by editor | Jan 23, 2026 | Environmental Literacy
What is Good Environmental Education?
Our students need to be ready to invest in building positive futures for the communities to which they belong – household to global.
by Peter Hayes
(originally published in CLEARING Feb 17, 2016
he choice to become an educator brings with it a career-long sentence to the blessing and curse of endlessly deciding what our students need to learn and how we will best help them learn it. At a recent conference, I was confronted with the honorable misfortune of joining a panel of speakers charged with provocatively stirring thoughts and feelings on the question of “what is good environmental education?”. I found the adventure to be both difficult and easy. It was difficult because the terms environment, environmental education, or environmentalist make no sense to me. They are words and concepts that have meaning only in a culture which clings to the illusion that human well-being does not depend on the health of the nature we are part of.
Because I believe that deep-seated confusion over these words and ideas is a major barrier to building a positive future, I choose to be an educator, community member, and citizen instead of accepting the destructive labels of environmental educator and environmentalist.
It was easier for me to form and share the answers that follow to the question of what makes for good education about how nature works and how humans fit into it. A simple, clear, and accessible yardstick for assessing the success of student learning is always available to us: how well do we help students become ready to do what they need to be ready? Ability – a fabric woven from the strands of knowledge, skill, and attitude – is important but not adequate; ability must be combined with motivation to create readiness.
To illustrate my belief that clues to our educational responsibilities are everpresent, and to ground these comments in the realities of my daily responsibilities, two simple, true stories – shared on the installment plan – seem helpful.
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Story 1 – Part A:
It’s mid-February and Seattle’s rains are pouring down on a confused-looking ninth-grade student standing knee deep in the muddy waters of Thornton Creek. In the final hours of a weeklong study of this urban creek and its watershed, she stands in a forested wetland slated to be developed as a driving range for the adjacent golf course.
She describes her confusion over whether the best use for the land is for it to continue as a wild wetland or to be developed as a driving range: “I’m so confused – I don’t know what the right thing to do is; I began this week believing that the world was much simpler than I now see it is – that there were good guys and bad guys – and that I was a good guy – now I see that choices are more complicated, that in many ways my choices make me part of the problem. I’m no longer sure what is the right thing to do.”
Story Two – Part A:
The early morning calm at our house is punctuated by the scuffing sound of a small person’s feet on the stairs. A three foot, sleepy eyed apparition settles in at the breakfast table – tousled brown hair, fuzzy, pink, one piece pajamas “with feet” – the kind that sweat. Slurping the last of her cereal – the kind where eating the box provides more nutriment than eating the cereal – she looks across the table. Her presence asks a single, clear, unspoken question to me: “you aren’t going to let us down are you? You are responsible for helping us grow up to be ready to successfully meet the challenges ahead; will you do it?”..
If we accept that readiness is the goal, then the next question is: Ready for what? What needs doing?. Given our understandable human self absorption, we know that our students need to be ready to provide for their own needs, that is their own “self-wealth”. Because self-wealth depends on a web of relationships with fellow humans and other species, our students also must be ready to understand, maintain, and build “common wealth”. The wealth that we share in common is the blend of such diverse treasures as the love of a neighbor who brings dinner over on the eve of our first child’s birth and the lifegiving qualities of the swirling atmosphere and oceans. Our students need to be ready to invest in building positive futures for the communities to which they belong – household to global. They need to be ready to do what no preceding generation has done before: satisfy their needs and wants in ways that don’t compromise Earth’s ability to support life.
The best way to narrow this challenge from the immense and vague toward something that we can get to work on in class tomorrow, we can ask and answer the questions of where and why are we failing, or have we failed, to maintain our common wealth? Though there are remarkable cases of success in maintaining our common wealth, I will focus here on examples from each of five concentric rings of community where we have lost, or are currently losing, common wealth – situations where humans were challenged to do the right thing in relationship to the rest of nature, and failed. What would need to be different for these to be on the list of successes instead?
The cases are:
– Global: Current efforts to reach cooperative agreements about reducing emissions of greenhouse gases which are causing warming of the atmosphere.
– Continental: The failure of cooperation in water use leading to the drying of the Aral Sea in Central Asia and the race to pump from the rapidly dropping waters of the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains in the central United States.
