Is Screen Time Harmful or Helpful for Student Learning?
How much screen time is too much in education? Our team recently discovered this interview with Maryann Wolf, the director of the Center...
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Julie Kucks
- Mar 20
- 4 min
Students Reveal What’s Wrong with Education in a Global Survey
Are students happy in school? Do they feel like they have a purpose? Is our education system failing them? We now have insight into these...
Julie Kucks
- Mar 16
- 4 min
The Elephant Whisperers: An Elephant Caretaker’s Journey to Love
“I cannot imagine a life without elephants.” "Oh, my dear. Did you sleep, my child? How are you? Oh, my dear. Oh, my dear Raghu, my...
Julie Kucks
- Mar 8
- 5 min
Mindful Birding Relieves Stress in Teens
I recently moved to a marina in South Brooklyn. And the most dramatic mental change since moving out of the city’s epicenter toward the...
Julie Kucks
- Mar 1
- 6 min
How Puberty Changes the Brain
We know that puberty changes the body. But what does it do to the mind? Puberty. We often associate it with “raging hormones,” impulsive...
Julie Kucks
- Feb 21
- 7 min
Girls are Opting out of STEM: What Can We Do?
With STEM-related fields burgeoning, why is it that girls are less likely to pursue these opportunities than boys? “Draw a scientist.” In...
Julie Kucks
- Feb 15
- 6 min
3 Sustainable Living Habits to Improve Mental Health
We know sustainability and mental health are important. But how does one affect the other? Uggianaqtuq. This is a vocabulary word of the...
Julie Kucks
- Feb 7
- 3 min
Recycled Wastewater Makes the Best Drinking Water
What if you could reclaim the water that runs down your drain, pour it into a glass, and have the cleanest drinking water possible?...
Kate Saunders
- Feb 2
- 3 min
Alternative Health Care for Horses
When was the last time you cleared your horse’s energy fields? Knowing your horse includes knowing their energy fields and exploring...
Julie Kucks
- Jan 25
- 9 min
11 Foraged Foods That Can Save Money on Groceries & Prescriptions
Could a food foraging guide help you through the recession? Dr. Nicole Apelian is an herbalist, biologist, and survivalist who has over...
Julie Kucks
- Jan 18
- 4 min
5 Easy Beginner Compost Tips
Composting is easy, clean, and is an ideal way for us to lessen our food waste. If you’ve been thinking about composting but decided it...
Julie Kucks
- Jan 12
- 7 min
Why is Holistic Education Important? Understanding What Students Need for Academic Success
Holistic education is a learning philosophy that believes students are people, not simply academics, and should thus be educated as a...
Julie Kucks
- Jan 4
- 7 min
Returning to Old Routines in the New Year
It’s the new year. The holidays – where we slept more, slept less, drank more, drank less water, celebrated, and let go of habits – are...
Julie Kucks
- Dec 28, 2022
- 4 min
3 Nature Lessons for New Year’s Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions — does the phrase make you shudder? Research shows 80% of people fail to reach their new year’s resolutions by...
Julie Kucks
- Dec 21, 2022
- 5 min
5 Wintery Nature Practices That Encourage Us to Slow Down
Winter: a lot of us associate this season with sadness, darkness, coldness, discomfort. A time of year when the sun disappears early and...
Julie Kucks
- Dec 15, 2022
- 2 min
Give the Gift of Sustainability: 8 Eco-Friendly Companies to Shop This Holiday
The holidays are here, and Americans are slated to spend $910 billion shopping online. While the holidays are a time of celebration and...
Julie Kucks
- Dec 6, 2022
- 3 min
3 Ideas to Cool a World That’s Getting Hotter and Hungrier
You’ve probably been seeing a lot on social media about COP27 – the 27th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties. As usual, there...
Julie Kucks
- Nov 30, 2022
- 2 min
Females Are Rebuilding the Planet’s Forests
Sherilyn Deschain is a third-generation forest owner and caretaker who has inherited care of acreage in Hillsborough, NC where her mother...
Julie Kucks
- Nov 22, 2022
- 4 min
3 Ways Horse Therapy Helps Students With High Functioning Anxiety
"I'm so stressed out!" "I have a lot on my plate." "Finals are here and I'm just a bundle of nerves!" How many times have you heard a...
Julie Kucks
- Nov 15, 2022
- 2 min
New Study Proves 60 Minutes in Nature Reduces Stress Levels
The first study of its kind has proven that 60 minutes spent in the outdoors diminishes hyperactivity in the amygdala. This project was...
Julie Kucks
- Nov 9, 2022
- 4 min
Blue Health: The Water-Based Approach to Mental Wellness
I live on a houseboat. I just moved in this month – it is a Catamaran Cruiser SE35 docked on Jamaica Bay in South Brooklyn. From my...
Ann Leslie Davis
- Nov 2, 2022
- 1 min
New Carbon Capture and Utilization Strategy Recycles CO2 Emissions
It’s morning and you wake on a comfortable foam mattress made partly from greenhouse gas. You pull on a T-shirt and sneakers containing...
Julie Kucks
- Oct 26, 2022
- 2 min
Harvard Takes Cues from Nature in New Biologically Inspired Engineering
The RoboBee. Metamorpho. Octobot. These are just a few of the remarkable biologically inspired technologies the Wyss Institute at Harvard...
Julie Kucks
- Oct 18, 2022
- 6 min
Shut Your Textbooks. Experience Learning.
“I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” – Confucius Imagine your child as a little one – they’ve just started...
Julie Kucks
- Oct 11, 2022
- 3 min
Ecovillages Are Illuminating the Way to a Sustainable Future
Ecovillage: an intentional, traditional or urban community that is consciously designing its pathway through locally owned, participatory...
