reeves was a planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 at duke university in 2023 and a storyfest 2024 grand prize winner for her comic, “your friendly neighborhood spider-party: community scientists use spider webs to monitor air pollution.” she traveled to the galápagos islands with planet forward and lindblad expeditions in july 2024. in the galápagos, she reported on the iguanas from above project, which uses drone research to inform conservation efforts for marine iguanas. reeves now works as the assistant director of policy and programs at the rachel carson council. 

sano was a planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 in 2021 and a senior correspondent in 2022, in addition to being a multiple-time storyfest finalist. a recent graduate of new york university’s steinhardt school of culture, education, and human development with an m.a. in food studies, he currently works as the organic program associate at beyond pesticides and has written extensively about agriculture and food systems.

the pair met when they were both recipients of the udall scholarship, which seeks to identify future leaders in environmental, tribal public policy, and healthcare fields. we sat down with joy and max to discuss their work, their love story, and the role planet forward has played in their lives and careers.

q: what is it that got both of you into the world of both environmental work and environmental storytelling?

joy: i always kind of knew it was going to be an environmental focus for me. like many folks, my parents are environmentalists; my dad worked in the epa when he was my age, and in various organizations in d.c., so i grew up with those values. that, combined with the cartooning upbringing, lent itself very naturally to climate storytelling and environmental storytelling. the udall scholarship in undergrad, which is how we met, was a big catalyst in my decision to commit to the field. 

max: she’s much more succinct than i am probably going to be. i did not grow up with that direct connection to environmental values or issues. i grew up in new york city, and i lived in lower manhattan when hurricane sandy hit. it was a very big eye-opening moment, seeing how even a few blocks away from wall street and these huge, powerful institutions, nothing protects you from the climate crisis.

and so, as a 12-year-old at the time, also going to a middle school dubbed the “green school” because it had solar panels on the roof and taught about sustainability, it seemed like such a bizarre disconnect with my middle school trying to be this representation of the future, but then also the climate crisis undermining that.

i always liked to write and had an interest in following political issues; i was an intern at a local newspaper in high school, did different types of writing when i was a model united nations kid in high school, and carried on doing reporting in college. i knew i wanted to commit to storytelling, but i was being pulled in a lot of different directions, and i think getting involved in environmental research and learning how to communicate that to implement and change policy, is where i found a natural synergy of, “oh, i can actually use storytelling and journalism to fulfill an advocacy role.”

q: so y’all are engaged, and it’s kind of a planet forward love story. what is the story of how y’all came together? 

m: we met because we both were nominated as undergrads for the udall scholarship, and they help support young people and other professionals at the intersection of environmental policy, healthcare policy, and indigenous and native american affairs policy, and so we met through the undergraduate program.

it was supposed to be in person in tucson, arizona, for a three-day conference, and the intended outcome of the conference is to bring people together as college sophomores and juniors to begin to build those relationships and connections as we figure out what we want to do. but because of covid, it was virtual, so i was very disappointed. it was a year out from when the pandemic began, so i think a lot of us were looking forward to building those relationships and connections.

little did i know that we would be put in one of the zoom breakout rooms to discuss media and storytelling, and joy talked about her climate cartoons. at the time, i was part of the executive board for the greenzine, a project out of my student environmental club, and i thought it’d be very cool to incorporate the work that she was doing. and because i hadn’t seen it before, it really was astounding to me, and i used that as an opportunity to reach out to joy — through zoom dm. i learned very quickly how similar we were, and we were able to talk online for a year, actually, before we met in person. we didn’t meet until maybe just under a year later when she was visiting new york, and we just hit it off.

j: there is some truth to the “planet forward love story” because he was in new york, i was in north carolina, and we did not get to see each other very often. we were broke grad students. it was hard to get the plane ticket, get the train ticket, whatever it was — it was always difficult. so we ended up often applying to the same conferences and letting those conference experiences be a convenient coincidence to also spend time together.

