by editor | Sep 15, 2025 | Adventure Learning, Conservation & Sustainability, Critical Thinking, Data Collection, Environmental Literacy, Experiential Learning, Forest Education, Homeschool, Inquiry, Outdoor education and Outdoor School, Place-based Education, Questioning strategies, STEM, Teaching Science
A Natural Fit: Homeschooling and the Establishment of a Research Forest
by Jess Lambright
For those open to an alternative educational path, a classroom with no walls or desks but instead trees, meadows, and streams, offers abundant opportunities for scientific exploration. My journey in outdoor education started by home-educating my own children, but soon expanded to include other students and families. Although making everyday a field day comes with certain challenges—such as very wet, cold winter days—it has also shown me how adaptable young people are, and how many spontaneous and fascinating learning opportunities present themselves when you commit to regular immersion in the natural world.
I have come to appreciate the vast range of possibilities in which students can acquire knowledge. While some homeschooling families follow packaged curriculum closely and monitor carefully to make sure their children meet state standards each year, others chose a less structured approach called unschooling, rooted in a deep trust for kids’ natural tendency and ability to learn. This philosophy can free a motivated young person to dive deeply into an ocean of learning powered by autonomy, inspiration, and infinite possibilities.
Connecting to place and stewardship of land
A multi-disciplinary unit study called My Tree and Me, where each student was connected with a specific tree which they measured (diameter, height, age) conducted secondary research about the species, wrote poetry, and created art with materials from the tree. One student decided to give his final poster presentation from the branches of the Cascara tree he had spent so many hours with.
The first outdoor program I hosted involved an established group of kids spending an entire day outdoors, once per week, for over four years. Week after week and year after year we returned to the same 40-acre woods from the first days of fall through the start of summer. It was common for our group to wander through the forest, without a destination or agenda, letting our innate curiosity lead the way. Wandering freely, with open eyes, allowed us to get in touch with what excited us and created opportunities for true discovery (Young et al., 2010, 56).
It filled me with satisfaction to watch the deep connection to place that developed over time in each of us. Monuments and landmarks, like a circle of giant old moss-covered stumps towards the southwest corner of the forest, acquired names and memories and provided comfort and familiarity when they were encountered. We would experience the wet meadow as a place that requires rubber boots to traverse in the wet months, a beautiful explosion of white flowers and soft grasses that dance in the wind in the summer, and a sea of delicate purple camas flowers in the spring. One year we returned to the same sit spots week after week, recording changes in our journals as spring brought all the growing things to life.
Students pause to examine a pile of feathers they discovered while exploring the woods on a rainy day. The group came up with a series of questions about what happened and brainstormed ideas about how they could investigate further to potentially find answers.
Spending time on a particular piece of land, through the seasons and years, inevitably leads to a sense of kinship and creates an urge to protect and enhance the natural environment. It’s been rewarding to teach students about which plants are non-native and potentially harmful to the local ecosystem, then see them step up as guardians of the land. When we wander through the woods, sometimes they spot a pocket of invasives and if we’re lucky enough to be carrying long-handled loppers, the team of weed warriors can quickly level a patch of Himalayan blackberry. In addition to studying and exploring, offering students an opportunity to actively participate in land management elevates their sense of purpose and deepens their connection to the natural world.
Full Family Learning
Homeschooling naturally leads to multiple ages and families all learning together. In the early days of our homeschool outdoor program the adults often observed activities and supported logistics. But over time it became clear that we truly were a mixed-age group of learners and explorers. Treating everyone as learners equally can have the effect of empowering young people. Sometimes kids master skills quickly. teaching what they’ve learned to adults. And sometimes the best exchange comes not from experts, who have a deep and longstanding understanding of a concept- but those who have recently experienced the gift of insight.
Mixed age learning is a mutually beneficial relationship fostering growth in multiple ways. Adults sometimes shelter in the security of topics they already understand and avoid venturing into areas less familiar. Conducting scientific inquiry in nature is ideal for having a high ceiling and a low floor: everyone knows something, and no one knows everything! Cultivating a growth mindset, by creating an atmosphere where mistakes are celebrated as learning opportunities, and where having a question is as valuable as having an answer (Boaler, 2015, 11), pairs beautifully with immersive study in nature.
A team of researchers determine the percent meadow knapweed present in a one-meter plot square by examining each of 100 smaller squares for the plant of interest.
Authentic Curriculum
Each day that I meet a group of students in the natural world, I come prepared with a plan for that day. Sometimes my plans are elaborate and detailed, and sometimes they are less specific and open to input from my fellow adventurers. But without exception I am mentally prepared and openly delighted to be upstaged by the unexpected. Whether it is locating a dead porcupine after noticing an unusual smell, being suddenly pelted by large hail, being startled by the arrival of the cacophonous noise of a murder of crows, or being circled by two deer so distracted in their mating dance that they fail to notice us; being fully present for nature’s dramas is my top priority.
After waiting over a year for the soft tissue to decompose, students collect and sort bones from a deer that died of natural causes near the Bear Creek Wilderness.
One day, just as the families were arriving at the Bear Creek Wilderness, a truck with two wildlife professionals pulled up to examine a deer laying in the horse pasture adjacent to our meadow. Curious, we gathered to ask questions about what might have happened. When they offered to let us keep the recently deceased animal, we gladly accepted- and spent the day dragging it across the meadow into the woods, securing it with paracord, and setting up our two trail cameras to watch what would happen.
Each week we checked on the deer, and everyone brave enough to venture near got to experience first-hand what decomposition looks and smells like. The camera footage revealed a series of fascinating dramas involving a bobcat, opossums, neighborhood dogs, and finally turkey vultures. A year and half later we carefully collected the bones and spent hours sorting and reconstructing a full deer skeleton. Finally, we tried our hands at making bone tools. In my experience, the best learning opportunities are not planned or expected. But when we build regular rhythms and practices, it is possible to “lay the groundwork for the outbreak of authentic curriculum” (Sobel, 2008, 81).
Cultivating scientific inquiry
Students work to match specific leaves to nature journal pages. Each student found a leaf while wandering through the woods, then recorded details of that leaf in their nature journals using words, pictures and numbers. The leaves were collected, then each student selected a new leaf and found the corresponding journal page.
