In 2022, the Pennsylvania State Board of Education adopted new environmental literacy and sustainability standards. This is surely important — that all students in Pennsylvania learn about how to protect the environment and live sustainably — but how do we get them to take that education to heart? All the nature lovers out there know
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On my way out of the Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center in October, I stopped to pick through the leaves around the American persimmon trees at the top of the driveway. It was a little early in the season, with plenty of fruit still on the tree, but I found a few little blobs of
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Stephanie Kearney has taught middle school science for 20 years. She uses the outdoors as a classroom, even when what’s outside is a schoolyard and the blocks of rowhouses around Penn Alexander School in West Philadelphia. Grid talked with Kearney to learn what it takes to bring the natural sciences to life for urban students.
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On an afternoon in late October, students from Sayre High School were trickling into the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center’s community room to take off their waders and to review what they had found in the creek. It was a scene you might expect at any environmental center, but a relatively fresh one now that
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On Oct. 2, 2025, a swamp sparrow smacked into a glass door at the Independence Visitor Center and fell dead onto the entryway’s pavement. A volunteer window collision monitor with Bird Safe Philly found the bird and documented its demise. Volunteers found four dead or stunned birds that morning, with an additional 13 logged by
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Uber-urban South Philadelphia might seem an unlikely place to find the next generation of naturalists, environmentalists and outdoor aficionados. But over the past four years, Adam Forbes, founder and director of the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Discovery Pathways, has done exactly that. After early career stops working with migrants, secondary school students and English language learners, Forbes
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On an April morning, Nick Macelko was scouring the Assunpink Creek in Lawrence Township, New Jersey. It was a successful search. He found an acuminate crayfish (Cambarus acuminatus) on the creek bottom. “You can tell because he has that rostrum [part of the head that projects forward] that doesn’t have little spines on it. Cool.”
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I parked my bike at nine in the morning on a heat-dome summer day and walked down the path into the University of Pennsylvania’s James G. Kaskey Memorial Park (better known as the BioPond). Under the tree canopy I immediately felt cooler after my sweaty bike ride. I paused to admire a stately American elm
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In nature there is always something to discover. Maybe you’ll encounter a species living somewhere it has never been documented, perhaps an unexpected crayfish in a creek. What else could be swimming in there? You could find a chestnut tree growing strong where others are afflicted. Could that tree hold answers for how to overcome
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In June 2023, I followed my friend Josh Ferguson from Keystone Permaculture past old, arching oaks and tall tulip poplars along a path in Carpenter’s Woods in Wissahickon Valley Park in search of a rare and intriguing pair of trees he had heard about. We eventually arrived at two initially normal-looking trees: a 45-foot tree
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