Allie Campbell
HMS alumna Allie Campbell was in the first class to go through the Hollis Montessori elementary and adolescent programs. After completing 9th grade at HMS, she attended Hollis Brookline High School and graduated in 2017. She is now a junior at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, majoring in Environmental Studies with a concentration in environmental policy. Allie has worked as the Zero Waste intern for the Williams Environmental Center and is a member of the Williams Environmental Council. She was recently chosen to be the student representative for the college’s sustainability strategic planning working group. Last summer she worked on policy issues as an intern at ReVision Energy in Brentwood, NH.
Her college application essay, written in 2016 and shared here, captured how her Montessori education inspired her passion for the environment.
Boots squeaked and thudded. Rain pants rustled. Faces were barely visible beneath brightly colored raincoats. Inside the door, our line was straight, but as soon as we stepped outside we were wild. Recess had begun.
The cold, damp air kissed my face, and I dashed, slipping and sliding, across the soggy playground. Mud splashed and splattered across my yellow raincoat. My heels rubbed raw in my boots. My fingernails filled with dirt and sand and wet bits of bark. The wet chill quickly numbed my fingers and nose and despite my “waterproof” rain gear, I was soaked through. I didn’t care. The wetness was an added challenge, an extra bit of fun, a chance to show off my grit. I loved being outside, and no amount of rain could change that.
In all the years I attended Montessori school, not a day went by when I didn’t venture out of doors. Beaming sun or pelting rain, I was out in it. Recess instilled in me a deep love of the natural world and a passion for being outside.
As I grew older, that love became a driving force in my education and the outdoors became not just a place to play, but also a place to learn. The Earth was my classroom and lessons found me crouching over mushrooms, comparing leaf varieties, wading through tidepools. I debated the carbon-footprint of omnivorism, discussed the detriments of plastic, and wrote essays on toxic waste. I designed and built composters and vegetables beds, sold salad greens and squash I had grown from seed, and analyzed soil layers and the yellow-orange blight of the American Chestnut. I wondered at glacier-sculpted eskers and weaving webs of Mycorrhizal fungi, drew and labeled flowers and plants, and ran my fingers over the smooth ridges of trilobite fossils. Each experience gave context to the laws and concepts of science and the humanities, adding to my growing understanding of the complex and beautiful world around me.
In middle school, I began to realize my role in that world. The apple in my lunchbox became more than just a snack. How many gallons of water and pesticides and fertilizers went into producing that one fruit? How many hundreds of miles did it travel to my local Trader Joe’s and how many joules of fossil fuel energy were burned to bring it there? I saw my place in a global ecosystem, within which apples were just the beginning.
What began as deep appreciation grew into the desire to protect and give back, to become a force of change in this world I care about so much. It was the motivation behind creating an environmental club and a new recycling program at my high school. It inspired my collaboration with resource recovery experts and waste management officers, designing a plastic film recycling program for my town. It compelled me to become a blogger, writing to raise awareness and inspire others to make a difference too.
My recess adventures and out-of-doors lessons have formed the foundation of a deep desire to know and understand our planet, driving my hand into the air during lectures on Hardy Weinberg equations and population dynamics and inspiring research projects on the economics of food. The wild joy of slipping and sliding across a muddy playground lives on—calling me outside, chasing me up mountains, turning my smile to the sky regardless of the sun or rain it sends my way. The little girl in the yellow raincoat may have grown up, but she still loves being outside. And no amount of rain can change that.