Getting to know a place, including its seasonal changes, provides a useful perspective when it comes to asking research questions. An invaluable tool to record and remember discoveries, questions and observations is the field notebook, or nature journal. Developing the habit of collecting data with pencil and paper while exploring the natural world takes ongoing dedication, is deeply personal, and will certainly evolve through the years if one continues the practice (Canfield, 2011, 187-200). Nature journaling techniques that involve close examination of specimens in order to draw them, often reveal details that would have been overlooked with a quick glace or photograph. Indeed, to truly get to know a specific plant species it is hard to imagine an activity more educational than carefully drawing each of its parts.
Foundational to scientific inquiry is the research question, or asking questions within the realm of science. There are plenty of valid and interesting questions that one might ask while pondering the wonders of nature, and it’s important not to shut down inquiry when a question like, “Does it make this tree happy when I climb it?” arise. If limited to knowledge bound by science, one may miss rich worlds of philosophy, spirituality, intuition, and other ways of knowing. Still, once we are ready plot our scientific course it’s useful to remind students that questions should be measurable (Laws & Lygren, 2020, 90-93).
At the start of a student-led wildlife study, one researcher, who had taken time to carefully read the manual and test out the equipment, teaches the other students how to label their memory cards and set up their trail cameras. This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Diack Ecology Education Program.
Research Methods
When guiding young people into the world of field research it is helpful to start with basic techniques and big picture, cross-cutting concepts. Keeping track of important details in a field notebook and not forgetting to record obvious but key information like the date and location takes practice before it becomes routine. Collecting data can be time consuming, but sometimes trying to interpret sloppily recorded field notes can lead to tedious and frustrating hours at home. Finding a doable and interesting research question, taking into account confounding factors, and dealing with the disappointment if all the hard work to apply different treatments on an invasive plant all result in similar outcomes, requires a certain level of maturity and commitment.
Digging into a full-fledged research project requires determination, perseverance, and time, but it is possible to introduce students to the exciting and fun parts without getting bogged down by details. I recently taught a research methods class to elementary and middle school students with the goal of having hands-on experience with sophisticated research equipment without requiring data analysis or report writing.
We practiced collecting samples, and at first, we recorded in our field notebooks all the important metadata. Inspired by collection and observation, but limited in time, we then simplified the process to maintain interest and focus. For the rest of our forest walk we collected whatever samples caught our eyes- and mentioned what we would record if we were doing a research project- but kept it fun and quick so we still had time to investigate them at the end with magnification. Keeping data collection fun and exciting for younger students makes for a useful introduction to scientific inquiry and sets them up for conducting their own research in the future.
Students collect carbon dioxide and pH data from a patch of earth using equipment funded by the Diack Ecology Education Program during a research methods class with Wild Alive Outside.
Student-Led Research
In my experience, homeschoolers have a low tolerance for contrived activities, busywork and doing things for a grade. Any activity, assignment or project needs to be authentically meaningful. While it may be hard to force them to fill out a worksheet recording what we just discussed, they often thrive with open-ended activities and projects they can direct. It’s important to provide the appropriate scaffolding, and offer examples, but I have been impressed by how quickly and enthusiastically students construct their own research projects. As a mentor, I sometimes struggle with finding balance between requiring them to do something ‘right’ and encouraging critical thinking along with a safe place to fail, each of which are valuable learning experiences. Allowing students to take ownership in the learning process enhances the development of scientific thinking.
Once, a student created an elaborate plan to attract birds for his trail camera research project involving dead trees, peanut butter, and bird seed. There was tangible disappointment when the resulting images revealed many more rodents than birds, but it led to a new series of questions as well as an understanding about wildlife activity in that area. Field science is almost always iterative in nature, with new questions emerging from initial data and, ideally, the opportunity to inquire further and collect more data. With guidance and partnership students integrate information while maintaining natural curiosity.
Expanded Educational Support
Last year our outdoor program, Wild Alive Outside, received its first infusion of grant-funded scientific equipment. The Diack Ecology Education Program financed a set a trail cameras for our students to study wildlife activity at the Bear Creek Wilderness. Access to high-quality equipment has been a game changer for our little research group. Students felt empowered to design their own experiments by having full control over one of the trail cameras and two high-capacity memory cards. In addition to learning what wildlife passed through the area of the forest or meadow they selected, they gained experience with organizing and analyzing digital data. For some, it was their first exposure to spreadsheets, and others had to push their edges to patiently examine each of hundreds of photos. After months of data collection and conducting secondary research on one of the many wildlife species they discovered, they created posters to present their findings.
Students carefully measure the water in the rain gauge to determine rainfall over the previous week. Data is later reported to the CoCoRaHS website as part of a nationwide citizen science initiative.
For several years now, each day on the land begins with checking the rain gauge. Because we only visit once per week, we often have several inches of rain to carefully measure and record in the notebook. This simple ritual wakes up scientific thinking: “remember to look straight on before taking a reading,” connects us to what’s been happening while we were away: “no wonder there’s standing water in the meadow,” and gives us access to site-specific long-term data. At the end of the water year, shortly after the start of autumn, we can look back at the data we’ve collected, compare it to previous years, and make predictions for when the rains might come that fall. Additionally, we report our data through a sophisticated citizen science program called CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network with thousands of other citizen scientists across the country. I have found students take data collection quite seriously when they know they are part of a larger community of scientists, all doing their best to produce accurate results.
After tackling a large patch of invasive blackberry bushes, the Weed Warriors celebrate their contribution to protecting the wet meadow in the Bear Creek Wilderness.
The Bear Creek Wilderness and Student Research Forest
My program design is to plant the seeds for creating a student research forest where young people will have ongoing opportunities to learn scientific methods of field research and contribute to an ever-increasing body of knowledge through their own efforts. Just as the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest welcomes graduate students and long-term ecological researchers and has amassed a wealth of knowledge and data about that site, we aim to support young emerging scientists with open minds and creative ideas to connect with place, nature, and make meaningful contributions to science within a community of knowledge seekers. Participants gain foundational skills together as they engage with the land, utilize scientific tools, grow as learners, and share knowledge with each other.
References
Boaler, J. (2015). Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students’ Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching. Wiley.
Canfield, M. R. (Ed.). (2011). Field Notes on Science and Nature. Harvard University Press.
CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network. Retrieved January 18, 2024, from https://www.cocorahs.org/
Diack Ecology Retrieved January 26, 2024, from https://www.diackecology.org/
H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Retrieved January 26, 2024, from https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/
Laws, J. M., & Lygren, E. (2020). How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention. Heyday.
Sobel, D. (2008). Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators. Stenhouse Publishers.
In 2019, Jess Lambright started a nature school for homeschool families where once per week kids and parents spend all day outside learning wilderness skills, exploring, developing naturalist knowledge, conducting field studies, and connecting with nature, themselves, and each other. She founded Wild Alive Outside in the summer of 2023 with the goal of getting more youth outdoors to discover wonder and inspiration in the natural world through science, outdoor skills, and wilderness connection.
by editor | May 27, 2022 | Equity and Inclusion, Indigenous Peoples & Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Tribes & Traditional Ecological Knowledge
River Newe: Creating
New Narratives On Historic Landscapes
In this article we present our work that directly addresses Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) for our tribal youth of the Shoshone-Bannock people. We have reimagined what JEDI means for us through environmental education activities as they relate to our efforts to reinhabit the traditional homelands where our people lived, gathered, hunted, and thrived since time immemorial.
by Jessica Matsaw, M.Ed,
Sammy Matsaw, Ph.D,
and Brant G. Miller, Ph.D
The landscapes of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River watershed and other usual and accustomed places of the Shoshone-Bannock are imbued with meaning and wisdom that we are actively seeking to connect our tribal youth with. The corridor is the heart of the largest wilderness segment in the lower 48 states with intact cultural sites and vast untouched lands with no cell service. The perfect place to disconnect youth and get them into a sense of what our ancestors knew about living without modern technologies and at the same time sharing in a true sense of unfragmented and connected riverscapes. The experience has been one where the students begin by wanting to go home to the final days of not wanting to leave and have real connection to place. We cannot stress how important this has been to our youth and tribal members.
To begin, we share a vignette that begins to capture the intentional and oftentimes dynamic approach we are taking to engage our Tribal youth deeply and meaningfully with experiences that give them grounding in the present, hope for the future, and a foundation for explorations using Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western scientific methods to inquire about their curiosities.
Shoshone-Bannock young ladies, Abrianna (7) and River (15), gathering wild berries, and enjoying one another’s company in the homelands of their ancestors. Photo by Popp Photography 2021.
“We wake from many stressful days of preparation to get here. We arrived at Dagger Falls campground the evening before. Yesterday was so much work finalizing all the things, loading ice, food, and organizing the coolers and dry boxes by meals, days, and how to access them the best. The trailer is mostly organized to get out things we need for a short breakfast and some coffee. Not sure what we forgot but at this point we will just make do. Coming from the Rez, our lives are mostly about making do, so we’re good at it. No worries, as we enjoy coffee and visiting with new and old friends and family. The kids and some of the adults are checking out the falls, picking raspberries, journaling, taking in the scenes of a river carved valley. Taking down the tents, stuffing sleeping bags, some hair braiding, and another cup of coffee. It’s starting to feel like we should move over to the boat launch – ‘Alright, let’s load up and head on over!’
“After mounting the frames, we begin rigging the rafts with heavy coolers, dry boxes, groover and tanks, camp chairs, tables, and dry bags filled with our hygiene kits, tents, sleeping bags, and dry clothes. We leave space for future dreams and incoming memories made with new faces and ones we haven’t seen in a bit.
“As each raft gets fully rigged you can hear, ‘Hey everyone, can we get a hand over here?’ It takes a team to load our rafts onto the boat launch ramp and walking it down together.
“At the same time our youth were creating prayer bundles to mount on the front of our rafts made up of tobacco ties, sage, and lots of good thoughts and laughter.
“Before we begin our journey down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, our women will ask the river for permission to travel with her. Once we make our offerings and give to the river a gift of our first foods and prayer, we can then open the circle. We acknowledge the land, water, rafts, and guides who will be working tirelessly to keep their hands on their oars, ears to their neighbors, and reading the water. She will tell us how to get down the river.
“The first two days will be rough as they are supposed to be. We are getting reacquainted with her again and she has lessons to teach us all. Mostly what is on our minds is the running of rapids like Sulfur Slide, and the big one for the day is Velvet Falls. We will arrive at our usual camp and enjoy a soak for the weary, just to relax, and some play for the young and old alike.”
The vignette above is a window into how we are approaching our ideas about place, homelands, and resituating Shoshone-Bannock culture into the 21st century, and reconnecting our youth with our memory traces left by our ancestors. We have a long history in the Middle Fork of the Salmon River watershed and to hear and see our young people couple Traditional Ecological knowledge with science, technology, engineering and mathematics through their own research, journaling, and artistic ways of capturing not only what they’re learning in mind, but also in heart and spirit, is to begin to see the future, and what is possible in this new, envisioned future. Each season and our planned activities can be thought of in this manner: traditional teachings, customs and protocols, tools, places across spatiotemporal distributions by elevation, weather, and climate, etc.
Intergenerational traumas such as the boarding school era interact with living in desperate times of survival between two entirely different cultures through the onslaught of threats to our literal and cultural existence. In a contemporary setting we are still orally in our collective thought about how our knowledge already knew the recent findings in Western science, that we have unwritten theoretical frameworks. Indigenous storytelling is a rich metaphor for the bold and creative space of curious Indigenous minds, hearts, and souls for the betterment of our Sogope Bia (Mother Earth) and to support our nation-building. Our connection in thought, verb-based languages, and action is complex and adheres to the so-called messiness of ecology, and the nature of science. The broader issue affecting our communities’ reflexive abilities are daily conflicts from a racialized society upholding asymmetrical forms of reasoning and assumptions about human entitlement to, and extractions from, the natural world, that continues to separate humans from nature (i.e., the nature-culture divide, Bang & Marin, 2015). A more localized related problem begins at K-12 schools where we are losing our children to the norms of the education system, that continues into college and in the workplace where our voices are dead before arrival (Matsaw et al. 2020). As professionals, the expectation is exceptional fluency in scientific comprehension and writing, coding, statistical analysis, and Western scientific theory, principles, methodology, and methods. The social and environmental justice of our times is to rise above racist microaggressions to on-the-fly cultural competency affording cultural relevancy so that we can broker space, and time for sustainable pedagogies and methodologies to the benefit of our Indigenous Knowledge. Sadly, we are outnumbered, and our children are being left behind, the gap in between is continually ever widening, so our loss deepens and the attainability for our youth to replace us in the workforce is further out of reach.