– Regional: The current struggle to reverse the trend of Pacific Salmon’s descent toward extinction, with hopes of not replicating the crash of North Atlantic fisheries.
– Local: The choice at the school where I teach not to match our actions as world-class consumers to our stated commitment to conservation contributes to the invisible but real erosion of common wealth around the planet.
– Next Door: Our neighbor seeks to tranform two acres of forested wetlands at the headwaters of a salmon supporting creek into five lawn- and driveway-surrounded homes, while arguing that there is no connection between his choices and the future of salmon struggling to retain their home in the creek downstream.
What do these five cases of loss of common wealth share? Why do they happen?
Decision makers failed to understand, value, and tell the story of the common wealth. Decisions were based on oversimplifications of the complex and interdependent systems of nature. Too much emphasis was placed on guaranteeing self wealth and too little on preserving common wealth. Diverse individuals and cultures failed to achieve cooperation necessary to understand and solve problems – often despite honest and major effort. Decision makers lacked integrity as defined as the agreement between actions and stated values. Participants had insufficient determined, enduring hope to solve the problem. And finally, participants believed our culturally ingrained myths of the separateness of humans from nature, of super abundance, of control, and of wilderness.
Mainstream analysis commonly describes such cases as economic, political, or environmental problems, but looked at in total, the root causes of each of these cases is our failure to understand and value community and citizenship and, taken one step further, the failure of our educational systems to help graduates be ready to do what they need to be ready to do. They are the consequence of educational systems which are more effective at equipping youth to be self-wealth pursuing predators through domination of nature than investing in education which maintains and builds our common wealth. These and other failures of community highlight where we as educators most need to concentrate our efforts. Transposing the seven common “failures” from above into positives, our students need to be ready to know and love our common wealth, recognize and be humbled by complexity; learn to balance their investment in self wealth with necessary investment in common wealth (and to see them not as a zero sum), use diversity as an asset not an impediment; have, demand, and value integrity; have an enduring sense of hope, and replace the four myths with reality. Education is now a major contributor to unworkable relationships between humans and the rest of nature; it is our challenge and opportunity to make it become a major component of the solution.
If our reasoning leads us to conclude that these outcomes are what the SATs, APs, and GREs of the future should test for, then the final step is to move from describing the desired outcomes to learning what educational experiences most effectively and consistently lead to successful student learning in these areas. The combination of personal experience and study of past and current educational practice make this task more straightforward than it would appear. While specific approaches must be adapted to match the unique needs of students and settings, education with the following characteristics appears to take us in the right direction:
1) Involving students in the real work of being active, informed citizens of the concentric, geocentric rings of community to which they belong. The smaller the unit, the sooner students learn through experience that the choice to care can lead to real change.
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see it as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” – Aldo Leopold
“There is an uncanny resemblance between our behaviour toward each other and our behavior toward the earth. …It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.” – Wendell Berry
“The watershed is the first and last nation, whose boundaries, though subtly shifting, are unarguable and the life that flourishes within it constitutes the first kind of community.” – Gary Snyder
2) The thread of understanding of the balance between self-wealth and common wealth runs throughout the curriculum and life of the school.
Daily school life provides an excellent learning lab for this topic, and the study of history and current events provides endless cases of the tension between self wealth and common wealth.
3) The curriculum is driven by asking, understanding, answering, and acting on real questions. Constructing knowledge and meaning from the rising sea of information and building wisdom from studying the relationship between intent, action, and consequences are central.
4) Teachers aspire to the impossible goal of non-advocacy through teaching the important skills of asking and answering questions instead of preaching personal answers.
5) Schools with clear missions are solidly connected to their surrounding community, and student generated new knowledge travels across well worn bridges of cooperation to be used by receptive members of the governmental, businesses, and general communities.
6) Educational goals are reached through the real work of building “way things work” understandings of community health.
7) Integrity – the matching of actions and beliefs – is modeled and highly valued.
“Many people want to change the world, but few want to change themselves.” – Tolstoy
8) Students develop an enduring sense of hope through experience in turning positive ideas into tangible success.
“A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the source of real hope” – Lennox
9) All ways of knowing – mathematical, artistic, scientific, historical – are blended, and real experience stirs student’s hearts as much or more than their minds.
