Forest School

PLAY

Nature provides infinite possibilities for play as students interact with their surroundings and each other. A fallen log becomes a spacecraft setting out to explore Mars; a low hollow in the landscape becomes the perfect dramatic stage; collaboration is required to connect two stick forts with a tall cargo net.  Play creates opportunities for students to bring their whole selves-- physical, emotional, and social beings-- into the task at hand, and in doing so, the learning that arises from these situations imprints, creates lasting neuroconnections. Additionally, with opportunities to play in mixed-age groups, older students gain opportunities to practice leadership, while younger students learn from and advance with older peers. Mixed-age play opportunities reduce stagnation in their play and learning (Peter Gray (2015) Free to Learn). 
 

At the Forest School, each day includes at least one 90-minute block of outdoor student-guided play.  This daily uninterrupted time for play, discovery and inquiry fuels the educator-guided learning in the structured portion of the afternoons for that week, month or season.  Students will see that their discoveries, events, questions, and interactions from the play time matter as they fuel their learning and guided lessons.

INQUIRY 

We believe students have an innate curiosity to learn. Our role as educators is to create the space, opportunity, and context for students to connect their internal motivations with weekly objectives. Daily, after the long play session and before lunch, students choose from a menu of offerings to enhance creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, fine motor, and collaboration skills. Options may include seasonal ecosystem changes, math and literacy practice, and handcrafts. Take penmanship, for example: fine motor skills for penmanship grow both in writing practice and in handcrafts such as whittling, chopping snack ingredients, weaving grasses, or sewing. A group of students interested in lettering and fonts work to create an advertisement for a dramatic production they will perform to demonstrate a recent study of plant cycles. Educators seize this opportunity to practice cursive writing and invite the actors to practice cursive lettering.

At times students work across age-groups to solve “low-floor, high-ceiling” problems that are accessible to all learners. These problems challenge multiple sets of children concurrently as students analyze and solve a problem at their skill level. One such example is estimating how many leaves will fall from a single maple tree and whether or not the pile will be big enough to jump in when raked together. The “low-floor” of this problem enables all students to determine a low and high estimate for how many leaves may fall from the tree. Advanced students determine the tools and measurements required to arrive at an accurate approximation and perform complex calculations. Through this single activity, students count, skip-count, estimate, add, multiply, measure, tally and graph data, construct arguments from evidence, and communicate reasoning.

CREW

Students need routine and boundaries.  In removing the physical walls that often serve as traditional structure, the routines and rituals of the group provide that assurance and certainty. The crew is the group of approximately 15 students and lead educator who are most connected. They meet daily to open and close the day, support each other, and act as touchpoints for smiles, frowns, discoveries, and celebrations. The lead educator of the crew serves also as the main point of contact for the family, communicating formally and informally about growth, concerns, and highlights of each child’s experience.  

 
Structured Learning for Deep Connections 

Learners meet daily in expertise groupings to build skills based on demonstrated needs. We believe students learn at their individual pace, which does not always obey the standard grade-level expectations. Further, learning is not a smooth and steady trajectory, but rather it is often jagged, where large leaps occur after several interactions. Learning intersects with developmental readiness. Labels “ahead” and “behind” stall curiosity and growth mindsets. To better accomplish differentiated and personalized learning, our flexible expertise groupings bring students together around a common skill required to make the next leap ahead. Students meet with a teacher to receive direct instruction and practice with fellow learners, regardless of age, who work on similar skill development. 

In addition to daily expertise groupings and because reading is one of the keys to success, our program capitalizes on the lunch period to incorporate further reading instruction. Every day as students settle into their meals with their crew, they actively listen to the Read Aloud. In Read Aloud, teachers strategically model effective reading skills.  After lunch, children read independently.

Diversity, Inclusion, & Access 

We believe nature-based, experiential learning is best for all students. Our goal is to make our program available to all learners. We also acknowledge that the population who currently views themselves as outdoor adventurers is narrow, and through intentional practice, it is our aim to help students of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and identities see themselves as belonging in outdoor spaces. Finally, we aim to guide children to see the vastness of their experiences with relation to a wide variety of cultural outdoor and nature-based practice, especially acknowledging the practices and wisdom of the local indigenous peoples who have developed outdoor practices particular to this area.

At this time, the ability to launch the innovative teaching and learning practices of The Forest School requires an independent school model, which means we must use funding independent of the public school system to support our program. As such, we attempt to supplement some of the costs to families with grants and financial aid to make the Forest School program more available for a wider population of families. Furthermore, The Forest School model relies upon all students having frequent interactions with Forest School educators; therefore, while we aspire to be a learning program for all, we must balance this with our current resource capacity. As we continue to build the program in future years, our goal is to expand our reach so more families may consider enrolling their children in nature-based education.