Prayer ties created by our youth in respect of elements, directions, sky and earth, and medicines we use to keep us safe and healthy for attaching to our rafts. Photo by Popp Photography 2021.
To combat these issues, we are using traditional ecological-thinking through a Shoshone-Bannock seasonal round in our homelands doing STEM learning activities. Activities through protocols of consent asking our land and waterways permission to test the ideas of our frameworks with tools of Western science such as river trips down the Middle Fork Salmon River; hunting/gathering of our wild foods; interacting with places of the stories/knowledge/theories of our ancestors. Along the way we will collect data, observation, journaling, using tools from our digging sticks to iPads, spear poles to DNA and otolith (ear bone) collections from salmon. These activities will be used to evaluate pedagogies and methodologies rooted in Shoshone-Bannock Traditional Knowledge by building theories, study plans, experimental designs, methods, and technologies as a way of creating new/old pedagogies. Our old pedagogies have been interrupted by colonialism and now we are adapting using state standards to quantify our learning and transfer of knowledge in the form of new pedagogies so that our knowledge persists. Concurrently, working to vacate racist structures in our tribal institutions, situating our own tribal organization and leadership to support making effective and meaningful changes in policy and reframing thoughts of becoming teachers and STEM professionals that cross with traumas associated with boarding schools and objects of research.
The doorway we are intentionally and mindfully creating is one for our youth to begin to envision a renewed path through an ecosystem of opportunities that will lead to their own success. In many ways we are just beginning to reimagine how to rebuild our presence of the Shoshone-Bannock people back into the cultural riverscapes of our ancestors and how we still see the land, as our Sogope Bia. Our river trips along ancestral homelands are to facilitate observations of where we once lived, how the landscape once appeared, and how our people interacted, honored, and were sustainable co-inhabitants with our more-than human relatives.
Back to the river…we stop at cultural sites where there are pit house depressions, and/or pictographs. We exercise our imaginations of what we know today with how it must have been then. For instance, looking at the villages and how they are arranged and imagining the proximity of families amongst the larger community. We can imagine this because our community back home on the reservation still reflects a similar state, preserved by our natural, innate need to arrange as we always have. Families in family areas closer to relatives of similar clans, bands and where we were when we came to the reservation life. Each site is not a far-off imaginary. To open the imagination of our youth is to then see the STEM, the Indigenous Ecosystem builders we always have been and still are today.
We are also wanting to be respectful of those who inherited the wrongful displacement of our Tukadeka relatives over a century ago. We believe they are there in the most loving way they can be, and we want to reciprocate the relationship they have with our home. In that we are wanting to share with them how this place is not only special, but also largely intact from the way our ancestors left it when they were forcibly removed. For the most part what we have gathered is that the guides on the river are happy to see us back.
Jessica Matsaw, M. Ed., is the Art, Civics & Tribal Government Teacher at the Shoshone-Bannock Jr/Sr High School. She combats educational systems of exclusion and cultural erasures by focusing culturally centered, equitable learning spaces of engagement to celebrate Indigenous ingenuity, intellect and inquiry.
Sammy Matsaw, Ph.D., is a grandfather, father, husband & extended family member amongst the Shoshone-Bannock and Oglala Lakota with a PhD in Water Resources. As co-founders, he and his wife are creating an intercultural STEAM pedagogy more agreeable with Indigenous peoples through a non-profit called River Newe.
Brant G. Miller, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Science Education at the University of Idaho. His research interests include Adventure Learning, culturally responsive approaches to STEM education, science teacher education, and technology integration within educational contexts.
For more information, check out https://rivernewe.org/
See more articles like this at https://clearingmagazine.org/fall-2021
by editor | May 12, 2021 | Equity and Inclusion
by Sprinavasa Brown
I often hear White educators ask “What should I do?” expressing an earnest desire to move beyond talking about equity and inclusion to wanting action steps toward meaningful change.
I will offer you my advice as a fellow educator. It is both a command and a powerful tool for individual and organizational change for those willing to shift their mindset to understand it, invest the time to practice it and hold fast to witness its potential.
The work of this moment is all about environmental justice centered in social justice, led by the communities most impacted by the outcomes of our collective action. It’s time to leverage your platform as a White person to make space for the voice of a person of color. It’s time to connect your resources and wealth to leaders from underrepresented communities so they can make decisions that place their community’s needs first.
If you have participated in any diversity trainings, you are likely familiar with the common process of establishing group agreements. Early on, set the foundation for how you engage colleagues, a circumspect reminder that meaningful interpersonal and intrapersonal discourse has protocols in order to be effective. I appreciate these agreements and the principles they represent because they remind us that this work is not easy. If you are doing it right, you will and should be uncomfortable, challenged and ready to work toward a transformational process that ends in visible change.
I want you to recall one such agreement: step up, step back, step aside.
That last part is where I want to focus. It’s a radical call to action: Step aside! There are leaders of color full of potential and solutions who no doubt hold crucial advice and wisdom that organizations are missing. Think about the ways you can step back and step aside to share power. Step back from a decision, step down from a position or simply step aside. If you currently work for or serve on the board of an organization whose primary stakeholders are from communities of color, then this advice is especially for you.
Stepping aside draws to attention arguably the most important and effective way White people can advance racial equity, especially when working in institutions that serve marginalized communities. To leverage your privilege for marginalized communities means removing yourself from your position and making space for Black and Brown leaders to leave the margins and be brought into the fold of power.
You may find yourself with the opportunity to retire or take another job. Before you depart, commit to making strides to position your organization to hire a person of color to fill the vacancy. Be outspoken, agitate and question the status quo. This requires advocating for equitable hiring policies, addressing bias in the interview process and diversifying the pool with applicants with transferable skills. Recruit applicants from a pipeline supported and led by culturally specific organizations with ties to the communities you want to attract, and perhaps invite those community members to serve on interview panels with direct access to hiring managers.