10) Education is “story” based with students learning to be critically aware of both why we tell the stories we tell and what stories we need to tell and pay attention to in order to successfully track the health of our communities. All explanations of phenomena, even the most rule-bound science, are a form of “story”. The ability to “read”, understand, and describe the health of a landscape is given as much emphasis as the ability to read and understand written words. Cause and effect lessons from history provide necessary basis for belief that individual action can shape a positive future.
11) Materials that perpetuate the four deep seated myths of separateness of human well-being from the well-being of nature, of superabundance, of control, and of wilderness are replaced by materials that communicate the assumptions of interdependence, limits, incomplete knowledge of nature, and the reality that both human influence and wildness are found everywhere.
“To treat wilderness as a holy shrine and Kansas and East Saint Louis as a terrain of an altogether different sort is a form of schizophrenia. Either all of the earth is holy or none is. Either every square foot deserves our respect or none does.” – Wes Jackson
12) Students develop a sense of awe and reverence for nature through consistant, patient practice of the skills of observation and communication (see past CLEARING articles by Saul Weisberg, Bob Pyle, and Tony Angell “Artist as Advocate for Nature”)
13) The success of students‚ learning and teachers‚ teaching is assessed through tangible results that are of real value to others. Eg. Students demonstrate mastery in research, mathematical, and writing skills through developing a report on trends in the health of the local neighborhood instead of through academic, standardized tests.
14) The language of “environment” is quietly replaced by language which more accurately communicates our beliefs and supports student learning.
The organizing concept of community, with humans as one part of larger living systems, replaces our current common use of the distinct and deceptively inaccurate concepts of “environment”, “economy”, and “culture”.
I share these approaches as ones which appear to work for me and the schools and projects with which I am involved in, not as a prescription for others. Though there are many working examples of how the approach described above is succeeding, there is much need for improvement and continued innovation. Since results, not talk, are what ultimately matter, the completion of our two opening stories will bring us back to the realities of the current students, and students yet to come, who are counting on us.
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Story 1 – Part B:
The student climbed out of the creek, dried off and acted on the passion that she had discovered. Her remaining high school years were filled with mastering and adding to the knowledge of the creek and watershed, conceiving of and successfully leading a “Creek Keepers” summer camp for middle schoolers, and contributing to the recent decision to rename the golf course after the creek (instead of turning the creek into a golf course.). On graduating she reflected “It [the watershed] is a living system that I have connected with. ..[My work with it] makes me feel part of something bigger than myself”.
These comments stand out in contrast to the bluntly honest – and depressing – comments that we regularly hear from students studying the current human relationship to nature: “Like I might care if I thought I could make a difference.” (“I choose not to care about anything other than self-wealth because experience hasn’t taught me to believe that I can make a difference”). The student in the creek has gone on to apply her citizenship skills to new places and might be considered a model for American Dream 2 where success is seen in lives where investment in self wealth and common wealth merge as one.
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Story 2 – Part B:
Breakfast is finished, lunch made, hair brushed, and we wait at the end of the driveway for the school bus. The unstated question is still there. What our children need to thrive and survive is a deep connection to a living system – their home community – where the questions of whether salmon will return to spawn in our river and whether any children will come to school hungry are seen accurately as one question, not two. They need to learn from experience that this place needs them and that they need it. They need to know and love where their breakfast and shoe leather comes from as much as the alpine meadow in the Glacier Peak Wilderness or the most magical rapid in the depths of the Green River Gorge.
The bus arrives. She climbs through the open doors and up the steps to settle into a seat beside a lunch box clutching friend. Waves are exchanged as the heads grow smaller in a cloud of diesel smoke. I have an enduring hope that we won’t let her down – that family and school will help our children be ready to do what they need to do – but I don’t sleep easily, knowing that there is much to be done and that we live in a world that doesn’t wait.
Peter Hayes, after 20 years of indoor and out of doors teaching and principaling in public and independent schools, as well as serving as Environmental Studies Coordinator at Lakeside School in Seattle, and as Co-coordinator of the Thornton Creek Project, now runs a family woodlot in the Coast Range of Oregon.
