Lessons from the Field

As an environmental science educator, I spend a lot of time teaching about nature, but this season I’ve been finding that as it turns out, nature has a lot to teach us, too. Sometimes I can let the trees, the meadow, and the lichen teach for me. They show us how to respect each other’s boundaries, how to celebrate differences, how to work together, and how to lean on each other’s strengths in order to exist in a new place. These lessons felt incredibly relevant to me heading into the first week of November, a notoriously busy time at NatureBridge Yosemite. I wanted to focus on messages of kindness and inclusivity with my students, I wanted them to feel a sense of belonging in this new space, and I also hoped that they would share those messages with others.

Outdoor environmental education programs like NatureBridge offer a unique and transformative approach to engaging students. A recent study by the Stanford University and the North American Association for Environmental Education shows that overnight outdoor school can have profound impacts on students by improving their academic and emotional development. Here are five ways outdoor school programs can advance your students’ learning this school year.

NatureBridge created a fire ecology curriculum to educate, inform and transform student perception of fire so that future generations of scientists and stewards would contribute to this vital field. Part of the fire ecology curriculum is to balance people’s lived experience with the complex nature of fire. Though the increase in fires due to climate change-related factors is alarming, fires in and of themselves are part of a healthy forest ecosystem. For the students who learn fire ecology through NatureBridge, reframing their mindset to think about living with fire can be one of the most profound impacts of the program.

"I used to ice climb quite a bit and often without a rope. In 1998, I took a 100 foot fall...and I was in a wheelchair for months. I also shattered my femur and broke my shoulder a year ago in a really bad paragliding accident in Mexico. So...yeah, I’ve banged up a few things.”

Listening to these injuries listed off one after another, it’s easy to believe you’re hearing from an X-Games athlete or a professional adrenaline junkie; a thrill-seeker and risk-taker of the highest order. Who you’re actually hearing from is Jeff Crow, NatureBridge’s Director of Risk Management.

In this week's Lessons From the Field, we learn about local Bay Area marine life from NatureBridge's Rachel Loud as she shares about her more than a decade of volunteer experience with The Marine Mammal Center.

In this week's Lessons From the Field, we hear from John Conant of NatureBridge at Golden Gate on all things ethnobotany and the importance of respecting and understanding the deeply rooted traditions associated with the plants of the Marin Headlands.

In this week's Lessons From the Field, NatureBridge Operations Manager Jenn Peach takes us through the Happy Isles Fen—a rare example of a fen ecosystem in the Yosemite Valley.

In this week's Lessons From the Field series, NatureBridge educator Nessarose Schear shares her experience working on the National Park Service restoration project of the Mountain and Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, the sister parks of Yosemite.

In this week's Lessons From the Field, Golden Gate Mentor Teacher Deepak Dathatri takes us on the journey of California migratory birds.