As an organizational leader responsible for decisions related to hiring, partnerships and board recruitment, I have made uncomfortable, hard choices in the name of racial equity, but these choices yield fruitful outcomes for leaders willing to stay the course. I’ve found myself at crossroads where the best course forward wasn’t always clear. This I have come to accept is part of my equity journey. Be encouraged: Effective change can be made through staying engaged in your personal equity journey. Across our region we have much work ahead at the institutional level, and even more courage is required for hard work at the interpersonal level.
In stepping aside you create an opportunity for a member of a marginalized community who may be your colleague, fellow board member or staff member to access power that you have held.
White people alone will not provide all of the solutions to fix institutional systems of oppression and to shift organizational culture from exclusion to inclusion. These solutions must come from those whose voices have not been heard. Your participation is integral to evolving systems and organizations and carrying out change, but your leadership as a White person in the change process is not.
The best investment we can make for marginalized communities is to actively create and hold space for leaders of color at every level from executives to interns. Invest time and energy into continuous self-reflection and selfevaluation. This is not the path for everyone, but I hope you can see that there are a variety of actions that can shift the paradigm of the environmental movement. If you find yourself unsure of what action steps best align with where you or your organization are at on your equity journey, then reach out to organizations led by people of color, consultants, and leaders and hire them for their leadership and expertise. By placing yourself in the passenger seat, with a person of color as the driver, you can identify areas to leverage your privilege to benefit marginalized communities.
Finally, share an act of gratitude. Be cognizant of opportunities to step back and step aside and actively pursue ways to listen, understand and practice empathy with your colleagues, community members, neighbors and friends.
Camp ELSO is an example of the outcomes of this advice. Our achievements are most notable because it is within the context of an organization led 100 percent by people of color from our Board of Directors to our seasonal staff. This in the context of a city and state with a history of racial oppression and in a field that is historically exclusively White.
We began as a community-supported project and are growing into a thriving community-based organization successfully providing a vital service for Black and Brown youths across the Portland metro area. The support we have received has crossed cultures, bridged the racial divide and united partners around our vision. It is built from the financial investments of allies – public agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. I see this as an act of solidarity with our work and our mission, and more importantly, an act of solidarity and support for our unwavering commitment to racial equity.
Sprinavasa Brown is the co-founder and executive director of Camp ELSO. She also serves on Metro’s Public Engagement Review Committee and the Parks and Nature Equity Advisory Committee.
by editor | Jan 27, 2020 | Equity and Inclusion, Outdoor education and Outdoor School
Providing opportunities for students of color to explore
the outdoors and science careers
Text and photos by Sprinavasa Brown
recall the high school science teacher who doubted my capacity to succeed in advanced biology, the pre-med advisers who pointed my friend Dr. Kellianne Richardson and me away from their program and discouraged us from considering a career in medicine – biased advice given under the guise of truth and tough love.
I remember only three classes with professors of color in my four years at college, only one of whom was a woman. We needed to see her, to hold faith that as women of color, we were good enough, we were smart enough to be there. We were simply enough, and we had so much to contribute to medicine, eager to learn, to improve and to struggle alongside our mostly White peers at our private liberal arts college.
These are the experiences that led Kellianne and me to see the need for more spaces set aside for future Black scientists, for multi-hued Brown future environmentalists.
The story of Camp ELSO (Experience Life Science Outdoors) started with our vision. We want Black and Brown children to access more and better experiences than we did, experiences that help them see their potential in science, that prepare them for the potentially steep learning curve that comes with declaring a science major. We want Black and Brown kids to feel comfortable in a lab room, navigating a science library, and advocating for themselves with faculty and advisers. We hope to inspire their academic pursuits by laying the foundation with curiosity and critical thinking.
Creating a sense of belonging
Camp ELSO’s Wayfinders program is our main program for youths in kindergarten through sixth grade. What began as a programmatic response to our community needs assessment – filling the visible gap in accessible, affordable, experiential science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs for young Black and Brown children – quickly grew into a refuge space for youth of greater Portland. Wayfinders is all about creating a safe uplifting and affirming space for youth to engage in learning around four key areas: life science, ecology, community and cultural history. While our week-long sessions include field trip sites similar to many mainstream environmental education programs, our approach is sharply focused on grounding the youth experience in environmental justice while elevating the visibility and leadership opportunities for folks of color.
We are creating a special place for Black and Brown youth to have transformative experiences, to create memories that we hope will stick with them until adulthood. Creating such a space comes with difficulties, the type of challenges that force our leadership to make tough decisions that we believe will yield the best outcomes for youth underrepresented in STEM fields. For instance, how to mitigate the undertones of colonization, nationalism, and co-opting of traditional knowledge – harmful practices ingrained in mainstream environmental education.
To do so, we invest in training young adults of color to lead as camp guides. We provide resources to support them in developing the skills necessary to engage youth of diverse ethnicities, backgrounds, socioeconomic status and family structure. Our guides practice taking topics and developing discussion questions and lesson plans that are relevant and engaging. We know that the more our staff represents the communities we serve, the closer we get to ensuring that Camp ELSO programming is responsive to the needs of children of color, authentic to their lived experience, and is a reflection of the values of our organization and community.
In 2019 nearly 100 children of color from greater Portland will participate in Camp ELSO’s Wayfinders program over spring and summer break, spending over 40 hours in a week-long day camp engaging in environmental STEM learning and enjoying the outdoors. We reach more children and families through our community outreach events like “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day: Women of Color Panel” and “Endangered Species Day: Introduction to Youth Activism.”
The most critical aspects of our Wayfinders program happens even before we welcome a single child through our doors. With the intent of purifying the air and spirit, we smudge with cedar and sage to prepare the space. When a child shows up, they are greeted by name. We set the tone for the day with yoga and affirmations to the sounds of Stevie Wonder and Yemi Alade as we strive to expose our kids to global music from diverse cultures.
We have taken the time to ask parents thoughtful questions in the application process to help us prepare to welcome their child to our community. We have painstakingly selected what we feel is a balanced, blended group of eager young minds from diverse ethnic backgrounds: Black, Latinx, the children of immigrants, multi and biracial children of various ethnicities, fuego and magic. Our children come from neighborhoods across Portland and its many suburbs. They come from foster care, single-parent households, affluent homes, homes where they are adopted into loving and beautifully blended families, strong and proud Black families, and intergenerational households with active grandmas and aunties. Consistent with every child and every household is an interest and curiosity around STEM, a love of nature and the outdoors.
