This fall, FRW hosted the 17th annual Youth Environmental Symposium (YES).  An award-winning event, YES seeks to connect regional high school students in a meaningful way to the natural world so that they may become vested stakeholders and stewards of the environment. The beautiful 561-acre Ryerson Woods site serves as a living classroom for YES. The principal goals of the YES include the following:
	Increase participant knowledge, awareness anc critical thinking about the environment. Encourage students to model individual decisions that are more ecologically sustainable.
Engage students in hands-on skill building and stewardship activities. Provide students with access to leaders and decision makers in the environmental sector. Amplify college opportunities in the conservation field.
Each fall, up to 120 high school students and their teachers from high schools across the region gather at Ryerson Woods for a full-day symposium that includes a keynote speaker, on-site habitat restoration work and interactive workshops exploring a pressing environmental concern in our region.  Teachers receive continuing education credit by participating in the Symposium.  YES participants are also provided with information about conservation-related college programs.

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LESSONS FROM THE PRAIRIE

The theme for 2012 is Lessons from the Prairie.  Students and teachers spent the day learning from experts through participatory sessions that explore what we here in Illinois can learn from our prairie ecosystem, as well as what human society can learn from natural systems broadly speaking.  The day kicked off with a keynote address by Jim DeNomie, President of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, who shared a unique perspective on how native peoples interacted with our local ecosystem and how this knowledge can inform our choices in the future.

Jim Denomie is a born storyteller.  In addition to his work at the Mitchell Museum to promote and share a deeper understanding of Native American peoples, he has hosted the acclaimed radio show Voices from the Circle for over a decade, providing a center for learning about and connecting with Native American culture throughout the Great Lakes region.  He has also been a leader in organizing the Indian Summer Festival since its inception in 1985.  Attracting 50-60,000 people to Milwaukee each year, it is the largest Native American cultural festival in the country.

2012 YES Workshops

The Lessons from the Prairie workshops provided hands-on experiences exploring a variety of different perspectives including habitat restoration, art, and the sometimes surprising uses of prairie plants (ethnobotany).

• Perception & Deception: Color Theory on the Prairie
  Study the camouflage strategies of prairie dwellers and explore the connections between visual perception and survival in this workshop led by Anne Hayden Stevens, an artist and Coordinator of the Creative Studies program at the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. Using pattern, color and light, students will produce an abstract painting that will disappear into the surrounding landscape. This integrated art and science activity asks students to hypothesize and design the most effective camouflage they can.
  

• Seed to Table Cooking Demonstration
  Amy Cox of subURBAN homestead will prepare a simple recipe with healthy, fresh, local ingredients and demonstrate it to the group. During the demonstration, Amy will educate the students about a variety of food-related wellness subjects, including the importance of mineral rich soil and the history of our Illinois tallgrass prairie. The students will get to taste what is made and ask questions.
  

• Prairie Restoration: A Seed of an Action
  A plant seed is where restoration all starts in a prairie. Each seed contain the DNA that codes it to a very specific place on earth. Learn about a project to save seeds from around the world and then collect seeds at Ryerson with naturalist Mark Hurley and seed nursery coordinator Kelly Schultz, both of the Lake County Forest Preserves. Collected seeds will be used in restoring prairies in Lake County.
  

• Prairie as an Ecosystem
  Prairies ecosystems are very harsh environments where plants and animals have developed special adaptations to survive. Explore the adaptations and learn about the prairie’s place in Illinois history with Lake County Forest Preserves environmental educator, Melissa Alderson.

FRW works in partnership with the Lake County Forest Preserves to host YES.

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In 2011, FRW presented GREEN DESIGN as our YES theme.  Our keynote speaker was architect and designer Richard Wilson, Director of the City Design Practice of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP. Richard works with public and private sector clients around the world to envision, master plan and build regions, cities, urban districts and neighborhoods. He explained that there is not only a great need to design buildings and cities to exist in harmony with nature, but also a great opportunity as the private and public sectors are coming to understand the benefits of environmentally conscious design. He made a compelling case that green design is not only an exciting and important field for young people to consider, but a personally rewarding one as well. Many of the designs Richard shared were beautiful as well as practical, including the Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, China, a skyscraper with wind-tunnels built into its structure to generate electricity.

After the keynote address, students broke into groups of 20-25 to meet and work with like-minded peers from other schools as they cycled through four interactive workshops. The workshops included: Green Urban Design, led by Christina Bader of Farr Associates; 3D Tetris: Becoming a Piece of the Puzzle, led by artist and School of the Art Institute Instructor Meaghan Burritt; Communicating Choices, led by Álvaro Amat, Exhibition Design Director at the Field Museum; and Habitat Restoration, with forest preserve naturalist Mark Hurley.

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