include books such as "The Lorax," and the next year, "Owl Moon." Last year we chose three nature poems for the school to focus on and rally around. This year we're going with a seemingly simple, but rich topic - "Trees!" 13. Next month our community is sponsoring and/or planting 125 trees not only on campus, but around the world for Earth Day and also for our school's 125th anniversary! The kids are picking locations and tree types. The first planting was a camphor tree a few days ago at the Greentown School in Hangzhou China by our Mandarin teacher Mulian Chen and some 9th grade students currently traveling there. Fifth graders are making bonsai as they study Japan. An idea from 4th graders who study Greece and recycling was to plant olive trees in big recycling bin pots! 14. Currently, several fourth and fifth grade students are displeased that Dunkin' Donuts uses about one billion styrofoam per year when serving their coffee. They started a petition, and my class is helping their cause. Stay tuned! This is our new "big idea" to creatively study and support.

There are many other "green ideas" out there which include full environmental science curricula, no-idoling zones, use of green school cleaning supplies, rooftop solar panels, raising farm animals, and e-waste recycling and disposal days. Such practice and learning not only improves our educational practices, but they can also help the planet.

This intersection of environmental education, service learning, and improved teaching practices is a powerful "sweet spot" to which our communities aspire. My school has been fortunate enough to witness this a few times -- it's pretty special, and I hope some of the ideas above light a spark in your mind and in your school. Run them by your Green Committee, a principal, or colleague and see if one is the right fit for you! Tis' the season. Happy Earth Day 2014!

Email me at wellst@parkschool.org if you have any questions about these opportunities. I would be pleased to answer any questions - this work is my passion, and I would like to help make it yours.

Source: huffingtonpost.com