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 | Aug 26, 2025 | Environmental Literacy, Equity and Inclusion, Indigenous Peoples & Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Tribes & Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Indigenous Perspectives
and Environmental Education:
Connecting Youth with Plants, Places,
and Cultural Traditions
INTRODUCTION
These are exciting times in our region. We are fortunate to live at the confluence of two currents: the growing integration of Indigenous perspectives in both formal and informal education, and a surge of cultural revitalization in Indigenous communities. In the state of Washington, the 2015 passage of Senate Bill 5433 requires public K-12 schools to teach Indigenous history, culture and sovereignty in collaboration with the tribes nearest their schools. Educators have a rich variety of curricular materials to draw upon, beginning with the Since Time Immemorial curriculum. In the state of Oregon, the 2017 passage of Senate Bill 13 Tribal History/Shared History has led to similar developments in curriculum creation and collaboration between schools and tribes. Simultaneously, Indigenous communities around the region are experiencing a dramatic and wide-ranging cultural resurgence, including language revitalization and the revival of traditional pre-colonial practices. This fertile convergence offers a wealth of new opportunities to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and their students. This special edition’s essays, including contributions by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners, introduce you to these currents and opportunities by focusing on Indigenous relationships with the more-than-human world, and particularly our ties to our plant relatives. We hope that these essays will inspire and guide you as you explore ways to enhance your teaching by accurately and respectfully integrating Indigenous experience and knowledge.
—Rob Efird and Laura Lynn
Co-editors
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 19, 2020 | Schoolyard Classroom
Kindergarten students admire a sunflower held by an Oxbow Farmer Educator while snacking on carrots during their fall field trip. Photo credit: 2016 Jess Eskelsen
Science Through the Seasons
by Shea Scribner
Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center
Carnation WA
igns of the shifting seasonal cycle are all around us. Children are especially keen to notice and appreciate the changing colors of leaves, frantic activities of squirrels, and blossoms slowly turning to fruits on apple trees, but how often do they really get to explore these wonders of nature at the place most specifically designed for learning—their school? With so many subjects to teach and standards to meet, how can teachers follow their students’ passions and incorporate environmental education into their curricula? With an entire class of kids but only one or two teachers to supervise, is venturing outside the classroom a safe and productive use of precious class time?
Beginning in 2016, with funding from an Environmental Protection Agency grant (EPA grant #01J26201), Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center’s team of Farmer Educators and Frank Wagner Elementary School’s Kindergarten teachers dug into these questions to co-develop and teach monthly environmental education lessons in the classroom, around the schoolyard, and on the farm. Through intentional relationship-building meetings and workshops with the teachers, we worked to better understand the specific needs and opportunities we could address through the new partnership between our nonprofit organization and their public school. We found that by following the natural curiosities kids have about the world outside their classroom window, we could address curricular and behavioral challenges and build programs that both captivated the student’s attention and nurtured their enthusiasm for learning. The early learner-focused lesson plans and activities, best practices, and key lessons learned from the project now populate an online compendium on the Oxbow website. We seek to share our story with other formal and informal educators who are working to address similar challenges, and spark ideas for how to incorporate seasonal, developmentally appropriate, place-based environmental education into their practice.
The “Earth Connections: Science Through the Seasons” compendium takes the form of a beautiful tree, a fitting metaphor for a natural system where all parts contribute to the tree’s wholeness and growth to reach its full potential. The roots and trunk serve as the main base of support for plants, representing the foundation and core of our growing partnership with the school—take a peek into the planning process involved in this project, other organizations we partnered with, academic literature which informed our lessons and methods, and best practices for working with students and fellow educators. The branches growing from the sturdy trunk are specific place-based and Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS)-supportive lesson plans, suggested activities, and short videos recorded by the Oxbow educators, linking learning themes throughout the three seasons of the public-school year: fall, winter, and spring. With the overall goals of connecting lessons to the students’ specific environment and building skills of science investigation and inquiry, each experience was additive and built upon to together tackle the NGSS of K-LS1-1: “Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals need to survive.”
Much like our tree changed through the seasons, the students involved in the journey with us sprouted, grew, and transitioned throughout the school year. We invite you to channel the mind of a child as we guide you through the journey of a Frank Wagner Kindergartener experiencing outdoor EE with Oxbow and their teachers.