but planet forward was different. i could tell max was bringing me into his world and an organization he really connected with and cared about. i came to the planet forward summit as a spectator, tagging along with max, and by the end of it, i had gone to all these workshops, talked to all these people, and felt like a part of planet forward. i met a bunch of the correspondents, and i actually pulled max aside and was like, “am i stepping on your toes? can i share this with you, or do you want this to be a max thing?” and he very kindly was like, “no, you can totally apply to be a correspondent.”

so our planet forward summit that we went to together was in 2023, and we started to picture ourselves living in d.c. for the first time. we were both here, we really loved the city, and then he proposed to me in may, so a month after the planet forward summit.

q: both of y’all were planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 s and storyfest finalists — y’all did all the really cool planet forward stuff. how do you think planet forward helped prepare you for the careers you’re working in now?

m: in the world of advocacy, you need to know how to leverage the power that journalists and journalism platforms have to help push forward new ideas that perhaps the general public hadn’t been thinking about. part of what i have been doing is trying to figure out how we can leverage letters to the editor and op-eds to help push forward some of the objectives and the policy work that we want to do.

but also just learning how to distinguish between different characters and different actors and how to step into different shoes of different types of organizations, individuals, and entities — i feel like that’s something that planet forward was really helpful with for me. knowing your audience when you’re trying to advocate for a certain type of policy solution is super important because how you talk with a farmer might be very different from how you talk with a public health professional or with a pesticide spraying company.

i think knowing how to take a step back and remove yourself from agendas that you agree with and agendas that you disagree with, and learning how to frame your solution in different ways is super powerful. that was something that i think planet forward was really helpful with.

j: i second all that, and i think the storytelling background has helped me in everything from meetings with senators to internal zoom meetings on a boring tuesday where storytelling might just brighten up the team’s day. so i think working in advocacy, and my work in advocacy, is grounded in the foundation of factual storytelling and journalistic integrity that i learned through planet forward.

i felt like i was able to just accelerate to the next level, because i had some comfort finding stories, but i had no idea how to even operate a digital camera until i went to the galápagos, but i’m almost certain i’m going to keep pursuing photography for advocacy purposes, and that’s really exciting.

m: a big part of what i do as well is public comments, like testifying for and against bills. the only way you can really do that effectively is by crafting stories and making sure that you’re amplifying people’s lived experiences, and how they would be impacted by a new rule that the epa is coming out with, or the reversal or the improvement of a certain rule that you know makes people’s eyes glaze over if you read it. but if you are able to come up with a template that is modifiable for members of your organization, it can be a super powerful tool for advocacy in that way too.

q: anything else y’all would like to share with the world of planet forward?

m: being vulnerable is scary, whether it’s in your professional life or in your personal life, and that was definitely something that i think i had to consider when reaching out to joy because i knew that our relationship was going to blend both worlds, but that’s part of why i knew that i wanted to pursue our relationship.

it was the perfect blend of having these shared professional and personal values. so i think that ties into advocacy and journalism work too, because learning how to be vulnerable and connect with your interviewees, and being able to just connect on a human level is very underrated and under-discussed. part of being a journalist is learning to build that trust — if you can’t build relationships, it’s sort of a non-starter.

j: there is a certain beauty to starting a romantic relationship with someone who shares your values, fundamentally. and all jokes and memes about dating within the environmental movement aside, i think at the end of the day, when you’re sitting on the couch and you’re watching frustrating climate news or debates, and you have someone sitting next to you who’s on the exact same page as you and is being vulnerable and sharing those values, i would choose that person 1,000 times over. and that’s why, that’s why i chose max.

as their lunch period came to an end, 15 students made their way into the science classroom at the corner of the fourth floor, grabbing large white trays from the lab tables in the back, each holding a sharpie, a ruler, a poster board, a cardboard cutter, and a blueprint.

amy cataldo’s seventh-grade class at the edmund burke school in washington d.c.’s ward 3 is building tiny houses. well, models of tiny houses.

cataldo gave each group a hypothetical $15,000 budget, a location in the u.s., a family to house, and exactly 240 square feet to work with, with just one catch: it had to be fully sustainable and able to adapt to the climate challenges of their specific area. 

