In the 2021-2022 school year, Perry received a new teacher for AP Environmental Science, Jill Kenyon. Kenyon transferred from Hamilton High School with high hopes when she heard of the opportunity to teach this class. 

In college, Kenyon majored in Conservative Biology which set a path for many adventures ahead of her. Her drive to pursue this major was formed by her high school environmental science class, where she was able to visit Hawaii and learn about the problems the state faces with the conservation of the land. After this experience, Kenyon expresses, “I just thought I would love to study this.” 

From then on, most of Kenyon’s life has been devoted to the environment. Her degree was in wildlife management which mainly focused on the outdoors and animals. When in college she volunteered for Liberty Wildlife, an organization that focused on the importance of the safe-keeping of wildlife,  where she would assist with wildlife rehabilitation. This allowed her to work with injured animals, release animals, and then could educate others on local wildlife. She volunteered in this organization for ten years then stopped when she had her first child. 

When she graduated college she worked at the zoo for a year. Then was offered the opportunity to be a grad student by her professor from her undergraduate program. This opened up many opportunities for her as his research assistant.

While in graduate school she majored in outdoor recreation. She was in graduate school for two years, where she expressed that “I got paid to go to the best places in the country,” said Kenyon.

During this time she kept very busy. She did research in Yosemite National Park in California. She did lots of work with the National Park Service. One of her favorite jobs was during the summer in Arizona, where she had to walk through streams and remove any invasive fish from the water in order to keep a steady flow in the ecosystem. She also spent 6 weeks living in a rainforest in Ecuador while studying abroad. “Not only did we get to learn about the local culture, but we also got to learn all about the different types of rainforest,” said Kenyon. 

After her many adventures, Kenyon returned to school to get her degree in education. Her goal was to spread her love for the environment to those of younger generations.

“Hopefully inspire other people to look at the environment in a different way,” said Kenyon. 

When the opportunity to teach APES at Perry came along, Kenyon was all in. Her main goal is to spread the message about this class and grow the program. 

“I think it’s a nice AP science for kids who may be a little more timid to jump into the AP science realm,” Kenyon said. 

She believes that this class is easily applied to the real world but is not overbearing to students. Her hope with the upcoming years is to spread the word of AP Environmental Science and add classes to her schedule.