The Perfect Education Model for Our Times - Forest Schools

Charlotte's beautiful eagle, after storytelling in the woods

I seem to do at least one nifty thing every summer that I want to share with you here. I've told you about my nature daycamps and growing wheat with my students and my community's Fall Fair Young People's Agriculture division. Well, this year it's the Forest School Educator training program I attended last week. 

Forest School Canada's Maureen Power and Jon Cree from the UK's Forest School Association spent a week with us, pretty much all in the woods (on an urban university campus, so it doesn't have to be in the wilderness), including two rainy days in the middle of the week. 

The magic of the program came partly from the wonderful synergy of the 18 participants, partly from the lovely wooded site that was chosen for the training, partly because the instructors work (and play) and teach so well together, partly from the great food, and partly because I was so ready for this. 

Forest School is as close to our species' original education "model" as you can get. It's based on regular and repeated access to the same natural space, whether for half a day per week or every school day. Children and adults spend their time in "their" woods or other natural setting in every sort of weather, year round. 

The kids play (play is a child's learning work) and the role of their teachers is to supply "loose parts" like tools and art supplies, and to keep the children safe while observing their growth and development. 

All the things we were learning and developing

It's not the same as outdoor education or environmental education where there is a pre-determined learning goal. In Forest School, the "curriculum" is emergent, which is to say that the children choose what they want to do next and so that's what they'll learn next. The learning is experiential, inquiry-based, play-based and place-based. 

Making a mallet (woodcraft and safety)

It might be climbing a rock or a tree (they'll learn courage and strategy, gross motor skills and pride of accomplishment) or sitting quietly in their magic spot with a journal (where they'll develop self-regulation skills, the gift of contemplation, and perhaps their writing skills and artistic side). 

Our week of training was a rich, warm, powerful, loving and learningful experience.

Here's what I know, for sure, in the depth of my heart. If our training course was a taste of what we can create in our own educational settings, then it's what I want for my students ... and for all the
human children in the world!

(For a history of this movement, check out Forest and Nature School in Canada: A Head, Heart, Hands Approach to Outdoor Learning.)

Helping Children Make Friends with the Rest of Nature

I just wrapped up my Nature Daycamp for 6 to 12 year olds. (I know, I know, I'm the oldest daycamp leader in the world!) This is my fourth year, and each year I get more and more children signed up.

Last Monday, I was feeling rather dazed with the sheer number of kids. But by Tuesday afternoon, my assistant and I had worked out some strategies for getting their attention and getting all of them engaged at the same time.

And then the magic began. Following a daily sketching lesson, these kids all sat quietly during Magic Spot Time, then eagerly showed us their drawings. They "built a tree" and played in the woods. They listened for birds at the marsh and celebrated when the osprey flew overhead. They dipped their nets into the pond and shrieked with delight and fascination at what they found. They played at the beach, floating on logs. And then they harvested vegetables from the school garden and made hand salads ... some of them eating foods they'd never tried before. We visited a farm where they fed the chickens and held some chicks. And then we ended the week with a splash – in a pond!

One of my goals, always, is to help children make friends with the rest of Nature. I've been thinking lately that the environmental education movement's move (since the 1960s) away from "naming" has been at least partly misguided. After all, what's the first thing we do when we make new friends? We learn their names! This year, my daycampers learned the difference between Douglas firs and cedar trees, between sea urchins and sea cucumbers, between eagles and turkey vultures in flight.

Only once, as we were hiking up a mountain, did I hear the older boys talking about video games, and I quickly explained that that was the one thing we don't talk about at Nature Daycamp. They respected that. Several parents told me they'd signed their kids up for daycamp in order to get them away from their computers. And we heard lots of stories of excited kids getting home and sharing every detail of their day, then sleeping soundly at night.

So I had to laugh – and I did, right out loud (a bit of a gallows laugh) – when the very first thing my youngest daycamper, a sweet little girl of 5 and a half who had loved daycamp, said to her mother at the end of our swim on Friday afternoon was, "Mom, when we get home, can I play video games?"

113 Days - Maybe Adults Need Nature Daycamp

Day 5 and my Nature Daycamp is over. What a wonderful week!

I've just remembered that several years ago, I did weekend workshops for adults not unlike this past week's Nature Daycamp. The adults who attended raved about their experiences and their learning. I remember one highly educated woman admitting that she'd never understood how trees worked until that weekend.

Perhaps that's what the world needs: more adults getting dirty in the woods. New rule: Grown-ups should not be allowed to rule the world unless they have made Nature's Perfumes, played Tickly Prickly, gone on a Gallery Walk, and listened for Nature's Symphony.

I just made that rule up, but imagine the difference it could make! People who actually love and appreciate the rest of Nature would be making decisions based on the needs of "all their relations" ... not basing them simply on what will make more money.

