Mandy Nix is a nonformal educator who had a very busy year. In addition to working in several seasonal positions, Mandy used her training and experiences to complete her N.C. Environmental Education Certification. She worked as an environmental education instructor at Mountain Trail Outdoor School in Hendersonville where she actively engaged 2nd to 8th-grade school groups in high adventure and discovery-based curricula throughout 1400 acres of southern Appalachian bogs, ponds, streams and forests. She taught a hands-on, “minds-on” natural science curriculum on native flora and fauna for the Nature Explorers Camp at the N.C. Botanical Garden. In September, Mandy will begin a year of service as an AmeriCorps member with Trout Unlimited. She will serve as a West Virginia Volunteer Restoration and Monitoring Organizer engaging volunteers from local communities in the restoration, monitoring and protection of the cold, clean water in our Appalachian waterways.
For her community partnership project, Mandy developed the Lemur S.C.O.U.T. Patch Program at the Duke Lemur Center to engage local youth, ages 6 to 12, in lemur science and conservation. The program gave the participants a toolkit of skills during the five-step program to “Study, Conserve, Observe, Understand and Teach.” The program also allowed her to create connections between the program and the Piedmont Girl Scouts and Y Guides.
Mandy says the program changed her approach to teaching others. “The program was hugely transformative for both my teaching and my perception of environmental education. It reinforced that we’re not teaching our communities to be scientists; we’re teaching them to be science lovers and science literate, thus empowering them to be intimate participants in conservation.”
She feels that the program further supported her views about the importance of working with communities and engaging youth early-on. “The certification program fortified my belief that conservation is rooted in deep, personal connections in and with nature. My own relationship with the natural world was born from sticky summers in the North Carolina Piedmont, where Kerr Lake was a quick hop-skip through the mixed hardwood and pine forests I called my backyard. But while I was lucky to have a childhood that kept dirt under my fingernails and between my toes, many lack my own experience and exposure. It’s important that I play an active role in growing that accessibility and engaging our communities in wild, green spaces. Moreover, those connections should begin early – with our youngest citizens.”
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