Well, here we are, posting our first blog. We’ve called the Blog ‘Forest School Chronicles” because we believe in the importance of documenting, and creating an historical record, of a national movement in education to see more children outdoors, engaged in the natural world.
This week, at Forest School Canada, we’ve seen an increase in registrants to the ‘Forest School Practitioners Course’ being piloted this summer in Ontario and New Brunswick. We’ve spoken to an educator and researcher in a remote Labrador community who is launching a Forest School program within an Innu School Board, and I just got off the phone with a professor and founder/supporter at the Saanich Nature Preschool in Victoria, BC. Our dialogue involved reflections on prescriptive versus experiential and emergent curriculum. What a week!
In terms of the future of this blog, we invite practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers to be a guest blogger for Forest School Canada. This will be a venue to share your own observations and learning around Forest and Nature-based education, and we hope to see all kinds of creative and collaborative projects being highlighted and shared. If you are interested in being a guest-blogger, please contact us at [admin@forestschoolcanada.ca].
Until next time…enjoy your long weekend, spend time in nature, give yourself the gift of self-direction AND self-reflection.
Cheers, Marlene Power