(Washington, DC) A new book by a group of talented Anacostia High School seniors, “From Anacostia with Love: An Environmental Journey,” brings together essays, poems and photographs reflecting the students’ experiences exploring nature and historic sites across the region.
The collection was created by 12 student authors who documented their observations and personal reflections after traveling to parks, forests, farms, rivers and other landscapes throughout the Washington area.
Students, educators and community partners gathered at Anacostia High School in March to celebrate the book’s release. The event was coordinated by Xavier Brown, Deputy Director of DAWN, and Nature-Wise Founder and Lead Instructor Caroline Brewer. Students read from selected works in the book.
Download a copy of the book here.
A group poem from the book follows:
Sensing the Anacostia Courtyard
Out the door of our air-conditioned school
The sky is wide and pearly blue
I touch the rail, still cool and black
Taste the hot wind as it swarms my face
See drops of water hugging blades of grass
Green bushes and trees dominate the center and sides of the courtyard
Competing for space
I notice red brick walls stretching high
Framing leaves that kiss the sky
I’m feeling the heat as if there were a thousand suns
And tiny rocks under my feet
– Excerpt of group poem by Anacostia High School students
“From Anacostia with Love” is the product of partnerships between the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) and its Developing America’s Workforce Nucleus (DAWN) Initiative, DC Public Schools (DCPS) and Nature-Wise Founder Caroline Brewer, with additional funding support from Pepco.
About what the Anacostia High School students saw
with their own eyes,
and filtered through their lived experiences.
This book is about voice.
About what came from the students’ mouths
–rhythmically, poetically, chronologically, with vulnerability —
about what they observed, reflected on,
and processed alone and in community with one another.
And in the seeing and speaking,
they have given us a book to cherish
— a book of poems, essays, reports, and images
that reveals what they felt, emotionally,
what they touched physically,
what they tasted, and what they heard.
And we owe them our deepest appreciation,
because what they have given us is profound!
The book is about journeys,
each of us separately, and all of us together
liberating ourselves, flying, like the birds, free,
dismantling the shackles of fear,
overcoming our insecurities,
touching truth and becoming one with it.
This book is about partnerships.
Many thanks to Conservation Nation
for sponsoring my Nature-Wise program with
the students, to Xavier Brown for
inviting me in to host the literacy
and the environment training,
to Patrick Gusman, UDC, the
Department of the Interior and
NPS for leading the establishment
of this summer internship program
and enthusiastically supporting our efforts
to engage the students as thinkers, readers, writers,
and critical observers of their relationship to nature
and in how to become even better advocates
for sustainability.