A Sense of Place
Trying to 'save the environment' on a global level is no easy task. That's why CO-SEED, a New Hampshire based outfit, is helping schools and their students focus locally—by turning community resources into one big classroom.
David Sobel, an education professor at Antioch New England Graduate School, lives outside Keene, New Hampshire, on a wooded hill in a frame house with a wood stove. Although we’d never met, he’d offered to put me up for a night when I came to New England to visit two rural elementary schools with which he was involved.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. The 55-year-old Sobel had been described to me as a “rock star” and “guru” in environmental education, which made me worry he’d be full of himself. And then there was that New Agey message on his answering machine, which ended with “I hope you’re having a blissful day.”
In person, though, Sobel seemed a regular guy, part professor, part outdoorsman, with a tall, lumbering body, a bristle-brush moustache, and thick glasses. I met him at his office, we ate dinner at a local restaurant, and then we got in our cars and Sobel led the way up dark country roads to his home. He welcomed me inside, explaining, “I’m divorced,” then added that his daughter was in Costa Rica, working as an intern in an environmental school, and that his son, who lived with him most of the time, was at his mom’s that night. “My partner is usually here, too,” he added. “But tonight,...
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