Building a Brighter Future with ACES Ed

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The children of the Roaring Fork Valley give me hope for the future. As a recent transplant to the Roaring Fork Valley, and as a new member of the ACES community, I want to send out my appreciation to the youth of this amazing valley. My previous work and wanderings have allowed my family to travel and live around the world, from the temples of south India, to homesteading in Yosemite, to teaching English in the Sahara Desert. I have journeyed far and wide, and yet nowhere in all my teaching and travels have I encountered a more ecologically literate, outdoor-oriented community of children and young adults.

As the new Education Director at Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, I have the privilege of working with 5,000 students from 42 regional schools. In my first few months here, I have learned much from these students, as we turned over rocks in the Roaring Fork River to test macro-invertebrate diversity, tracked snowshoe hare across Richmond Ridge on Aspen Mountain, dug potatoes and collected eggs at Rock Bottom Ranch. The youth of this valley understand more about watershed and ecosystem health, biodiversity, and sustainable food source than most adults I have worked with.

I know that ACES Ed has been a key piece in cultivating this level of ecological literacy, and I feel proud to be a part of this organization. And yet, I also know that without the continued support of parents, teachers, other educational non-profits, and the general community, our work would fall short of its full potential. I feel fortunate to be a part of this vibrant and ecologically informed community.

~ Arin Trook, Education Director

 

 

 

 

 

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