Reflection & Documentation 

Daily, students reflect upon their experiences through written, artistic, and quantitative expression. Learners keep a journal in which they document learning and ask questions for further research. The journal serves as a communication tool between the family and school. In addition to paper journals, older students use iPads to create seasonal portfolios to track their learning and growth.  Journals, observations, running records, and other informal assessments provide a snapshot of a child’s development and guide instruction. Formal assessments in reading and math twice a year convey students’ progress toward national benchmarks. 

The Forest School offers family conferences in October, January, and May. Learning best occurs when common practices are shared between home and school. Conferences are one of the methods through which we share practices and learn about your family and home environment. In March, we also prepare narrative feedback for families to provide an overall portrait of the student and their growth.

Place-based Learning 

We live in a beautiful place with a rich history. On the shores of Lake Gitchigami/Lake Superior, the world’s largest lake, we are part of one of the world’s largest watersheds.  Migratory birds grace us with their flight in the spring and fall.  In only a ten mile radius, we experience the rocky shores of the North Shore, the sandy isthmus of Park Point, and the ecosystems of inland lakes.  This land has a rich and complicated history. First inhabited by Native Americans, including the Anishinaabe, it was later traveled by the Voyageurs and settled by Northern European immigrants, and is part of the 1854 Treaty Land. We honor the many stories of this land with special reverence to the First Peoples of this region. 

Compassion

Compassion is the cornerstone of a joyful community.  While playing in the woods, wading through the creek, climbing trees, and observing wildlife, children connect with the natural world. From connection grows appreciation, from appreciation arises love, from love flourishes compassion. From compassion comes responsibility for the earth and the commitment to act to preserve it. Additionally, children foster meaningful relationships with each other grounded in compassion. As they build together, cook, pretend, problem solve, inquire, and discover together, they learn to care for one another.  At the Forest School, relationships are defined by mutuality, respect, and service. These values pervade the Forest School, defining the relationships of teacher to teacher, teacher to learner, student to student.

Self-worth & Resilience

At the Forest School, we value failure. Yes, failure. When given the opportunity to play without the judgments or interruptions of adults, children throw themselves wholeheartedly into experiences. They tackle big problems. They fail. They implement a new plan until they reach their goal.  This is the definition of resilience:  in the face of failure, continuing to try.  Forest School learners foster self-worth through their repeated experiences of failure, persistence, and success buoyed by the love and support of their learning community.  

Even before the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, stress, anxiety, and depression had risen to alarming levels amongst students (Denizet-Lewis, 2017). After almost a year of reintroducing students to the daily routines of school life, it is clear that the Pandemic only exacerbated this trend. According to PEW research released in November 2021, the impact on students’ mental health has resulted in increased disruptive behaviors, inability for students to focus, lack of effort, feelings of pointlessness, and increased violence, bullying, and suicidal ideation. The American Academy of Pediatrics among others view students’ mental health as an emergency that will last much longer than the end of the Pandemic.

This is why building resilience is central to the practices of the Forest School. Local University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) professor Julie Ernst’s (2021) research over the past several years has demonstrated that children in nature-based learning settings have greater opportunity to work on becoming competent, build social connections, practice self-regulation, and lean into taking initiative–all positive protective factors for increasing resilience and decreasing the impact of anxiety, stress, and depression. Building resilience also promotes fluid adaptation as students’ environments shift around them. Ernst asserts that the dynamic and playful learning that occurs in nature-based education helps children take responsibility for their learning, solve problems as they arise, assist each other, and launch into challenging activities without relying on the presence of adults to advance their learning. Even as we consider students’ resilience to being outside in colder weather, that knowledge of understanding the difference between the warning signs of painful tingling versus the the brush of cold in one’s extremities connects to the emotional and feeling processes students use to build emotional intelligence.

Reversing the Educational Paradigm 

While in the traditional classroom, play is a break from learning, in the Forest School play is the laboratory for exploration, problem solving, creativity, communication, and personal and interpersonal growth.  While in the traditional classroom, students learn inside and go outside for recess, at the Forest School, students immerse themselves in nature, building a personal connection to the earth, experiencing the seasons first hand, and learning to inquire, wonder, savor, and share discovery. Likewise, lunch, a time during traditional school when students are given more freedom and time for socialization, lunch in The Forest School leverages this time for more focused literacy learning. Because we intentionally design our time around freedom, choice, and socialization, we use those “lost” minutes from a traditional structure to offer time for read alouds and independent reading under the guidance of the crew’s lead educator. Therefore, while in the traditional classroom, students require “downtime” to recover from the barrage of teacher input and direct instruction, at the Forest School students come to instruction energized by their self-directed play and discovery.