THE CREE PROPHECY

Only after the Last Tree has been cut down,

Only after the Last River has been poisoned,

Only after the Last Fish has been caught,

Only then will you find that

Money Cannot Be Eaten.

114 Days - It's Easy for Kids to Be Green

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, while wearing my It's Not Easy Being Green Kermit T-shirt, I got to experience the look on a little girl's face when she held her first ever frog this morning. "That's the first REAL frog I've ever seen!" Mady exclaimed.

It's how we started our 4th day of Nature Daycamp, a day that was focused on visiting the "secret pond."

It was the tiniest little frog, quite cute, and very still at first - and then it leapt into my knapsack, to everyone's amusement.

After making "scopes" from juice cartons and getting our magnifying glasses and plastic jars ready, we finally hiked to the pond where the kids loved discovering more frogs, dragonfly nymphs, and a water boatman or two.

I think a lot of us forget that many, if not most, kids in North America these days don't get the chance to visit ponds and marshes and forests and wild beaches. We did those things as part of our everyday lives when we were children, but it's a special privilege nowadays.

I'm so happy to be providing that opportunity for a dozen little ones this week. I really think these children will grow up appreciating the gifts that Nature gives us.

What a concept, eh? Maybe all those CEOs of banks and fossil fuel corporations didn't get to go exploring when they were kids!

115 Days - Nature's Rainbow

Another wonderful day of Nature Daycamp (well, except that I sprained and broke my ankle middway through the day — but the kids were great, finding me walking sticks and carrying my bags).

The highlight for me today was our time at the edge of a marsh, one that is protected from the sea by a berm but which is brackish/salty on the beach side and freshwater on the far (land) side. The kids and I thought this was pretty nifty.

After our Magic Spot time (a quiet time for reflection and writing or drawing in small journals), I did an activity with them called Nature's Rainbow. I'd found great paint chip collections at the local hardware store, and gave each group one of these brochures.

The kids had never thought about how many shades, tints and hues of green there are in the world! Especially in a marsh in mid-summer. Wow. It was grand watching them point out all the different greens (and a few oranges, reds and yellows) to their partners.

If you are ever at risk of losing faith in humanity, take a young person outdoors, have some fun together, then focus their attention and watch them connect with their true Mother. It will be an absolute delight!

116 Days - "Everything Has a Heartbeat!"

With apologies to those who aren't really "into" kids, I'm pretty focused on them this week because of our Nature Daycamp.

Working with these wonderful youngsters is like a tonic after months and months of focus on the climate change emergency.

Today we visited the forest. We sat and talked with the birds, played Camouflage, did an activity called Hug a Tree (with uproarious laughter).

But my favourite activity was giving each pair a stethoscope to listen to the "heartbeat" of a tree. The best moment of the day was when Isabela came running back to tell me, after doing some experimenting on the moss and the rocks, that "everything has a heartbeat!"

Can you imagine a world where every human being, of every age, recognizes that the rest of Nature is living and breathing? We would treat everything as kin, just as the aboriginal peoples did.

And, I'm betting, we would remain childlike in our sense of awe and discovery in the world of our natural neighbours.

Tomorrow we're going to the marsh!

117 Days - Kids and Rain (Why Was I Worried?)

I awoke very early this morning to the sound of heavy rain on the roof. I felt sick to my stomach. Sure, we need the rain. It's been a hot, dry summer. But on the first day of Nature Daycamp? Why here? Why today?

Well, I needn't have worried one iota. Children love rain and they love getting wet (when their parents aren't telling them to stay dry). And they love the ocean, which is where we spent several hours today - in the rain.

I must remember to trust in children, to trust in the joy, excitement and fascination they still experience when face to face with the elements.

Tomorrow's Nature Daycamp will take us into the forest, face to face with trees and soil. I'm looking forward to it, rain or shine!

118 Days - Falling Prey and Losing Confidence

Tomorrow I will start a five-day Nature Daycamp for children aged 5 to 12. It's something I should be excited about. Yet I'm anxious. Why is that?

My whole professional career — until now — I have revelled in opportunities to introduce youngsters to the joys of the natural world. At university during my education studies in outdoor and experiential education, I focused on sensory awareness when all my classmates were either athletic (and focusing on physical pursuits in the outdoors) or science majors (focusing on biology and ecology).

I do not have a scientific mind. I have had to work very hard to understand the science of climate change, and I feel confident in my knowledge of the fundamentals. But somewhere along the way, I have lost confidence in my ability to pass on my love for the rest of Nature.

Is it because I feel I need to "know" all the science we'll meet up with in the woods and at the beach? Or is it because I'm nervous about wired kids getting easily bored by the speed of the natural world? Whatever it is, I feel I am casting my fate to the wind.

Perhaps, then, it is the angst from my life as a climate activist pervading my work with children — and I don't like it one bit.

So tonight, my compassionate climate action is to take care of myself, treat myself gingerly, and trust in the wisdom of my friends and neighbours of other species. And then to relax and have fun tomorrow!