Dear Springhouse community,
I am Jeret Phelps, I am a 19-year-old senior student, and I am very grateful to our community at Springhouse for many reasons. Since my first time at Springhouse, the community has provided me with a safe, open, and loving environment. This fruitful environment has helped me become more confident in my own abilities and has enabled me to dive deeper into my passions.
My first days at the school were spent in the printshop for a summer printing camp. During the camp, I was encouraged to explore different mediums of print by creating art I was passionate about. I think back to this time because it was the first project where I decided to focus my art on a cause that mattered to me: invasive species management to conserve native ecosystems. I would incorporate this newly blossoming interest into my final project for the camp—an invasive species poster to raise awareness about the invasive Tree Of Heaven. This early experience in the community convinced me to do an extra year of school so that I could get a fuller 2 year experience at Springhouse.
Later on in that year, as I became more familiar with Springhouse, I became more comfortable exploring parts of myself, including the leader in me. I take both pride and inspiration from the radical simplicity of my community’s message, the idea that all life deserves to be cultivated and cared for so that it can have the opportunity to thrive. So when I found out about an opportunity to be one of the three student representatives for my school at a learner-focused education conference in DC, I took it. At first it was scary to sit down and talk with groups of different people I had never met. But as conversations continued, I realized these were just other students with similar backgrounds and aspirations to my own. Listening to these different students share their thoughts helped me feel more comfortable sharing my own. It was an exciting experience, both for the learning and leadership opportunities it provided, but also for the time I got to spend with my fellow students. This time in DC made me much more confident to take on leadership roles, including the student leader role I was appointed to this year.
All of these experiences, my ecologically conscious art as well as my growing leadership skills, culminated this year into what I plan to be my final project as a high school student: an invasive species task force. I worked with my mentor, budgeting for supplies, and then got together with the students I was leading to explain the plan. We would go out during our work block each day, cut down invasive species, and treat their stumps with a dyed herbicide. Once we cleared the invasives, we would dig up the ground to plant seeds.
Being able to lead a group like this surprised me, not only because I got to see how fun and joyful this sort of work was for my community, but also because we quickly achieved more than I had ever expected. With the help of my group and a little mulch, we were able to plant the seeds for over 20 different native plant species, hopefully with more to come in spring. My experience at Springhouse with the taskforce as well as the events leading up to it have shown me just how valuable putting in the work to do what I’m afraid of can be. I hope to take on many more challenges in the future.
~ Jeret Phelps
Well done, Jeret!