Ray LaVoie Photography
Local science teacher. National Geographic educator. Wildlife tracker. Beekeeper. Sandy Reed has kept herself busy over the years, gearing her professional and personal life toward benefiting the environment.
Reed has been an educator since 1986, spending the last 20 years at New Albany Middle School, teaching students science and social studies and providing them insight on the natural world they inhabit.
Growing Up Green
Reed grew up and attended high school in Westerville, where, she says, her passion for environmentalism began. She credits her science teachers for planting that seed.
Reed went on to become an educator herself after graduating from The Ohio State University in 1986. She began her career at Sells Middle School in Dublin and went on to teach at a private Montessori school. Shortly after she obtained her master’s degree from Ashland University, she began teaching in New Albany-Plain Local Schools and working in the Easton E3 Learning Lab, sharing her knowledge of the environment with her students.
“If you’re teaching students at all, and you’re not passionate about it, you shouldn’t be teaching,” Reed says. “That’s how they learn. And I do love this planet. And I do love the environment. If we don’t have an understanding of how we affect the planet, we are not going to be able to preserve a planet, or the other species. I don't know really anything more important than that.”
Reed has also developed several environmentally focused projects in her personal life, which she has woven into her professional life.
“A lot of people like to keep their work separate from the rest of their life, and I’ve never been good at that,” Reed says. “My work is my life, my hobbies are my life and my family is my life. And it all is one big, messy, wonderful journey.”
Environmental Endeavors
In conjunction with other local teachers, Reed founded the Earth Defenders Group, a networking system that enables educators and other individuals making strides to better the environment to connect with one another and share resources.
“We’ve talked to local people in in New Albany, including local businesses who have native plants, and they’re putting that out there to farm markets,” she says. “We just keep expanding trying to connect everybody and support each other.”
In addition to Earth Defenders, Reed is a certified wildlife tracker in North America and South Africa, which, she says, has enabled her to combine all of her outdoors efforts into one.
The essence of wildlife tracking is to digitally collect data on animals around the world, and users may be tested on their knowledge of sign tracking and trailing an animal. Reed uses the network CyberTracker, which monitors environmental species, and travels all around the country and world, visiting South Africa every summer to develop her tracking skills and running the certification process in Ohio.
“There is no better way to understand our relationship with the environment in our backyard, or our global environment, than through tracking,” Reed says. “We can’t protect what we don’t know. We will lose more and more species in our backyard, unless we have ways to identify it.”
Reed integrated that hobby into a project for her students. She developed the STEM Expeditions Field Studies program, through which students can travel around the world to earn course credits. Reed took several student groups to South Africa to complete the certification test.
“After two weeks in the bush, (they are) identifying a rhino track, identifying mongoose tracks, identifying the difference between an elephant and a giraffe and an impala,” Reed says. “By the time they get done with that, they get the whole big picture, the predator-prey relationships that are going on and human impact on a species.”
Over her career, Reed has also become a National Geographic Certified Educator and earned her Federal Aviation Administration pilot’s license, which she is using to create a drone curriculum for the school district.
Changing the World
While Reed’s work has taken her around the world, she still finds it important to localize environmental issues.
“New Albany is where most of my adult life took place, and I don’t think it’s over-romantic to say that just because out west has big animals, it’s not important in Ohio, too,” Reed says. “The students that are going to school in New Albany … that education that they’re getting here is … as important as any anywhere else.”
Even in her own home, Reed takes measures to preserve and protect the environment and the species that inhabit it.
She keeps bees in a pollination area to assist in their pollinating and preservation, and brings hives (sans the bees) to her classrooms, where she educates her students on the life cycles of bees and their impact on daily produce.
“I do believe you need to be environmentally active and everything counts,” Reed says. “Beekeeping is one thing I do for that reason. I feel it makes a difference, my little piece in the world.”
Reed lives on three and a half acres, which she has transformed into a space for environmental upkeep. One of her acres is a native prairie that houses all native plants in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her house is surrounded by a natural environment, featuring plants such as honeysuckle and garlic mustard.
“I’m educating my neighbors, just trying to make a difference where I live,” Reed says. “And that’s ongoing. That’s what we all need to do, because we could change the world.”
To protect the environment and ensure it thrives, Reed says, it is imperative that each individual recognize their part in the world and what they can contribute to the overall betterment of the planet.
“The environment is not separate from people; we are part of the environment,” Reed says. “My hope is that we increase our awareness and we reestablish our personal connection to the earth so that we may be healthier, and the earth can be healthy and sustainable as well.”
Lauren Serge is a contributing writer at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenecolumbus.com
