Celebrating Earth Day Can Lead to a Life of Stewardship

When Earth Day can (and should) be every day

My bulletin boards were made to extend engagement to the whole student body at an elementary school. © Carol Labuzzetta, 2015.

For 15 years, my garden club lessons focused on our Earth and the awe-inspiring nature it provides. We celebrated Earth Day every month we met for the after-school garden club I founded, from September until May, not just in April. I served over 500 individual students (not counting the repeat members of the garden club) during that time.

Soon, when Earth Day celebrations arrived at schools, I started to have the opportunity to engage more students, sometimes an entire student body, or 400+ students at a time, with my presentations.

What subject did I deem important enough to engage a whole school for their Earth or Environmental Day celebrations?

As I considered my lessons, I chose subjects that were broad enough to capture the attention of most students, who encompassed a wide range of grade levels and capacities. I covered things like Forest Stewardship, Citizen Science, Monarch Migration, the Monarch Life Cycle, the Phenology of Spring, and the importance of bats.

The following photographs are screenshots from presentations by the author, Carol Labuzzetta, conducted over a decade of teaching about our environment.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Screen shot of presentation title slide by author, Carol Labuzzetta.

Far-reaching effects of environmental lessons are possible

Earth Day comes under fire for being celebrated only once a year in April, when in fact, “Earth Day is Every Day.”

And I believe in that sentiment. But when you can turn a child onto the awe-inspiring things we can experience through our environment, we must take it, even if it’s just one day at a time.

I am teaching an entire grade level (75 4th-grade students) at one of our local elementary schools in 2016 about Monarchs and Milkweed. Photo used with permission.

Some of my former students have gone on to become organic farmers, major in the environment and ecology at university, become climate change researchers, and environmental problem solvers.

Were these students interested in the earth before attending the garden club and hearing my lessons? Perhaps. As I finished my graduate education in 2018 in Environmental Education and Interpretation, I was in my last year of teaching the garden club (even though I didn’t know it at the time).

A timeline of some of the units I developed on Monarch Butterfly conservation through 2015. © Carol Labuzzetta, 2015.

At that point, I elected to conduct an independent study of my former students, as I desperately wanted to know if the environmental lessons I provided to them as children made a difference in their future environmental stewardship.

It became important to me to know whether my lessons had any effect on the students and helped them become future environmental stewards. I asked the students what topics they remembered, where the lessons took place, and how they felt about what they learned.

Teaching elementary students about bats. © 2023. Photo used with permission.

Unfortunately, I cannot write much about the results because I’ve written a textbook chapter that includes this information, and it should remain unknown until that comes out.

But I can say that yes, exposure to environmental lessons, on Earth Day, during Earth Month, or at any time — with a teacher or knowledgeable parent or another invested adult — is beneficial to planting the seed of environmental stewardship in our youth.

Earth Day, for me, has always been about sharing knowledge about our earth and inspiring action in my local communities. We all must do our part to sustain our Earth home, for if we don’t, the planet will suffer. It already is, so please do something — anything — to care for our Earth — every day.

You might be inspired today — Earth Day — but remember, our Earth needs to be cared for Every Day.

This is my response to my own prompt for the Challenged for April 22nd, Earth Day, 2026.

What do you do to celebrate Earth Day? Tag me in your response!

[embed]April Arrives With More Writing Prompts for the Challenged We are here at the 25% mark…scary!medium.com

Thank you, Adrienne Beaumont, for your hard work as the editor of this fun publication!