Wading into my Environmental Storytelling class in the fall of 2024, I never imagined how this program would rearrange the stars as I wayfind the environmental space. When the waters ahead are uncertain, working with high school students at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts (GHAA) through Natural Resource Conservation Academy’s (NRCA) Eco-Digital Storytellers (EDS) inspired joy and hope for our collective environmental future. This experience guiding students as they told community-centered environmental stories using geospatial technology and digital media helped me see the power of radical imagination and creative storytelling in opening pathways for environmental justice.
At the first class visit of fall 2025, students collected temperature, air quality, noise, and biodiversity data using our Urban Forestry Toolkit and Survey123 to map the impact of urban trees on ArcGIS Online. This visit exploring the surroundings of their school showed me the possibilities in returning the classroom to nature and empowering communities to gather their own data for environmental stories.
A highlight of the fall was inviting community partners, Sydney from CT Roundtable on Climate and Jobs and Madison from CT Zero Waste Coalition, to visit the classes. After listening to them share their communications and community organizing work, students had the opportunity to practice mock interviews with the digital media techniques they learned. Moved and energized by the climate leaders’ passion and journeys shaping environmental justice futures, we carried that inspiration into students’ own projects as they began workshopping ideas for their concept pitches.
As GHAA teachers brought together digital media and environmental science classes to mirror UConn’s interdisciplinary undergraduate course for the new school year, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to community partners working more closely with students in the fall. Reflecting on last spring, I remember learning from conversations about placemaking and murals with RiseUP for Arts and listening to stories about food justice when EDS mentors visited Keney Park Sustainability Project. From workshops on the UConn campus to class visits in Hartford, it has been such a gift to learn from the students, listen to their stories, and hold space for their ideas.
After many months of crafting their multimedia storytelling projects on StoryMaps, seeing the students share their work at the Environmental Changemakers showcase in April was a proud moment for us all. We also had the chance to interact with posters by Conservation Ambassadors Program students under Difference Maker Mentors (DMM), another impactful NRCA program engaging historically underrepresented youth in environmental action, and hear from panelists who helped us see how environmental action and digital media storytelling fields can be inclusive and intersectional.
Beyond the digital storytelling skills and environmental justice wisdom this program has sown, EDS has illuminated more paths in my career and life. As I study humanity’s diverse relations and imaginings of the environment through Environmental Studies and English and learn how to visualize and analyze geographic data with maps through Geographic Information Science, in EDS I found a collaborative space where my interests and these disciplines I study uniquely meet. This program’s innovative nature and culturally sustaining pedagogy is truly a paradigm shift embodying the kind of creativity within environmental justice in technology that sparks the courage and solutions the world needs in this era.
Braiding science exploration with storytelling education, EDS has been a community that illuminates the wonders of our world to not only envision, but to co-create regenerative futures. This has been one of the most inspiring experiences of my time at UConn and I will carry it with me always. A special thank you to Laura, Laurel, and Nicole for their thoughtful mentorship, trusting me with this role and helping me grow. Thank you to my fellow fall mentor Jamaile and my spring mentoring cohort for being incredible individuals to have crossed paths and worked with. I am excited for how this program continues to grow, teaching us the art of possibility and reminding us that the stories within our communities can be the maps that help us find our way.