November’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on Melissa Sellon from Bryan Community School. Sellon has been at Bryan as a counselor for four years and picked up the role of Sustainability Champion two years ago. Alongside this role, Sellon also serves as the school’s Native American Success Coach and works to find ways to incorporate Native American ideas into sustainability initiatives.
I'm a huge advocate for anything that is helpful to Mother Nature. I'm the Native American Success Coach, and I have some Native background myself, and so climate and nature and Earth are huge values of mine, and so [being the Sustainability Champion] is a way that I felt like I could connect to those things at my job, and also help kids connect those things while we're all together.”
Last year, Sellon worked to make sustainability more visible and accessible.
Sellon finds that her favorite part of building on sustainable initiatives is planning and getting others involved. Collaborating with other people and having the space and ability to be creative is a driving force behind Sellon’s efforts. She highlights the importance of using community and diversity as a benefit to finding creative ways to build sustainability.
Beyond these efforts, Sellon is currently working on creating a garden at Bryan that centers around the Native American Medicine Wheel. This garden–medicine garden–is in the shape of a circle divided into four meaningful quadrants. She also elaborates that the plants happen to be pollinator-friendly and native to Nebraska, adding to their sustainability benefits.
“We grow things that are both native here, but also things that would have been traditionally used in Native American medicine, and it just so happens that all of those things are also pollinating plants. Most of them are native to Nebraska, and so in that way, those two things become married.”
She explains that in Native American culture, medicine is viewed as something that is of the Earth. She thinks that the medicine wheel garden will both serve as a teaching tool and also provide a focus on sustainability and the use of natural resources. She hopes that a garden and a focus on sustainability could really help “staff and students understand that we can use our resources in a way that is smart and use the land and the resources that we already have.”
I think any time where a student feels no longer trapped within the walls of a building, and a student feels like they are more grounded and connected to their community and to a place that they go to every day. That is what keeps kids in schools. That is what keeps families functioning. That is the basis for a lot of health.”
Sellon highlights that sustainable practices provide mental health benefits for students. This is especially important in the current age of digital consumerism, she explains.
“A lot of our students have really lost touch with the physical world around them. They are constantly inundated with images on their phone or things that are not really even in their present everyday life. And so, really bringing them back to the mindfulness of okay, you’re in the here and now. Let’s take a minute to look around ourselves and actually be present.”
Sellon believes that a large part of building mindfulness is connection with nature. She cites how mental and physical health are often intertwined, and by encouraging students to be outside and interact with the environment is a major step towards benefiting all areas of health. Beyond this, she emphasizes how being in touch with the environment also helps build communities and keep students engaged in learning.
Her biggest piece of advice for someone wanting to start collaborating with others on sustainability is “finding one other thing that you’re passionate about that somebody else can get behind.” For her, it was Native Club, but for others it could encompass a variety of topics and interests. She continues, “any time that you can connect a community goal with what you’re doing. I think that there can be a lot of movement there.”
LPS Sustainability is so proud of the work that Sellon has done to promote sustainability and environmental connections at Bryan. We are so excited to see what she and her students accomplish in the years to come!