In the CEE-Change, Together blog series, NAAEE shares narratives from the CEE-Change Fellows as they implement their community action projects and work to strengthen environmental education and civic engagement capabilities, all supporting the mission of cleaner air, land, and water. Join us on their journey! The Civics and Environmental Education (CEE) Change Fellowship is NAAEE’s initiative to support leadership and innovation in civics and environmental education in North America and beyond. 

The 2025 U.S.-based CEE-Change Fellowship Program is supported by generous funding from ee360+, the Cedar Tree Foundation, the Sam and Mary Lawrence Foundation, and the Weeden Foundation. The 2025 International CEE-Change Fellowship Program is a partnership between NAAEE and the Global Environmental Education Partnership (GEEP). 

In early 2025, I was serving as a Community Engagement Specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, where I led regional conservation education efforts across 20 states and 15 National Forests. Through that work, I helped build partnerships that connected communities to forests through public service and environmental education. 

After leaving the Forest Service in 2025, I began looking for new ways to strengthen access to forest-based learning and public service opportunities in my community. That search led me to apply for the North American Association for Environmental Education's Civic and Environmental Education (CEE)-Change Fellowship, an innovative, cohort-based program that equips environmental educators to integrate civic action into their work. I was fortunate to be selected as one of the 2025 CEE-Change Fellows.

When I began the Fellowship, I expected to gain new tools, ideas, and strategies for civic and environmental education. What I did not expect was how often I would find myself drawing on those lessons long after our Fellowship meetings had ended.

One of the most meaningful examples of the ripple effects of my time with the CEE-Change Fellowship has been the development of a Tiny Forest and Outdoor Living Lab at Readington Middle School in New Jersey. Many of the concepts and methods we discussed throughout the Fellowship—including civic engagement, theories of change, community partnership development, project monitoring and evaluation, and empowering young people as environmental stewards—have fundamentally shaped my approach to the project.

The idea for the project began with a simple question: How could an underused playground become something more meaningful for students and the broader community? The answer evolved into a vision for a Tiny Forest and Outdoor Living Lab—a 0.2-acre schoolyard forest where students would not simply visit nature, but help create, study, and care for it. Tiny forests are densely planted patches of native trees designed to mimic the composition and structure of local forest ecosystems on a small footprint, typically less than one acre. By pairing the forest with an Outdoor Living Lab, we created a space where students can investigate the science of forest stewardship, monitor ecological change over time, and take civic action to address local environmental challenges.

As we worked to bring that vision to life, I found myself drawing on many of the ideas we explored through the Fellowship. A central theme centered on the importance of moving beyond thinking about environmental education as simply teaching about environmental issues and toward using education to empower people to take action in their communities. Those discussions encouraged me to rethink what meaningful environmental learning can look like—increasing knowledge while creating opportunities for students to engage as civic actors, citizen scientists, and stewards of their local environment.

Guided by these principles, the project team embedded student leadership into every stage of the project—from design and implementation to monitoring and long-term stewardship. Students have led planning discussions, contributed to grant writing, planted the forest, and helped build the community partnerships needed to ensure its long-term success. Along the way, they have used Google Maps to develop site plans, worked with geospatial analysts to explore how classroom drones can monitor forest growth, and organized an Earth Day event that brought together AmeriCorps Watershed Ambassadors, Rutgers graduate students, nonprofit organizations, and environmental professionals.

The students' accomplishments over the past year demonstrate what is possible when young people are empowered to lead. They secured $40,000 through the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Sustainable Jersey's Trees for Schools program to design and establish the Tiny Forest, along with a $10,000 grand prize through Project Green Schools' Outdoor Classroom Challenge. Those funds are supporting the infrastructure needed for the site's Outdoor Living Lab, improving accessibility for students with disabilities, and expanding horticultural therapy spaces to better support student mental health and well-being. The concept was recognized as a winner of STEM Next's national Nature Prize Challenge and recently featured as a Tiny Forest impact story. Students also won first place at Thomas Edison Pitch Contest, where they presented on an AI-based air quality system they developed that tracks pollution in real time to support local communities in addressing local air quality issues.

We were recently awarded a $5,000 grant from the Society of American Foresters to expand the Tiny Forest Living Lab at Readington Middle School into a hub for youth forestry education and exposure to careers urban and community forestry. The grant will fund hands-on field equipment, workshops led by Yale and Rutgers forestry faculty and graduate students, field trips, student-led forest monitoring, and community engagement activities that connect middle school students with sustainable forest management and careers in forestry.

While these milestones are exciting, what is most meaningful to me has been how many of these opportunities emerged through applying the frameworks I developed during the CEE-Change Fellowship to how I approach environmental education. These frameworks have encouraged me to ask different questions: How can students become active participants rather than passive learners? How can community partnerships strengthen educational outcomes? How can environmental education create opportunities for civic engagement and stewardship? How can local places become living classrooms? 

Looking back, I also realize how joining a community of educators who challenged one another to think differently about environmental education and what it can accomplish was central to our project’s development and success. The Tiny Forest may not have been my Fellowship project, but it is undeniably a product of the ideas, relationships, and inspiration that the Fellowship helped cultivate.

This project has only been possible through Betsy Freeman, the Gift & Talent development educator at Readington Middle School and Dr. Neil Hendrickson, executive director of the New Jersey Shade Tree Federation. Betsy is the reason these students are both environmentally- and civic-minded at such a young age, and I cannot thank her enough for giving me the opportunity to support this project, largely through the knowledge and skillsets I have developed as a CEE-Change Fellow.