Nature Blog Network

Unless you’ve recently won a large lottery prize or cashed out a substantial investment portfolio that was heavily invested in Internet technologies just before the bust, you’ve no doubt noticed that things in the national economies of just about every country on the planet are not doing so well at the moment. This “downturn,” as the talking heads like to call it, is having different effects in different parts of the world. In the United States where I live, it has meant levels of unemployment unseen in decades (my own home state of Oregon is second highest in the nation right now with at least 12.1% of the adult working age population lacking jobs), neighborhoods full of foreclosed and often abandoned houses, food banks running out of food, and cuts in public (as well as private) school budgets that should be unthinkable in a nation so vocally concerned about “family values” as the U.S. purports to be. However despite the fact that things generally, well… suck right now, many people are asking the same question: “What can I do to help?”

As a nature-oriented journalist, something everyone with a blog in the Nature Blog Network can say of themselves in either a professional or an amateur perspective, I have a suggestion that we all might want to consider. It pertains to helping overcome the horrific cuts in funding to the schools which will no doubt see staff cuts, class sizes in primary grades rising above 30 pupils per classroom, and many enrichment programs disappear. We can all take the knowledge we bring to our blogs into the schools as volunteers.

Think about it: we all have writing skills that are honed from day upon day, year upon year posting – therefore we can all help tutor schoolchildren in writing. We are all bloggers, thus we presumably know something about that activity as well as computers in general – therefore we can help with computer and Internet literacy. Finally, we are all nature enthusiasts who are so passionate about what we do that we produce blogs dedicated to sharing our experiences in our favorite natural history subject or subjects – therefore we can surely be of use to science teachers as project assistants or tutors, and especially valuable to primary level teachers who often want to teach more science-related topics but lack the experience themselves to do so.

Fortunately, to most who are reading this post, it is by the choir that the sermon is being heard; many here are already dedicated volunteers in their local schools. However to those who might not have thought of it, or who have but feared that their knowledge might not be sufficient to the task, let me say only that what you can bring to your local school is something they would lack were you not to bring it. You will be amazed at just how much knowledge you have to offer to an underfunded and over-worked classroom teacher trying to provide his or her students the high quality of education that they deserve.