Excerpts from my Peace Corps Quarterly Report

By May, my first semester as a teacher will have ended. I have found it a challenging assignment, but very rewarding. It has been great to see my students become little environmentalists who can impart their knowledge on others around them. In July I will be teaching another course through Knox Community College, and a third course in August through the Environmental Studies Summer Institute run by Dr. Errol Miller. In the months of May and June I will be preparing for my summer courses by researching and writing out lesson plans.

One project that I’ve had some difficulty with is revitalizing the KEST program at Knox Community College. I still plan to try and make some headway with promotions, finding a donor for a bus, looking into an EFJ grant, and getting community support.

My biggest professional goal for this next quarter will be making some headway with the Canoe Valley Project through Mr. Sam Miller and the Manchester Parish Development Committee. This will involve further research of the area, more networking with locals, possibly starting a handbook/field guide to the area, and taking steps in hopes to make the Canoe Valley a Protected Area. Through collaborations with Knox Community College, MPDC, Manchester Environmental Protection Association, NEPA, and others hopefully we can make some headway.

Another smaller project I’m working on is with the Jamaica Caves Organization. In April I helped with the biological inventory (bats, invertebrates, crabs, etc.) and locations of 5 caves in Jamaica. I may have discovered a new cave worm species when I went caving in April! (pending further research). In late June, I plan to do some more scientific caving through the JCO (hopefully in Manchester, so it can also be of value with the MPDC and their parish profile).