The Rookery

It happened more than once. Our naturalist at Wolf Ridge would lean over to me in the middle of a class and say, “They’re just so…interested.” The naturalists were used to having to get a class interested. They were used to being the ones who modeled curiosity, at least at first. But not for the kids from Prairie Creek. “They ask so many questions!” “It’s like I don’t have to do anything and they are finding things to learn about”

What makes our kids different?

In part, I think it is that they have been learning “The Wolf Ridge Way” for a long time. Prairie Creek has been coming to Wolf Ridge since the mid eighties. Their pedagogy and our pedagogy have become intertwined. I know that my twenty visits have shaped who I am as an educator. My journals from early visits note how every naturalist seemed genuinely excited about what the students were discovering. I knew that they had taught the class countless times and had seen deer poop countless times — but when students exclaimed that they had found some scat, the naturalist would wade through the snow with an urgency that communicated to the students that their discovery was important and worthy of wonder.

I learned so much from those early visits and began to incorporate what I learned into my lessons. Eventually, I grew brave enough to declare Wednesday “Forest School Day” — we would spend every Wednesday morning outside learning, no matter what. I knew that what we learned might be unpredictable but that whatever we learned would be deep and memorable.

In those first years at Wolf Ridge, I so admired the sense of discovery and adventure that the naturalists engendered in my students. I learned so much from watching them and, later, learning from their teacher, Joe Walewski. Joe taught us to teach through story and to have the students help us create that story. “What do you think happened?” “What do you notice?” “Why might that be?” (He is also one of the most genuine educators I have ever watched — he truly marvels at students’ discoveries and makes them realize their genius.)

Over time, what I learned about experiential learning at Wolf Ridge seeped into every aspect of my teaching, not just Forest School. I strive for all of my lessons to have a way for students to discover something and teach us about it. I’ve come to know that the most powerful learning emanates from them, not from me.

So, to return to that initial question – why were our kids different? Why were they interested and curious and full of questions? I think it’s because they’ve learned to be. More important than parroting back any content standard, our students have learned that the world is theirs to discover. Their questions matter. Their ideas are powerful.