A volunteer farm naturalist asks kindergarten students about the crops they’re finding on the Kids Farm during a fall fieldtrip. Photo Credit: 2017 Jess Eskelsen
Fall:
Throughout this season, the remaining produce is plucked from Oxbow’s farm fields and pumpkins begin to turn from shiny orange to fuzzy black goo. As vibrant native trees and shrubs drop their leaves, humans and critters alike stash away the remaining treats of the season and work to prepare their homes for the cold, dark winter ahead. So too, young people across the region pack their backpacks full of snacks and supplies, bundle up in rain gear, and transition from summer beaches and sunlit backyards into the warm halls of their school every fall.
For some kindergarteners at Frank Wagner—a Title 1 school where many did not have the opportunity to attend preschool—the first time they transition into the fall season in the classroom can be understandably scary. The students are navigating a whole new environment, different schedule, and unfamiliar social expectations, all without the support of the primary caregivers whom they’ve relied on for so many seasons prior. Teachers are faced with the exceptional task of setting routines, helping every student feel safe, and helping students understand their role in their new classroom community. We found that many of the challenges of the early school year can be addressed through activities and practices that focus on building trust, sharing personal stories, and setting expectations for the new relationships students will build with teachers and one another.
Two students sit together behind large rhubarb leaves, playing a game of hide-and-seek (and finding hidden frogs and insects living in the field) during their spring fieldtrip. Photo Credit: Jess Eskelsen
Oxbow Educators visited the classrooms in the fall and collaborated with the students to construct a “CommuniTree” contract. Together, we used the structures of an apple tree to guide discussion of what sweet “fruits” both students and teachers hope to reap from their experience at school and on the farm, which “beehaviors” will help those fruits mature, and what obstacles to learning might be acting as big “rocks” in the soil, keeping the class’ roots from growing strong. We then began exploring the concept that learning can happen both in the classroom and outdoors through the Inside-Outside sorting activity. Students were given opportunities to express their own understandings of food and nature through prompted drawings, which we used as a baseline for assessing student growth throughout the school year. The Kindergarteners also came out to Oxbow for a Fall Farm Adventure, an introduction to how food grows and the many plants and animals that call a farm home, stoking their curiosity and excitement about the ongoing Farmer visits throughout the year. The fall season also included an introduction to the concept of “habitat,” a recurring and kindergarten-friendly theme that connected student learning about plant and animal needs throughout the rest of the year.
Winter:
For most of us on the west side of the Cascades, winter is cold, dark, and most of all, WET. Farm fields throughout the Snoqualmie River Valley rest quietly under risk of flood while puddles grow into lakes in school parking lots. Rain has shaped the landscape for thousands of years and water continues to connect rural farmland with urban neighborhoods. Dormant plants focus on underground root growth, and many animals must also conserve energy by hibernating or digging deep into warm piles of decomposing fall leaves to survive frosty temperatures.
An Oxbow Farmer Educator helps students find and sample tomatoes growing in a high tunnel during their fall fieldtrip, catching the tail end of the growing season on the Oxbow Kids’ Farm. Photo credit: 2016 Jess Eskelsen
Building on the relationships forged through the fall, winter was a time to begin channeling student’s excitement toward specific learning targets, helping them dig deeper into their wonderments and explore the systems connecting us to one another, and the greater planet we’re all a part of. With now-established routines and a classroom culture helping kids adhere to behavior expectations, students were ready to build on the basics and learn how to ask specific questions, make and share their observations, and consider new concepts. The weather during the winter months kept most of our lessons in the classroom, but certainly didn’t keep the kids from hands-on learning opportunities and ongoing nature connections!
Since things are a bit too muddy at Oxbow in the winter, we brought the farm into the classroom in the form of real live wiggling worms, giving students a chance to gently interact with the creatures as they sorted through the contents of their habitat during the Soil Sorting Activity. Students also identified what components serve as food and shelter for the decomposers to come up with a definition of what “soil is” and then used their observations to design and build a small composting chamber for the classroom. The teachers took this introductory lesson and built on it throughout the winter to address other parts of their curricula and learning targets: helping their students develop fine motor skills by cutting pictures out of seed catalogues and newspaper ads, then sorting the foods into those which worms can eat and those they cannot, and finally gluing their colorful collages onto posters and practicing writing the names of the foods in both English and Spanish. Further exploring habitats and plant and animal needs, we followed student curiosity into the schoolyard to investigate if the schoolyard is a healthy habitat for squirrels and learned how Squirrels and Trees help meet each other’s needs.