“right now we are working on building houses that are, like, small houses, in really climate active places,” said 12 – “almost 13” – year-old sana. “and the challenge is to make our house as sustainable as possible.”

sana’s group excitedly finished the blueprint for their tiny home in maui, hawai’i, featuring an outdoor pineapple garden, a compostable toilet, a solar paneled roof, and recycled driftwood floors. and the group has an extra advantage because they can ride their bikes everywhere, sana happily explained – after all, their house is less than a quarter of a mile away from the maui city center, she boasted.

4,762 miles east of maui, e.c.’s group is working to build a tiny home that will be resilient to the over 100 inches of snow that falls on syracuse, new york each year. how? solar panels, a heating system, a $76 couch from amazon, and a barn for the backyard.

“we found a barn for $466,” his classmate said. “we’re not sure if that’s a scam.”

“it doesn’t matter,” e.c. interjected.

another group worked on a house built from a shipping container, designed to withstand the unpredictable weather of southern california, and the last group began assembling the walls of their tiny house as two of its members debated whether a one foot-wide door would be large enough. they decided it probably would be.

“across the u.s., they’re tackling different climate issues,” cataldo said. “they’re realizing what their ‘client’ is going to need to make it functional.”

as she explained, the tiny house project is just one small part of a science curriculum built around climate justice. throughout their seventh-grade year, students at burke, in all of their classes, learn about the intersections of sustainability and social justice, as well as themselves and the worlds around them.

a family affair

at the front of her classroom, which she helped architects design when the school decided to expand and construct an additional building in 2003, cataldo sits at a desk, ipad in hand, calling students to the front to review a test from the week before. a trio of tattoos is visible on her forearms, owing to the rolled up red flannel she has donned for the day. she occasionally brushes her short hair out of her eyes, and her sandals remain firmly planted to the floor beneath her.

she has been teaching science at burke for 22 years and comes from a long line of educators: her mother, father, two siblings, in-laws, and a healthy portion of her cousins all work in education. both of her children also attended burke, one of them a recent graduate and the other a current high school senior.

the “family affair” at burke has also become an important part of her love for teaching at the private school in d.c.’s van ness neighborhood. as she explained, being with students from the moment they start their first day of sixth grade to their graduations at the end of their senior years provides her with an unmatchable opportunity to watch them grow from children to adults.

“truly, it’s one of my favorite things ever,” cataldo said.

the edmund burke school opened its doors in 1968 to 17 students. in the 55 years since then, the school has become home to 315 students, ranging in age from 11 to 18 years old (or 6th grade through 12th grade). since its founding, burke has placed heavy emphasis on a progressive education: classes are small, teachers and students are all on a first name basis, and students are given a significant amount of independence, both in their studies and in their school days. 

as part of the school’s commitment to equity and social justice-oriented education, each grade level spends the year learning through the lens of a particular social justice issue: seventh-graders focus on the climate; eighth-graders focus on civil rights; sophomores focus on a “soapbox project,” where students do a deep dive into a certain issue of their choosing; and seniors are encouraged to bring all of the themes they learn about together with a capstone project.

and, as cataldo explained, the justice-oriented curriculum at burke has led many students to careers in social justice-related fields.

