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his career was directly attributable to his experiences at Scotts Creek doing Sunship Earth and SUNSHIP III (I have heard many of those stories over the years). 4. Working with wonderful colleagues at Accompany Outdoors and in South Australia generally. People like Kris Mosher, Cath Jenner, Martyn Risbey, Bo Power, Mark Hayward, Kathy Binks, Kate Mitchell, Beau Griffiths, Nick Hartog, Bill Prime, etc.
Thanks Steve, thanks Bruce, and all of the wonderful dedicated people I have met and worked with on earth education projects.
Bill Coutts
I first came across earth education when I went to a workshop in 1985, led by Steve Van Matre, in the grounds of a Primary School in Birmingham. I was a Secondary School Biology teacher at the time but realised that what I had learnt that day was the key to what I felt was missing in main- stream education.
I started running Earthwalks for youngsters in my school Wildlife Club and the local Watch group that I ran at weekends, and quickly graduated to running my first Sunship Earth Programme in 1988 with the help of I•E•E Associates across the West Midlands. My experiences in earth education were instrumental in my being appointed as the Environmental Education Advisor for Hereford and Worcester County Council. As part of that role I was able to set up Bishops Wood Environmental Education Centre which I ran for nearly 25 years.
At Bishops Wood I was able to introduce many teachers and their pupils to earth education programmes and activities. Even when curriculum demands meant that we needed programmes addressing technology, literacy and history we applied the inspiration and principles of earth education to these programmes ensuring that pupils had plenty of first-hand contact with the natural world and that their experiences were engaging, playful and holistic. I also wrote “Teddy Bears Picnic”, a home-grown earth education programme which has been run at many centres across at least 7 countries and has been translated into several languages. I estimate that close to half a million children aged from 4-6 years have experienced this programme.
For many years I served as UK Programme Coordinator for I•E•E. Now that I have retired from paid work I continue my involvement with earth education as Chair of Earth Education UK, our local membership charity which supports folk across the UK in running earth education programmes. I occasionally get to run interest sessions and lead earthwalks which still maintain their magic after more than 30 years!
Earth Education has given me the opportunity to introduce thousands of youngsters to the natural world and help them to understand how it works and decide how to help it. It has given me a rewarding and enjoyable career at one of the leading Environmental Education Centres worldwide. Perhaps most impor- tantly, earth education has also given me the chance to get to know some of the finest people I have ever met in the UK and across the world, many of them Associates of I•E•E, and I number them amongst my personal life-long friends.
John Rhymer
Annual Report/9