Nature's Classroom- - Forest kindergartens in the Tennessee valley.

Support for Greater Chattanooga is provided by EPB Fiber Optics and UNUM. I like to go in the forest and see plants a lot. You can smell them by just doing this. Smell. Being outside with no walls around you. Just that open sky. That freedom, I think is what children need. There's something about that openness that opens them up. As a classroom teacher, I instinctively knew the best way for children to learn was to take them out of the classroom. I think a lot of parents in particular these days are concerned about risk being outside. And so one of the foundational principles of outdoor education and forest kindergarten is that that is an important part of development. That children learn how to deal with the risks that are inherent in an outdoor setting. I like to consider Wahatchee School kind of the mothership. It kind of started here. We were the first forest kindergarten in the state of Tennessee. And so my goal has always been to make this a model. We still need another rock over here. The idea of outdoor education, of course, is immersion in nature. So children come here for a full immersion experience. That means they stay outside, whatever the weather. What instrument is that? Just about any subject can be taught in an outdoor setting. The history of outdoor education is really quite ancient. In more modern times, you see it probably emerging around the turn of the 20th century. And particularly in Europe, northern Europe, a number of countries, Scandinavia, Denmark, you have the use of forest education in Germany. Even the term kindergarten is a German term. And it means child's garden. My biggest concern right now is the disconnect between nature and human beings. That disconnect is bad for us in every way, physically, mentally, spiritually. And so I think this movement to getting children back into nature has a lot to do with the concern of being disconnected from it. What do you see in the tree? I see more trees. The fear is that these kids are going to be behind academically. People think, well, anybody can just go outside and play in the park, so how is this education, how is this beneficial? But when you start looking at the research and say, no, these kids actually do better academically. This is our favorite soup, one of our favorite recipes. In math, reading, and language art, in all of the hard skills we want them to gain at those foundational levels, they're always better. Forest Kindergarten runs the whole gamut of structured teaching to allowing the children to direct the teaching. The European philosophy is the teacher is the facilitator. The teacher is not there to give information to the children to direct their learning. The teacher is there to stand back, allow the children to explore, discover on their own, and direct their own learning. The teacher is there to support that. And then, of course, they can give information as is necessary. And to me, it's probably the most powerful way for children to learn because it's their discovery, and they're excited about it, and they're interested in it. I experienced firsthand the benefits for children with, for instance, ADHD in being in an outdoor setting when I was a teacher. The child that had struggled with staying on task in the classroom and following directions when he was outside, when they were outside, it was for some reason they were able to focus. They were excited. They were following directions. Our parents tell us that their children are becoming, they're much more independent. They can do things on their own. Socially, they get along better together. It's wonderful that we have a private school here, and parents can bring their children here, but every child should have this experience. And to see it integrated into public school curriculum and all school curriculum, that was my long-term goal, was to see it become a part of public education. About the time I started exploring the idea of starting a forest kindergarten, I was also working at Gilbert Elementary as a consultant for outdoor education. And Matt Harris at Gilbert and I started talking about forest kindergarten, and he was also excited about the concept. It can be done in a regular public school. It just takes a little bit of creativity and a little bit of freedom. We had kind of developed an outdoor ed program, so we knew that we had the space. We started off with grade-level research projects, and each one of those projects had some aspect to get the kids outside. He's going to the orange. He tried the orange. From there, we kind of progressed to trying to get every kid to spend an hour a day outside. We try to do a lot of the outdoor education concepts that have been around for a long time, but we try to be really connected to the standards and make sure that we're being efficient in covering the material that we need to. Forest kindergarten, they spend half their day every day outside, rain or shine. Curriculum-wise, year one was a learning process. We tried to go exactly by the book, and the book wasn't written for public schools. We have two hours a day, usually after lunch. Some days we spend all day out, and the morning's more instructional time where I'm actually leading and teaching. Talk about what animals need, and you just did. But the two hours after lunch is child-directed play, child-directed exploration. At the end of our adventure session, they come to the forest, the pine forest, and they sit at their own tree, and they have their own journals and pencils, and that's the time we have them to write down their discoveries of the day. You know, year one, that was a concern of mine. Are they going to be close to grade level, or are they going to be able to transition into a normal class with their peers? And they came out slightly ahead of their peers. I don't know that I can attribute that to forest kindergarten because we don't have the long-term data yet, but I can say that they were not behind. I want us to kind of be something that can be replicated. I want to see Gilbert kind of be a tool used to spread it to other schools, whether it's our county or Chattanooga or Hamilton County. There's just so much research and documentation showing that it's effective, showing that it's the right thing to do. It's been the most exciting thing for me, is to see it actually happening here in Chattanooga, to see the interest in public schools now. Chattanooga is a place where people come because they love the outdoors. This is where people can see it working. I would love to see at all levels, starting with education of teachers and moving right on through to administrators of schools and administrators in county offices and on through to principals, understanding enough so that instead of seeing this as something fringe or weird, that it's seen as something that is very foundational to the well-balanced development of any student at any level. To me, probably the joy of learning, the excitement about learning, is what sparks lifelong learning. So when children are excited about learning when they're really young, they can carry that excitement through school. What I've noticed is some of the teachers who have been through our program who are utilizing this method, first of all, notice how much more they enjoy teaching. And they also are finding that their kids enjoy school more. So there's just a level of loving to learn that has come along with this. If you're a fan of Greater Chattanooga, support it! 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