Kids These Days
SUMMER 2019
BY ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATION STUDENT ABBY STORROW (WORDS IN ITALICS) AND EDUCATOR ADAM ROBB
O
n May 1st, 28 high school students and 4 chaperones, including myself, arrived in Seattle (Duwamish Territory) on a perfectly sunny, spring day after a 15-hour bus ride from Calgary, Alberta (Treaty 7 Territory, traditional home of the tribes within the Blackfoot Confederacy). The stated purpose of this field trip was to learn more about green building technologies and green design. The unstated purpose of the trip was far more than that.
Above: Educator Adam Robb’s Energy and Environmental Innovation students at the Amazon Spheres on their recent visit to Seattle for the Living Future unConference. 32
After spending fifteen or more hours on a bus, we ended up in Seattle to attend the Living Future unConference. Although the ride was extensively long, the importance behind being involved in change for this group of students far outweighed
the inconvenience. I co-teach (with Lauren Elliott) a public high school program called Energy and Environmental Innovation in Calgary. The program is available to all high school students across the city through a unique career pathway strategy started by the Calgary Board of Education years ago. This Energy and Environmental education is not a common program style offered to students in Calgary or in the province. In fact, we are one of three remaining Natural Science based programs (other than ecoclubs) in the province. That being said, our students accomplish an amazing amount. They all work on real community-based projects to improve everything from food security to Indigenous rights to