Nicolette Sowder
- Sep 28, 2022
- 2 min
Wildschooling: Old Traditions for a New Nature-based Approach to Education
“More than a curriculum or framework, Wildschooling is a movement designed to honor and support our innate, inexorable bond with nature...
Julie Kucks
- Sep 21, 2022
- 1 min
Can Nature-Inspired Architectural Design Affect Cognition?
Biophilia. Translated as “love of life,” it is the concept that human beings are innately wired with a love of and desire to be in...
Julie Kucks
- Sep 13, 2022
- 5 min
Grounding: The Electric Healer
“The ungrounded state is neither normal nor natural, nor the way that humans lived throughout most of history.” – Clint Ober A few weeks...
Julie Kucks
- Sep 7, 2022
- 2 min
Flying Away Home: Migration 101
Perhaps you’ve watched the endearing 90’s film Fly Away Home where a young girl raises an orphaned flock of geese and helps show them...
Julie Kucks
- Aug 30, 2022
- 1 min
Cloud-Seeding: The Middle East’s Race to Claim Rainfall
Middle Eastern countries are attempting to make clouds pour down rain to restore their water supply. A recent New York Times piece...
Anderson Eduardo Santos
- Aug 24, 2022
- 1 min
Know the Bee, Not the Idea of the Bee
An important personal piece featured in Science impresses upon us that deep learning and academic success must be founded on lived...
Julie Kucks
- Aug 16, 2022
- 5 min
Top 10 Most Efficient Individual Actions to Fight Climate Change
By Julie Kucks There is an 80-foot-long clock on a building in Manhattan’s Union Square that actively counts down the numbers of years,...
Julie Kucks
- Aug 9, 2022
- 1 min
UNESCO Calls Higher Education to Climate Action
Earlier this year, UNESCO released a report that outlined steps for how higher education institutions are expected to help deliver on the...
Julie Kucks
- Aug 2, 2022
- 7 min
Lake Ecology: The Complex World Within Water
By Julie Kucks Perhaps you’ve seen a Rube Goldberg Machine in action. Rube Goldberg, a cartoonist and inventor, became famous for...
Julie Kucks
- Jul 26, 2022
- 2 min
98 Percent of Americans are Ecologically Illiterate
A study conducted by the National Environmental Education Foundation discovered that a mere 1-2% of Americans are considered...
Julie Kucks
- Jul 18, 2022
- 2 min
Holgate, NJ Holds Hope for Endangered Bird’s Repopulation
Earlier this week, I felt immense sadness watching a Facebook video shared with me by someone on our NJIN team stating that nearly 1 in 3...
Julie Kucks
- Jul 13, 2022
- 5 min
Water: 5 Ways to Conserve, 5 Ways to Recycle
Water feels boundless to the majority of Americans. Most of us do not make the connection between the amount of water running out of our...
Julie Kucks
- Jul 4, 2022
- 2 min
Goldman Environmental Prize Winners
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” - Robert Swan Robert Swan is the first person in...
Julie Kucks
- Jun 28, 2022
- 5 min
5 Tips for Growing Social Media Mindfulness This Summer
Summertime means freedom for many young people. It is a time to shut the books, click off the timers, and leave the obligations behind –...
Rommel Santos
- Jun 21, 2022
- 2 min
Universities Take the Hint that the Climate Crisis isn’t Going Anywhere
An article by Julie Kucks Some of the top universities in the world are incorporating sustainability education into their curricula due...
Julie Kucks
- Jun 14, 2022
- 4 min
Global Food Systems Should Take Pointers from Pride Month
It seems we need a Pride Month for our food systems. The recent global crises we’ve sustained in the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine,...
Julie Kucks
- Jun 7, 2022
- 2 min
Rayonier: The Company That’s Rebuilding U.S. Forests
Rayonier is a company dedicated to rebuilding the environment by re-populating forest ecosystems. Visit their website HERE. It’s easy to...
Rommel Santos
- May 31, 2022
- 4 min
Wilderness Therapy: an Alternative Approach to Mental Healing
By Julie Kucks In 2020, I completed my first ever 2-week hike on a portion of the Appalachian Trail. What I remember the most was how...
Nandini Menon
- May 24, 2022
- 1 min
Can Algae Charge Your Smartphone?
An article by Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine May 17, 2022. Full article here. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an ever-growing...
Rommel Santos
- May 17, 2022
- 3 min
4 Interactive Nature Apps for Tech-Loving Middle and High Schoolers
By Julie Kucks Middle and High Schoolers rely on their smartphones. They also are privy to many conversations about climate change in...
Nandini Menon
- May 10, 2022
- 1 min
4 Reasons to Invest in Leadership Development
An Article By The Center of Creative Leadership, November 20 2020. View the full article HERE. Why Is Leadership Development Important?...
Nandini Menon
- May 3, 2022
- 1 min
Designing Schools For Mental Health and Well-Being
An Article By Denise Pope, Co-Founder of Challenge for Success, Senior Lecturer Stanford Graduate School of Education. "Social-Emotional...
Rommel Santos
- Apr 20, 2022
- 1 min
Engineering Trees To Grow Faster And Capture More Carbon
An article by Vanessa Bates Ramirez Singularity Hub April 14 2022 Genetic engineering has given scientists the power to manipulate...
Nandini Menon
- Apr 12, 2022
- 1 min
Malala Introducing The Worlds Largest Lesson
A video by The Global Goals . In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals (officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals or...
Nandini Menon
- Mar 23, 2022
- 1 min
Employers Increasing Focus on Core Skills
An article by Kyle Su/lender Executive Director, Focus NJ THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has made it harder for employers to find workers, and...
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