by Matt Armstrong
At the 2013
Minnesota Conference of Science Educators in Duluth, I attended a presentation
about using a school forest to enhance outdoor education opportunities. Seeing
as Cedar Park has been designated as a school forest by the DNR (way to go
Kelli!) this seminar seemed like an obvious choice to attend. Presenters Robin
Halverson and Chris Hanson teach science at Forestview Middle School in Baxter,
MN. Eight years ago, the school was granted a 63-acre school forest just
outside their back doors. While this is clearly on a much larger scale than
what we will have at Cedar Park, the implementation opportunities will be very
similar for us in the coming months and years.
The main
thing to remember when beginning a school forest is that it is an ongoing process.
No one is expecting us to have a completely integrated and functioning
curriculum utilizing the forest on day one. It will be a process that we will
take steps at a time. Starting small and adding onto ideas over time is the
best way to build up school forest usage. We can start by looking for
individual activities that connect with our current curriculum. Our
kindergarteners could go out and plant a tree and as a class adopt that tree.
They care for it during the course of the year. They can observe it as it
grows. They can name it. Then as they move into first grade, they have this
tree to which they have a vested interest. I thought one of the most
fascinating things Robin and Chris talked about was students being able to care
for a tree all through elementary school and then when they got to Forestview
Middle, they had a connection to their tree. We could try to foster the same
for our students during the course of their elementary years.
Another
important aspect of a school forest is fostering a sense of community. A school
forest is something that students should have a stake in; it belongs to them.
If they feel ownership and responsibility for the forest, they will more
actively participate, they will begin to care about what they are doing and they
will make strong educational connections to the work they are doing. Along with
involving students in the forest, we should also foster community support for
the forest. It is on public land, after all, and the community should also feel
some ownership in it. If we can get parents involved in helping us care for the
forest that will help relieve some of the workload from the teachers. A school
forest can be a great community builder and we should take advantage of that.
The final
point that I want to present is that we will be well supported in our
implementation of our school forest. The people at the DNR that are responsible
for setting up our forest will also be more than willing to help us support it.
They will help us take care of the forest and they will also help us come up
with ways to utilize our new forest. They have been doing this for many years
and are very enthusiastic about their work. They take pride in it and we should
as well. An outdoor forest makes for incredible outdoor learning capabilities
and as we move forward, we can look forward to a school forest program that
will nurture our students’ appreciation for the outdoors.
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