What are your expectations for this class? In your own words, what is sustainability? How does sustainability (or ecological sense of place) relate to your chosen field of study? Can you identify any personal behaviors and/or attitudes that are unsustainable? This may not be readily apparent, but try to think outside the box!

My expectations for this class are to learn more about the environment, ways to better it and to obtain a better understanding of how we are destroying it unknowingly by our daily task. In my own words sustainability is the process of conserving and maintaining a balance in our environment so that every aspect of it escalates. Sustainability means choosing alternative ways of doing everyday task to lower the harm we put on the environment. It means to learn to use what we already have while at the same time learning how to use less of it.

            My major is pre-elementary education; being an educator plays a great role and extends a great advantage to inform others of sustainability. Therefore, sustainability relates to my chosen field of study because I can educate children; what better way to spread this information than started with a younger generation, to become more eco-friendly to the environment around them. I could teach them the importance of protecting our world and the dangers that follow if it is not properly attended.

            Personal behaviors and/or attitudes that are unsustainable are deforestation, littering, thinking we cannot help if we are the only one doing something to sustain the environment, not recycling, not caring about the environment, and smoking (contaminates the air and harms the environment because cigarettes sometimes start fires). I guess in so many ways our lifestyles are unsustainable because we have a demand for items that require much manufacture labor resulting in harmful gases and other substances to enter the environment. Actually almost everything we do is unsustainable. We leave lights on in rooms no one is in, leave electronics plugged in when they aren’t in use, drive vehicles which attribute to pollution, and there is constantly someone somewhere building homes or places of business. So if I were to put a percentage on the unsustainable to sustainable personal behaviors and/or attitudes, I would say it would be 80% unsustainable to 20% sustainable for some of us.