Today is Earth Day. I pulled out some of my environmental lessons and am working to put them together so I can post them to Teachers Pay Teachers. One idea I had in 2020 was to make a self-study activity card pack on the monarch butterfly for classroom use. Lately, it’s been on my mind to get it done. It’s been sitting in a box for years.
Sorting the cards and questions I had already made is the first step.
I’m working on a Medium.com post that will feature some of my past environmental day presentations as well as the first published results of a qualitative study I conducted in 2018.
I wanted to have that up by today, but have not been able to pull my research out to cull the pieces I want to share. I just got home from my trip to Colorado yesterday and need to give myself a grace period.
A sampling of my past projects and/or presentations included:
There’s more, but you get the idea. Earth Day is an important day to spread the ideas and practices we should use every day.
With the change in the United States administration, our Earth is more at risk than it has been in years. Recent repeals of laws, acts, and protections have put into play dangerous environmental scenarios that we might not be able to recover from as easily as if we continued to protect biodiversity and habitats, provide conservation, and develop clean energy to its fullest degree.
My hope is that the repeal of these laws and the closure of the agencies that utilize them to protect the environment and find new ways to preserve lands and biodiversity do not happen.
We need our environmental scientists from the USGS, NOAA, and more to continue their research. We need our National Parks, National Forests, and National Lakeshores to remain as untouched as possible for future generations to enjoy, explore, and learn from.
My poem today focuses on some of this. I did not want it to be overly political, but the use of chide at the end is intentional. If we don’t continue to protect the Earth and stop the slippery slope of climate change, we are the ones at risk. The Earth will continue as she has for millennia.
Enough said. Happy Earth Day. Please think about how YOU can protect our Earth.
Ebb
Nowhere does Earth’s
Ebb and flow show more
Than at the beach where
Land and sea meet at the shore.
Ebb and flow,
Flow and ebb.
A tide goes in and out
No matter how the wind might blow
Water rises on the moon’s command
And retreats into the ocean’s flow
Ebb and flow
Flow and ebb.
On this Earth Day, the ebb
Does flow, moving with the tide
Out, further out, until a crisis
Returns the flow with a powerful chide
© Draft, Carol Labuzzetta, 2025
The Apples in My Orchard 
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