From Camper to Headliner: Teen Speaks at Central Park Climate Concert

The crowd at Central Park’s SummerStage had come to see Young the Giant and St. Lucia perform. By the time 16-year-old Ian McKinney walked off stage, they were chanting his name.

McKinney, a LaGuardia High School junior from Marine Park, Brooklyn, was the featured youth speaker at Music for Action, a free Climate Week NYC concert on Sept. 22, presented jointly by City Parks Foundation (CPF) and LymeLnk, a Nonprofit organization that combats Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

“Climate change is real, people! And it’s hitting the places we love most. Our beaches, our parks, even our own backyards are at risk,” McKinney said in his remarks to a crowd of close to 3000, according to a representative from CPF. “I’m here because I’ve seen what happens when young people get the tools to understand our environment. It changes everything. Just like how City Parks Foundation changed me.”

In middle school, McKinney was a Coastal Classroom camper; now he’s a paid intern. CPF’s Coastal Classroom program transforms NYC’s waterways and coasts into a site of experiential education for local middle schoolers. The program helps about 600 students each year gain a deeper understanding of marine ecology, urban waterfront restoration, and environmental preservation, through hands-on learning and team building activities.

“Kids are learning about the ecosystems of the near shore and the shoreline environment, and they’re also learning how to fish. They’re learning how to row. They’re learning how to advocate for the environment in these neighborhoods, especially regarding shoreline resiliency,” said Chrissy Word, Director of Education for City Parks Foundation.

“The students today didn’t come through [Hurricane] Sandy,” Word said. “But nonetheless, they’re learning about the vulnerability of our coastlines and how we can advocate for them.”

Rowing is central to Coastal Classroom’s programming, Word said. It builds teamwork, but it also puts students on the water in a city many of them have only seen from the shore. “We have a city of water,” she said. “There is a vast maritime industry here that many of the youth that we work with have no access to.”

The goal, she said, is for students to see the ships and businesses “coming and going” all around them as “a vast world with lots of job opportunities.” She continued: “We are trying to provide access to the maritime industry of New York City.”

For McKinney, the program started with a net. As a camper, seining (dragging a net through the shallows to see what comes up) was his favorite station. Now he runs it. “You don’t realize what animals are in the water until you’re actually in the water,” McKinney said. When most people think of sea horses and puffer fish, he said, they picture somewhere tropical, like the Caribbean. “But what if I told you... I’ve fished up four puffer fish in Coney Island?” he said, his eyes alight. “You wouldn’t believe me, but it’s there...these hidden gems.”

Interns are expected to act as educators, not just supervisors, McKinney said. At his station, the creatures pulled into the net go into containers set up to mimic their natural habitat, so that the kids can observe them before they’re released. That’s when he quizzes them:

Why do you think the Atlantic silversides have the silver on the side of their bodies?

Why does the crab raise its claws when something gets close?

Why are the flounder and fluke mirror images, flat with eyes on only one side?

His curiosity is infectious. Word said choosing McKinney to speak at the event was easy. “Ian is just such a joyful human being,” she said. “He’s a kid that really observes things... and he loves the kids.”

Word, who has been with City Parks Foundation for more than twelve years, oversees CityParks Learn, a network of environmental education programs that reach about 5,000 students each year. In addition to Coastal Classroom, they include Seeds to Trees, a parks ecology program running in public schools since the mid-1990s; Learning Gardens, where teens grow food in urban community gardens and can move into paid internships; and Eco-Innovators, a new high school advocacy program culminating in a spring pitch event called “Dolphin Tank.” This summer, CPF employed close to 80 high school paid interns, according to Word. Last summer, McKinney was one such intern, working for Coastal Classroom on a near full-time schedule. This fall, he’ll continue working part-time for Coastal Classroom at Kaiser Park in Coney Island.

The programs are funded through a mix of private foundations, including the Pinkerton Foundation, and public money from New York State and the City Council. CPF also runs SummerStage itself – which just celebrated its 40th season. Across 330 parks, recreation centers and schools, City Parks Foundation reaches nearly 300,000 people a year.

McKinney says he has wanted to study marine biology since he was about five. For him, climate change is a question of speed. “Survival of the fittest is an important thing, but we’re changing the world so fast that there’s no actual room for things to adapt fast enough,” he said. “If you look at civilization 50 years ago versus today, it’s like night and day.”

Speaking to a crowd that size might rattle most teenagers (or even adults). But McKinney, a vocalist at LaGuardia, has had about a decade of classical voice training and has even sung with a chorus at Carnegie Hall. He admitted what he calls his “corporate-issued five minutes of anxiety” beforehand. “But then I just think: I got this.” During his speech, he never looked at his notes.

For McKinney, climate change isn’t just melting ice caps. It’s what rising water could mean for the creatures that live between the tides, and in our own city. For piping plovers that nest on city beaches and feed along the waterline. Taking care of the environment, he said, means paying attention to “the little things, the little guys.”

McKinney has no plans to stop performing; but his dream is to pursue marine biology. He wants to “be the guy that goes into the submarine” into the deep ocean, “where there’s no light and everything looks straight out of a horror movie.”

Does that scare him? “A little bit,” he admitted. “But someone has to do it.”