From Climate Doom to the Redwoods: Alex Sherry on Teaching Hope, One Kid at a Time

Sometimes saving the planet starts with a banana slug on your face.Alex Sherry is a 23-year-old naturalist at Mission Springs Outdoor Education in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We talk about what happens when you put city kids in the redwoods for a week, what it's like to grow up inside the climate crisis instead of watching it approach, and how small moments outside can stick with kids for years.This episode is for teachers, coaches, parents, nannies, or anyone who works with kids. You have more influence than you realize, and Alex has ideas for how to use it. Fun, educational, and just a little outside the comfort zone.In this episode:The one-week transformation from "afraid of dirt" to eating edible plants off the trailA food waste system that took one group from 28 pounds to 4 in a weekThe Thanksgiving table moment that changed Alex's majorHow being outside every day is what actually calms her eco-anxietyWhat any adult who works with kids can do starting tomorrow━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━About Mission Springs:Website: https://missionspringsoe.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/missionspringsoe/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Chapters:00:00 Cold open: The banana slug club01:00 Why this conversation stuck with me03:13 The Oakland kids transformation09:41 Comfort zones and how kids grow at camp13:23 The Banana Slug Club Challenge15:50 Food waste: 28 pounds to 424:28 Screen time and Gen Alpha26:28 From climate doom to the redwoods32:48 Advice for anyone who works with kids35:35 What sticks in you?37:29 My closing reflection━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎧 Listen to the podcast⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🗞️ Sign up for the ⁠newsletter⁠━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🤝 Partnerships⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠✨ Work with me⁠⁠For speaking, coaching, and workshops⁠━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎙 CreditsProduced and hosted by ⁠Louisa Henry⁠ | Edited by ⁠Alex Leff⁠ | Music by ⁠Run Riot Run⁠ | Logo by ⁠Cassidy Frost⁠