The children arrive full of potential and the vitality of youth. Some are shy, and nerves are visible each morning. By the end of the week we’ve built trust and rapport with each of them, we’ve sat in countless circles teaching them our values based in Afrocentric principles, values selected by previous camp guides representing the youth voice that actively shapes the camp’s culture.
On our way to more distant Metro sites like Blue Lake and Oxbow regional parks and Quamash Prairie, we play DJ in the van. Each kid who wants to has an opportunity to share their favorite song with the group, and if you know the words, you’d better belt it out. We share food and pass around snacks while some children rest and others catch up with old friends. Many more are deep in conversation forging new friendships.
When we arrive, we remind the kids of what is expected of them. We have no doubts that each and every child will respect the land and respect our leaders. The boundaries are clear, and our expectations for them don’t change when problems arise. We hold them to the highest standards, regardless of their life situation. We respect, listen, and embrace who they are.
We are often greeted by Alice Froehlich, a Metro naturalist. Our kids know Alice, and the mutual trust, respect and accountability we have shared over the last three years has been the foundation to create field trips that cater to the needs of our blended group – and oh, it is a beautiful group.
At Oxbow, we are also greeted by teen leaders from the Oregon Zoo’s ZAP (Zoo Animal Presenters) program. These teens of color join us each year for what always ends up being a highlight of the week: playing in the frigid waters of the Sandy River, our brown skin baking under the hot summer sun, music in the background and so much laughter. Like family, we enjoy one another’s company.
Then we break into smaller groups and head into the ancient forest. Almost immediately the calm of the forest envelopes our youth. The serenity that draws us to nature turns our group of active bodies into quieted beings content to listen, observe, respond and reflect. It doesn’t take much for them to find their rhythm and adjust to nature’s pace. Similarly, when we kayak the Tualatin River or canoe the Columbia Slough, they are keen to show their knowledge of local plants and taking notice as the occasional bird comes into view. We learn as much from them as we do from our guides.
These are the moments that allow Camp ELSO’s participants to feel welcome, not just to fit in but to belong. To feel deeply connected to the earth, to nature and to community.
Encouragement for my community
As a Black environmental educator I’m always navigating two frames of view. One is grounded in my Americanness, the other is grounded in my Blackness, the lineage of my people from where I pull my strength and affirm my birthright. I wear my identities with pride, however difficult it can be to navigate this world as a part of two communities, two identities. One part of me is constantly under attack from the other that is rife with nationalism, anti-Brownness, and opposition toward the people upon whose lives and ancestry this country was built.
I am a descendant of African people and the motherland. I’m deeply connected to the earth as a descendant of strong, free, resilient and resourceful Black people. The land is a part of me, part of who I am. My ancestors toiled, and they survived, they lived off, they cultivated, and they loved the land.
As a black woman, my relationship with the land and its bounty is a part of my heritage. It’s in my backyard garden, where I grow greens from my great-grandmother’s seeds passed down to me from my mother, who taught me how to save, store and harvest them. Greens from the motherland I was taught to cook by my Sierra Leonean, Rwandese and Jamaican family – aunties and uncles I’ve known as my kin since I was a child. It’s in the birds that roam my backyard, short bursts and squawks as my children chase them. The land is in the final jar my mother canned last summer when the harvest was good, and she had more tomatoes than we could eat after sharing with her church, neighbors and family.
Our connection to the land was lost through colonization, through the blanket of whiteness that a culture and set of values instilled upon us all as westerners living on stolen Indigenous land and working in systems influenced by one dominant culture. Our sacred connection with outdoor spaces was lost as laws set aside the “great outdoors” as if it were for White men only. These laws pushed us from our heritage and erased the stories of our forefathers, forgetting that the Buffalo Soldiers were some of the first park rangers, that the movement for justice was first fought by Black and Brown folks.
We grew our own food before our land was stripped away. We lived in harmony with the natural world before our communities were destroyed, displaced or forcibly relocated. We were healthy and thriving when we ate the food of our ancestors, before it was co-opted and appropriated. We must remember and reclaim this relationship for ourselves and for our children.
We are trying to do this with Camp ELSO, starting with our next generation. Children have the capacity to bring so much to environmental professions that desperately need Black and Brown representation. These professions need the ideas, innovations and solutions that can only come from the lived experiences of people of color. Children of color can solve problems that require Indigenous knowledge, cultural knowledge and knowledge of the African Diaspora. We want to give kids learning experiences that are relevant in today’s context, as more people become aware of racial equity and as the mainstream environmental movement starts to recognize historical oppression of people of color.
We need more spaces for Black and Brown children to see STEM professionals who are relatable through shared experiences, ethnicity, culture and history. We need spaces that allow Black children to experience the outdoors in a majority setting with limited influence of Whiteness – not White people but Whiteness – the dominant culture and norms that influence almost every aspect of our lives.
Camp ELSO is working to be that space. We aren’t there yet. We are on our own learning journey, and it comes with constant challenges and a need to continuously question, heal, build and fortify our own space.
Sprinavasa Brown is the co-founder and executive director of Camp ELSO. She also serves on Metro’s Public Engagement Review Committee and the Parks and Nature Equity Advisory Committee.
Advice for White Environmentalists and Nature Educators
by Sprinavasa Brown
I often hear White educators ask “What should I do?” expressing an earnest desire to move beyond talking about equity and inclusion to wanting action steps toward meaningful change.
I will offer you my advice as a fellow educator. It is both a command and a powerful tool for individual and organizational change for those willing to shift their mindset to understand it, invest the time to practice it and hold fast to witness its potential.
The work of this moment is all about environmental justice centered in social justice, led by the communities most impacted by the outcomes of our collective action. It’s time to leverage your platform as a White person to make space for the voice of a person of color. It’s time to connect your resources and wealth to leaders from underrepresented communities so they can make decisions that place their community’s needs first.
If you have participated in any diversity trainings, you are likely familiar with the common process of establishing group agreements. Early on, set the foundation for how you engage colleagues, a circumspect reminder that meaningful interpersonal and intrapersonal discourse has protocols in order to be effective. I appreciate these agreements and the principles they represent because they remind us that this work is not easy. If you are doing it right, you will and should be uncomfortable, challenged and ready to work toward a transformational process that ends in visible change.
