Champion Teachers

For Tashanda Gilies-Jones, hands-on activities are at the heart of an education that leads to true understanding and transformation. In 2014, Tashanda chaperoned an ECS seventh-grade trip to NatureBridge’s Southern California campus in the Santa Monica Mountains. More than ten years later, she’s still bringing students back to experience NatureBridge programs.

On Tuesday, October 14, NatureBridge hosted a Teacher Night at Hidden Oaks Nature Center in Annandale, VA for a meaningful evening of connection, exploration, and learning with a group of dedicated educators from across Northern Virginia—including teachers from Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Prince William County Public Schools, and several local private schools.

Sixth grade teacher Stephen Sugay knows student success requires going beyond typical coursework to include personal development and interpersonal connections. “We try to foster community building and couple that with actual learning in other subject areas,” he says. “NatureBridge helps us achieve those things.”

Growing up in western Sonoma County, CA, Anna Kennedy spent much of her childhood exploring the outdoors. But it wasn’t until her sixth grade class visited NatureBridge’s Golden Gate campus and her group embarked on their challenge hike in the Marin Headlands that Anna “had this moment of realizing I enjoy hiking!” That experience, coupled with a memorable night walk on the beach, set Anna on a path of discovery, study, and fieldwork that ultimately brought her back to NatureBridge Golden Gate in Fall 2023—as a seventh grade teacher with students of her own.

“I’ve taught for sixteen years…and I have always wanted to experience something like NatureBridge.” For many students, the chance to experience nature and environmental education at our national parks is a unique opportunity they didn’t know existed before coming to NatureBridge. For Forks Middle School sixth grade science teacher Kim Kearns, bringing a class to NatureBridge represents the realization of a long-held dream.

For Kathryn, it is essential that the learning experiences her students have outside the classrooms work in tandem with what they are learning in the classroom.

One of the many joys we get to experience at NatureBridge is the frequent return of supporters and friends who have had a lasting impact on students as well as our staff. Such is the case with Maryhien Pham, an eighth grade teacher at Lawson Middle School in Northern California who has been bringing students to our Yosemite campus for 10 years.

In the fall of 2022, I brought a group of 54 eighth graders to NatureBridge for the first time since the Covid pandemic shut down the school district in March of 2020.

Mary visited us as a student back in 1977 when NatureBridge was known as the Yosemite Institute. Nearly 20 years later, Mary completed the cycle when she returned as a teacher, bringing her first group of eighth graders to our Yosemite campus.