“a lot of our kids go on to do nonprofit work and things of that nature,” she said. “it’s pretty amazing.”

hands-on education

a burke education is also highlighted by frequent field trips related to the topics students are studying, with some going as far as new york, pennsylvania, and alabama. the trips are designed to reinforce the themes students learn about, and are almost always paid for entirely by the school. this year, the seventh graders at burke are taking a trip to philadelphia as part of a year-long comparative project between sustainability practices in pennsylvania’s largest city and those in d.c.

this approach, providing students with opportunities to understand how climate change affects them at home and seeing which sustainability practices work and don’t work, is a key element of effective climate education, according to university of florida researcher martha c. monroe.

a study conducted by a team of researchers led by monroe found that students resonated the most with climate education frameworks that: were built around their own personal experiences; encouraged students to engage with one another through discussion and debate; utilized models, visuals, data collection and analysis; and created a space where students were able to freely ask questions, promoting a system of lasting education.

d.c.-area high school science teacher daniela munoz couldn’t agree more.

“given the urgency of the issue, i do think that it is a disservice to approach it in a way that doesn’t really drive that critical thinking piece,” munoz said. “we don’t tell our students what to think, but once they analyze the data…it’s a very innate human reaction to think ‘okay, so what are we going to do about this?’”

costly endeavors

in cataldo’s seventh-grade class at burke, that data driven approach is already one that students have fully embraced. as they completed the blueprints for their tiny houses, they continuously raised questions about sea levels, precipitation rates, and constantly rising average temperatures across the country.

but the students were also quickly realizing just how expensive it is to combat some of the world’s most pressing climate issues.

sana’s group had hoped to install energy-friendly roof tiles, but the recycled wood, locally-sourced wall paneling, and solar panels had all but dried up their $15,000 budget. if they wanted their sustainable roof, they would likely have to give up their sustainable energy supply. and if they gave up their sustainable energy supply, they would have to give up their fully electric kitchen.

sana was realizing just how difficult it could be to live a sustainable lifestyle, especially with limited resources.

“[it] makes it kind of hard to be sustainable if you don’t have access to as much money,” she said. “it was like $20,000 for a fully sustainable roof.”

while sana’s group eventually settled on going without the energy-efficient roof, their debate still acts as a sort of microcosm for one of the largest barriers to both sustainable life practices and effective climate education: access.

and robust, climate justice-centered educations, like the one at burke, are not available to every student. with a price tag approaching $50,000 per academic year, burke, like many private schools with similar approaches to education, may not be attainable to many families. and climate justice, like so many other urgent initiatives, is one that requires enormous amounts of funding.

but the edmund burke school is not unaware of the concerns that may come from its lofty cost of attendance. this year alone, burke allocated $2.3 million to financial aid, ultimately awarding an average of $20,000 in need-based scholarships to a third of its students. and the school hopes that, with a burke education, its students will continue to create change for those who need it most in their communities.

cataldo said that burke’s approach to education was a large reason she wanted to focus so heavily on teaching her students about climate change and its impacts on communities around the world.

“for us, it really is part of our mission. it’s really about getting kids to understand who they are,” she said. “it’s more than just climate, but for everyone to realize that we’re all different from one another, but we can learn so much from one another.”

as cataldo’s class loaded their blueprints back into their trays, searched for a couple loose sharpies, and began to gather their bookbags, she reminded them all about their field trip to ikea the next day to get some final supplies and inspirations for the furniture and decor in their tiny houses. she let them all know that their lunch would be paid for, and said they wouldn’t regret trying some swedish meatballs.

one student raised his hand and asked if he could bring some extra cash in case he wanted something from the store that the school wouldn’t be paying for.

cataldo responded quickly. she explained the importance of equity, telling the class that it was important to both her and the school that no student feels left out or left behind by their classmates, and this was one of the ways they could ensure that wouldn’t happen. he nodded in understanding, and a few of the students chimed in with their agreement. then the class period came to an end, and cataldo started gathering what she would need for her trip to spencerville to coach the middle school girls basketball team.

the science lab on the corner of the fourth floor would be empty for the rest of the day. the girls basketball team would win their game against spencerville adventist. 

and the tiny houses serve as a tiny reminder that climate justice begins in classes like amy cataldo’s.