I want you to recall one such agreement: step up, step back, step aside.
That last part is where I want to focus. It’s a radical call to action: Step aside! There are leaders of color full of potential and solutions who no doubt hold crucial advice and wisdom that organizations are missing. Think about the ways you can step back and step aside to share power. Step back from a decision, step down from a position or simply step aside. If you currently work for or serve on the board of an organization whose primary stakeholders are from communities of color, then this advice is especially for you.
Stepping aside draws to attention arguably the most important and effective way White people can advance racial equity, especially when working in institutions that serve marginalized communities. To leverage your privilege for marginalized communities means removing yourself from your position and making space for Black and Brown leaders to leave the margins and be brought into the fold of power.
You may find yourself with the opportunity to retire or take another job. Before you depart, commit to making strides to position your organization to hire a person of color to fill the vacancy. Be outspoken, agitate and question the status quo. This requires advocating for equitable hiring policies, addressing bias in the interview process and diversifying the pool with applicants with transferable skills. Recruit applicants from a pipeline supported and led by culturally specific organizations with ties to the communities you want to attract, and perhaps invite those community members to serve on interview panels with direct access to hiring managers.
As an organizational leader responsible for decisions related to hiring, partnerships and board recruitment, I have made uncomfortable, hard choices in the name of racial equity, but these choices yield fruitful outcomes for leaders willing to stay the course. I’ve found myself at crossroads where the best course forward wasn’t always clear. This I have come to accept is part of my equity journey. Be encouraged: Effective change can be made through staying engaged in your personal equity journey. Across our region we have much work ahead at the institutional level, and even more courage is required for hard work at the interpersonal level.
In stepping aside you create an opportunity for a member of a marginalized community who may be your colleague, fellow board member or staff member to access power that you have held.
White people alone will not provide all of the solutions to fix institutional systems of oppression and to shift organizational culture from exclusion to inclusion. These solutions must come from those whose voices have not been heard. Your participation is integral to evolving systems and organizations and carrying out change, but your leadership as a White person in the change process is not.
The best investment we can make for marginalized communities is to actively create and hold space for leaders of color at every level from executives to interns. Invest time and energy into continuous self-reflection and selfevaluation. This is not the path for everyone, but I hope you can see that there are a variety of actions that can shift the paradigm of the environmental movement. If you find yourself unsure of what action steps best align with where you or your organization are at on your equity journey, then reach out to organizations led by people of color, consultants, and leaders and hire them for their leadership and expertise. By placing yourself in the passenger seat, with a person of color as the driver, you can identify areas to leverage your privilege to benefit marginalized communities.
Finally, share an act of gratitude. Be cognizant of opportunities to step back and step aside and actively pursue ways to listen, understand and practice empathy with your colleagues, community members, neighbors and friends.
Camp ELSO is an example of the outcomes of this advice. Our achievements are most notable because it is within the context of an organization led 100 percent by people of color from our Board of Directors to our seasonal staff. This in the context of a city and state with a history of racial oppression and in a field that is historically exclusively White.
We began as a community-supported project and are growing into a thriving community-based organization successfully providing a vital service for Black and Brown youths across the Portland metro area. The support we have received has crossed cultures, bridged the racial divide and united partners around our vision. It is built from the financial investments of allies – public agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. I see this as an act of solidarity with our work and our mission, and more importantly, an act of solidarity and support for our unwavering commitment to racial equity.
by editor | Mar 19, 2018 | IslandWood, Learning Theory
The Compassionate Educator:
Empathy and Environmental Education
Tom Stonehocker
common challenge in environmental education is working with students who feel disconnected from their environment. This disconnection not only impedes a student’s ability to understand how natural systems function, it also affects how they value the natural world. This is caused not necessarily from lack of education, but the lack of focus on types of learning that build social-emotional skills in students.
Environmental work is inherently about responding to the needs of a changing planet. Environmental education must also continually focus on responding to the needs of our students so that they can grow to do the same for others. The study of nature is the study of relationships, and we would be wise to include ourselves in that definition, and perhaps even more importantly, those around us.
Author and educator Joseph Cornell shares that, “Our enjoyment and appreciation of life depends on our ability to sense feelings of other creatures, escaping our self-definitions to taste the joy of self-forgetful empathy with others” (Cornell, 1998, p.33). If young people are not well practiced in putting themselves into perspectives outside of their normal selves, how can they be expected to understand and care for the natural world?
Through my own reflections and experience as a field instructor at Islandwood, “a school in the woods”, located in Washington state, I have witnessed the value of being able to take on other perspectives. By adopting new points of view, we are better able to make informed and meaningful connections with ourselves, with others, and with our environment. As educators, the opportunites we provide our students largely do not come from the knowledge we can impart, rather our ability to engage students in experiences that speak to where they are coming from in life. To teach in this way, we must be willing to step out of our own experience from time to time and into the experiences of others in our community. Fortunately, with practice and thoughtful action, empathy can be used to increase the impact of our teaching.
Beyond Egocentrism
In Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature, the authors describe a progression toward empathy that begins as students learn to recognize and express their own needs. “Over time and with your encouragement, they will go beyond asserting their needs into taking responsibility for them and being proactive about them” (Young, Haas, and McGown, 2010, p. 268). This growing sense of responsibility might be observed in simple acts, like noticing a student plan ahead by bringing warm and dry clothing. It might be a student who articulates that they are uncomfortable with a certain aspect of an activity and opens a conversation to plan an alternative.
Young, et al. go on to describe how this behavior often expands into a greater awareness of others and tending to their needs as well (2010). I have witnessed this progression in my students as I see them begin to speak up for each other. Students also feel more comfortable affirming the positive attributes that their peers bring to the group, and begin to feel a sense of comradery and pride with group identity.
“This same tending sensibility will also show itself as care for the natural world -and especially one’s own native romping grounds” (Young, et al., 2010, p. 268). In watching how self-care can grow into caring for others, it’s easy to imagine this expanding beyond just people and encompassing the environment as well. Developing a sense of place begins when a person starts to have deeper familiarity with their surroundings, and ultimately begins to feel at home where they are. Feeling a sense belonging is a true testament to the number and quality of the relationships built.
