Classrooms Without Walls

Growing up with apple trees to climb, dogs and cats as constant companions, and a wooded playground behind our house, nature was my teacher. Damming a stream, building forts in the underbrush and creating imaginary worlds filled hours of playtime. Riding my bike for miles broadened my horizons while providing healthy exercise.

The woods are gone, replaced by houses. The two-lane roads have become speedways clogged with traffic. And nowadays, my parents would be concerned for my safety, keeping me out of the woods, off my bike and away from strangers. Author Richard Louv in “Last Child in the Woods” cautions that the new landscape of childhood includes the emergence of what he calls nature-deficit disorder.

Despite being surrounded by mountains, ponderosa forests, snow-fed rivers and lakes and the high desert, many Central Oregon children are disconnected from the natural world around them. Between parents’ work schedules and safety concerns to lists of extracurricular activities and the lure of electronics, days often pass without any time spent exploring nature.

Outdoor School (ODS), one of the antidotes to nature-deficit disorder, is a residential outdoor school program in which students experience life in a camp setting for multiple days and nights, providing an ideal environment for learning, personal growth and connecting with nature.

A concept that has been around in one form or another since 1930, ODS started in Oregon in the spring of 1958, with a pilot project launched in the Crook County School District. Thirty-two sixth-grade students from Crook County Elementary School spent five days at Camp Tamarack located in the Cascades near Suttle Lake.

Other programs enjoyed wide acceptance in Central Oregon starting in the 1960s, but fell on hard times with the educational budget cuts in the 1990s.

There is renewed interest in ODS as more concern develops over our children’s nature deficit. Bend-La Pine Schools has allotted $50,000 in next year’s school budget for experiential education, which includes Outdoor School.

Support for ODS is growing as a variety of organizations who believe in the importance of children being out in nature provide financial support, including Carly’s Kids, the Gray Family Foundation and Friends of Outdoor School. In the Oregon Legislature, a house bill (HB 2516), also known as Outdoor School for Everyone, if passed, will provide funding for every Oregon fifth- or sixth-grade student to attend Outdoor School.

Last year, Ray Price, a fifth-grade teacher at Juniper Elementary School in Bend, took his students to Camp Tamarack to get them out of the classroom and into Mother Nature’s laboratory, where their abstract learning was reinforced with concrete experience. They were not memorizing information for a test. Rather, their hands-on, intimate contact with nature became a part of them.

“Without having to do anything, placing students out in nature puts them in a place of wonder and awe.”

Price extolls the value of having students learn “outside of the bell schedule.”

Experiences in nature change students in ways that standardized tests can’t measure. New friends, traditions, campfire songs and skits provide students with some of the most enduring memories and life lessons.

“Without a doubt, you can’t educate the whole child without tapping into their creative, natural rhythms,” Price added.

Students succeed in conquering inner fears, such as one of Price’s students who wanted to be changed into a different small group because there was “no one I’m going to get along with” in his group. He was encouraged to give it a try and during the closing ceremony, when students pass a candle and share a fear they overcame or a joy they didn’t expect, the student admitted, “I’m so glad I stuck with it. I would have missed all this. I manned up.”

Charlie Anderson, owner and director of Camp Tamarack, which offers ODS sessions in the fall and spring, believes there are many benefits to the ODS experience, from cooperative learning to practical problem-solving.

Teamwork skills are also needed as the kids conduct field studies. And succeeding at new challenges such as canoeing and archery helps develop self-esteem.

When students study flora, fauna and fire and the impact humans have on those things, they begin to understand the relationship between people and the environment and the importance of sustainability.

ODS encourages children to become involved in nature-based activities such as stream restoration, litter cleanup and tree planting, activities offered for children by organizations such as the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council and Trout Unlimited. But it also fosters a deeper respect for the power of imagination.

“If between the ages of 7 and 12 children don’t get positive outdoor experiences, their chances of becoming outdoor enthusiasts as adults decline drastically,” said Adam Sather, director of RAD Camps, which offers kids unstructured, supervised free play outdoors throughout Central Oregon.

Sather has translated a lifetime of outdoor experience into a business, providing “guided discovery” through adventures, where kids explore, hike, swim, fish, play and soak up nature.

The camps teach valuable lessons without the kids even realizing they are learning about themselves and their world. They catch snakes and frogs and learn to return the wild creatures to their homes. They are free to play, explore and use their imagination, while learning the importance of leaving no trace.

Sather’s passion is evident as he describes RAD Camps and how he “cares about every single kid.”

And the campers love what he offers.

“This is the best camp I’ve ever been to. I just want to come here every day,” one camper exclaimed.

Central Oregon is rich with organizations that offer a multitude of opportunities for children to get outdoors into nature. The Deschutes Land Trust offers walks on their preserves for children and their families to experience birds and butterflies and water wonders. Children who might not otherwise have the opportunity to explore nature are taken on hikes by the local chapter of the Sierra Club.

The Deschutes Children’s Forest, a local network of 17 Central Oregon places and programs, collaborates for the benefit of all youths’ healthy minds and bodies as well as healthy forests.

At their Kansas Street location in Bend, The Environmental Center has a Learning Garden where children plant, tend and harvest crops while learning about composting and growing organic. They take kids on field trips to the landfill and waste management treatment plants as well as the local watershed to demonstrate the importance of sustainability and conservation.

People love Oregon for its scenic beauty, the environment and their connection to the land. With the resurgence of ODS, local children are given opportunities to play and learn in nature so that they, too, will grow up to understand and appreciate the importance of the natural systems that sustain us.

Being out in the woods helps kids understand their relationship to the natural world and what healthy looks like — for themselves, the environment, their community and the world.

Price related the story of a fifth-grade girl who, upon completing a water study during Outdoor School at Camp Tamarack, said, “Now I know what healthy water’s supposed to look like.”