Baltimore City Teen Has Special Earth Day

BALTIMORE (WJZ) - This is an Earth Day a Baltimore City teen will remember for the rest of his life.

As Mike Schuh reports, the City College junior's passion for the environment led him to a national stage.

The president came to a tree planting--not because they need an extra worker, but because a president will focus attention on the work being done. In this case, teens were from the Student Conservation Association.

"I was paired up with him. Out of six students, I was paired up with the president," said Chris Jackson, a 17-year-old junior at City College. "I was working for the Student Conservation Association. It's an environmental association."

He was nervous before Obama arrived, but the president put him at ease.

"And the first thing, I'll never forget it is he said my name," Jackson said. "And I walked down to him and I was the first to meet him out of everybody and I shook his hand."

Jackson was relaxed enough to pitch the president about his eyes for environmental conservation.

"I was trying to pitch these ideas about green cities projects in every major city across America," he said. "The work I put into it was just my passion. Youth today don't have enough passion for something. Students have to know what their passion is and go about doing it. Live for the moment and try to make change and make that change accessible to others."

Jackson says that meeting the president has caused him to think about running for class officer, saying he can influence more people about the environment if he were to be a class leader.
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