The Snoqualmie River flowing past Oxbow joins with the Skykomish River right near Frank Wagner to form the Snohomish River, a perfect natural connection to frame an investigation! As winter transitioned into (a still wet) spring, a Watersheds lesson helped to reinforce the link between farm and school, giving students a chance to work with maps of the actual landscape to trace the route of a raindrop as it would flow down from mountaintops and through interconnected rivers, and illustrate many human and natural features that use and depend on this water.
A kindergarten student carefully draws in her science notebook, documenting a specific apple tree she observed in the orchard. Photo credit: 2017 Jess Eskelsen
Spring:
Early-season native pollinators like blue orchard mason bees are a Farmer Educator’s best friend. Not only do these cute little insects help flowers turn to fruits and seeds, but they do so in a kid-friendly manner, hatching from hardy cocoons into adults friendly enough to hold without fear of a sting! With the warmer weather, students were able to spend more time outdoors exploring nature around the schoolyard and came back out to Oxbow to see how the big pumpkins they harvested back in the fall get their start as tiny seeds in the cozy greenhouse. With spring’s official arrival, the time had come for all that fall fertilizing and deep-winter pondering to transition into a growing, independent entity—be it a seedling or an excited student!
Springtime is a season full of vigorous growth and the kindergarteners were practically bursting to share with us all they’d been learning about through the winter. The students were ready to dynamically explore and understand the many connections between their lives, the farmers, and the plants and animals they saw popping up from the warming soils. Lessons in the springtime harnessed this energy by playing active games during multiple field trips to the farm and further investigating the nature around the schoolyard, all with a focus on connecting students more intimately with their sense of place.
Through an early spring field trip focused on Animals in the Water, students participated in a macroinvertebrate study, closely examining the “little bugs” that rely on cool, toxin-free water in the oxbow lake, and played games embodying the flow of nutrients through the freshwater food web these bugs are an integral part of. Their Spring Farm Adventure field trip and Orchard Stations had a focus on lifecycles and natural processes they could observe firsthand: how the buds on the orchard trees would soon (with a little help from the farmers, sunny and wet weather, and pollinators) become summer’s sweet fruits, and how the growing season for most food crops in this region is really just beginning as their school year comes to an end. As an end-line assessment of the student’s change in environmental understanding, we asked the students to again “draw a picture of nature” and were impressed to see the concepts of life cycles, interdependence of organisms, habitat needs, and where food comes from recalled and illustrated so eagerly by the students.
Our Tree
Behind every future environmental steward there is a spark of wonder which must be fanned to a flame, often with the support of dedicated educators and an array of tried and tested strategies. The Foundation of the tree includes a selection of Best Practices, which are continually growing. These ideas and strategies are intended to prepare students for outdoor science learning and provide teachers with the tools and skills to feel confident teaching in the outdoors.
Of course, none of the curricular branches would be strong without the solid structure of the trunk and roots. Building strong relationships with the teachers, school district, and other nonprofit partners throughout the project was integral to understanding the specific needs of the kindergarten classes and how informal educators can best support their in-class learning. We look forward to continuing to work with the students through this spring and beyond as we help build a school garden on their campus, giving students of every grade more opportunities to discover the magic of growing plants, harvesting food, and caring for worms and native wildlife. Our Earth Connections compendium will continue to be populated with additional resources and we hope to hear from educators like you about how you’ve used the materials, your recommendations for improvement, or ideas for expansion!
We are thrilled to share the fruits of this partnership with fellow educators and hope you find inspiration to continue exploring and learning from nature, both inside the classroom and around the schoolyard, maybe even taking a field trip to a local farm or community garden! You can learn more about Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center at www.oxbow.org.
About the author:
Shea Scribner is an Environmental Education Specialist and Summer Camp Director at Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center in Carnation, WA.