Helping Students to Cultivate Empathy
An important way to help a group of students begin to see from perspectives other than their own is by helping each individual realize the interconnectedness present within a community. One way to encourage this sense of interpersonal connection is by engaging them in team-building challenges. Of course there are millions of activities that achieve this—I’ve seen wonders happen when I challenge group of ten students to transport themselves 25 feet across an expanse of “shark-infested hot lava” using only four foam seat-pads as stepping stones. They become invested in a successful outcome for the group and along the way, they discover the role that each person plays and how they can more carefully and effectively communicate with one another.
These types of play-based collaborations have helped groups of students with intense trust and interpersonal challenges to become significantly more community-minded and thoughtful of each other’s needs. Sometimes, we must recognize that there is more work than can be achieved in our time together with students, but we must not let that stop us from trying.
One of my favorite activities to facilitate with students to dive even deeper into empathy is to engage them in storytelling from the perspective of a non-human element of the natural world. Students get to create their own narrative, which could be a short story, poem, or comic about any living or nonliving component found in our place.
One memorable story came from a student who, after having trouble coming up with ideas for his story, eventually wrote a beautiful piece about a plant he had learned about earlier in the day, the Evergreen Huckleberry:
One time there was [an] Evergreen Huckleberry. People and animals came every second to take the berry. A bird comes and make a house out of you, but the evergreen huckleberry can’t do nothing. So every time it grows [berries], people or animals take it. The tree was mad…because they were eating its berry. It [wanted] revenge and a 10-year-old kid came and said, ‘Stop, we were not hurting you, we were only [taking] berries because it taste good and we take out the seeds and grow another tree. No big deal.’”
Another student wrote from the perspective of a Salal plant that lives through the challenges of each season and ultimately feels unwanted by the other members of the forest community. She wrote,
“A small blueberry tree [looked] at me and said, ‘Salal you are great just like you are. You don’t need to be bigger and we need you. We need you, like you have very [delicious] and sweet [berries] and animals need you. Look, the [deer] needs you for your [berries].’ Salal said ‘Cool, I’m special.’”
In both of these stories, students are demonstrating their understanding of ecological relationships but also have some compelling themes of personal struggle. Both stories have moments when the main character is feeling underappreciated until another member of the community shows them they are valued. People of all ages struggle with self-confidence or feeling like an outsider. These stories illustrate how students can identify threads of connection across boundaries. This helps them develop new interpretations of environmental relationships andf also interpersonal relationships.
Another strength of perspective storytelling is that it helps students to view the natural world through a creative lens, and allows them to do so on their own terms and in their preferred medium. The perspective storytelling activity I shared with my students involved writing, but perspective storytelling can be done with singing, rapping, dancing, acting, or any other interpretation. By giving them flexibility in how they complete the activity, students will be more successful in reaching the goals of connecting with place and practicing empathy.
Showing Students We Care
Environmental and outdoor education inherently provides experiences that are new and often uncomfortable for students. Some students have spent very little time outdoors, some are away from their families for the first time, and some are working with people they don’t know very well. It is a vulnerable time for many, and often students’ interpersonal and intrapersonal challenges are placed secondary to content. The best way we can teach empathy is by practicing it ourselves.
I frequently encounter students with anxiety from being away from home. It is incredibly difficult for a student to experience the wonders of nature when they are in tears and sick to their stomach from being anxious. I approach these students by thinking about where I was at 10 years old. I remember being at outdoor school being unable to sleep, staying up at night crying, and feeling so alone in my discomfort. By stepping into the shoes of my 10-year-old self, I am better able to help students feel like they are being heard and help them persist through their challenges. I acknowledge the difficulty and pain, but remind them of the ways in which I’ve watched them succeed during our time together.
Being empathetic toward students also helps us as educators be more responsive to diverse groups of students. Something as seemingly straightforward as writing in a nature journal may cause great stress for an English Language Learner or a student with different learning abilities. It’s important for us to assess how we are connecting with our students, because it ultimately affects how they will be able to connect with the natural world
Many educators feel constrained when their curricula is focused on meeting state and national achievement standards. Some may not realize that NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) was designed to improve the equity of science education and serve diverse populations and learners (Quinn, 2015). At its core, NGSS help students explore concepts that are applicable across many different scales and subjects.
It is precisely this adaptability to a broad range of learners that demonstrates how integral empathy is in science teaching. An important tenet of NGSS is to create an environment where students feel at home and are “welcomed as full members, and invited to share their ideas and participate fully” (Quinn, 2015, p. 16). Reaching this place of comfort will happen after learning to be appropriately responsive to the needs of the students. Getting there could be as simple as providing opportunities for movement within lessons, inviting them to incorporate personal or family stories as part of the activity, or by keeping the focus on experience rather than outcome.
Making content more relevant to student lives can help concepts feel less abstract and more tangible. Kathy Liu Sun (2017) suggests incorporating guests to share their perspective and speak from experience. Hearing from voices that students can identify with helps add personal meaning and relevance. When learning is rooted in the experiences of real people and real places, students will recognize the authenticity and be more able to make connections back to themselves, their families, and their communities.
Being There
In her 2012 novel, Wonder, R.J. Palacio writes, “It’s not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend” (p. 312). I interpret this to mean that we can treat others with kindness, but it means little if we are not working towards creating a meaningful relationship. In environmental education, we must prioritize relationship-building if we are to truly show that we care for future generations and the planet. By being present and attentive to student needs, we can help them cultivate a rich and meaningful connection to nature. By helping create these relationships, we are helping to create a future where people are fully invested in and advocate for the wellbeing of their natural and human communities.
Tom Stonehocker is a naturalist, graduate student, and field instructor who works with 4th & 5th-grade students at Islandwood, an outdoor school on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
References:
Cornell, Joseph. (1998) Sharing Nature With Children. Nevada City, CA: DAWN Publications
Palacio, R. J. (2012). Wonder. New York: Knopf
Quinn, Helen. (2015) Science and Engineering Practices for Equity. In NGSS for All (pp.7-18). Arlington, VA: NSTA
Sun, Kathy Liu. (2017) The Importance of Cultivating Empathy in STEM Education. In Science Scope. April/May. Pp. 6-8.
Young, J., Haas, E., and McGown, E. (2010) Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature. Shelton, WA: OWLink Media.
