Struggle in Paradise: Three Critical Challenges for Forest Education

The 'nature based' education movement has been growing steadily for decades, with Forest Schools, nature camps, after school programs and forest bathing offerings gaining in popularity in communities around the world. This is encouraging to see and it feels good to know that more and more people are looking for, asking for and in some cases, actually registering for these kinds of experiences!

Note: I don't have actual client attendance reports or cumulative comparison data from all of the nature education organizations in the US or globally, so, take my generalizations with a grain of salt. (Your results may vary!). It would be great to have that data, though!

The research and studies that have been ongoing keep confirming what we already know: Nature is good for human beings, and helps us in a multitude of ways as children, as teens and as adults. Every week another article makes the rounds, which is great news, and incrementally, it moves the needle a little closer to critical mass of mainstream acceptance of these truths which leads to public sector action on a larger, more impactful scale.

However, there are some unresolved issues in nature movement, that currently threaten our momentum and keeps us from making more and faster progress, and we need to talk about it. If we are trying to build for the future, it's vital that we start with a stable and strong foundation, as any good builder knows!

The Experience Dilemma: It's difficult to grow a nature program if you don't have experienced, trained professional staff. This experience falls in two primary categories: One: Real working knowledge of nature, crafts, arts, games, activities and skills, and Two: Real working knowledge of child/teen/adult behavioral awareness, communication skills, supervisory skills, therapeutic intervention skills, and crisis management.

The bottom line is, we can't take someone off the street and insert them into our programs because we have a large demand for programs and large groups, even if they are 'super nice' and 'really good people'.

I used to think that it was the 'hard skills' experienced staff that were the key to our wilderness summer camp programs, until I recognized that it was actually the staff who could create an emotionally safe environment and actually cared and connected to the students. This really expanded my understanding back in the day, and it's still true today, maybe more than ever.

I also realized that I couldn't just install recent graduates with environmental education type majors in our unique nature program or forest school and expect good results. They needed to understand what we were doing, how it worked and where their strengths could be best offered to create something transformative and magical.

The types of training and experience needed for most schools varies widely for each program. A bushcraft school for adults can't easily add a Forest School Educator into their instructor team because the trainings for each of these programs is very, very different. Likewise, a science based environmental educator is not always going to be easily integrated into an after school nature program, where students have been 'learning all day' and don't necessarily want to study nature in an academic manner after school.

There are always exceptions to my generalizations, of course, but overall, this problem is not going to go away as our nature connection education field grows and demand increases. This gap in our infrastructure will be a bottleneck that will lead to directors hiring inexperienced staff and 'hope it all works out', (fingers crossed). I've seen this in LOTS of programs of all kinds, and it is difficult to fully comprehend the impact it has on the program and the participants.

I witnessed this firsthand at a school where we delivered nature activities for their after school program. This school is in a very rural part of upstate New York, and it had limited candidates to choose from for several of their staff positions, and they hired a few people who were very heavy handed in their approach to discipline, all communications and presence. These people in turn were also 'training' the teen peer leaders in this kind of Deloris Umbrage type approach (Harry Potter reference) and the students really struggled in dealing with this energy every time we would show up. The enrollment for this free, grant driven enrichment program struggled as a result. I discussed my observations with the coordinator, and she agreed but also offered her own perspective that 'If I hadn't hired those individuals, I would have not been able to offer ANY program to ANY of the students, at all, and the community/school would have missed out on everything.' A valid point and a decision that administrators and directors have to make all of the time. She just didn't have enough qualified candidates from which to choose her preferred staff.

Investing in a variety of training programs is absolutely key to our long term success.

The Compensation Problem: The inconsistency of salary/pay expectations across the wide spectrum of nature programs is an additional challenge that doesn't appear to be going away any time soon either. This ties into the previous challenge because it's hard to want to attend trainings or college level courses at sometimes considerable expense, for a job that doesn't pay enough to actually live on.

It's also hard to quantify what a camp counselor who's 17 should be paid to learn how to lead games and support a nature program, when they also live primarily at home as a dependent and have almost no living expenses to cover after their summer adventure, and many programs are caught in the headlights when they offer extremely low pay and it doesn't match the new minimum wage requirements. The salary of a camp director, or homeschool program educator or a public school teacher can all vary widely from state to state or even city to city. Regardless of the program model, the push for livable wages and equity is here to stay, and it's definitely a struggle for many organizations to re-work their annual budgets and figure out what can be absorbed through fundraising and what is going to impact the bottom line price for a Forest Bathing hike or a week of Nature Day Camp.

As a wilderness program director for many years, know that I tried to keep the price of my experiences affordable so they could be accessible to as many children as possible, but at the same time, I saw how hard everyone worked at our small camp and how much my staff appreciated every opportunity to make extra money whenever they could.

I don't think that we will ever have a uniform salary scale for all nature programs that works just like I don't think the price of a pizza will always be the same throughout all restaurants in a region, but if we don't find a way to pay people to do professional work, our 'industry' will be greatly impacted by the lack of quality educators who simply can't afford to take a nature education position and still take care of their family.

This isn't a problem unique to nature or forest educators, of course, as the entire Educational system has a wage problem as well, but most nature instructors I know would be incredibly happy to take a position if they knew it paid as well as the lowest tier of a starting public schoolteacher. Without giving this issue some daylight and real discussion, it will hold us back in more ways than one. Maybe it's ALSO an issue for our entire culture/society, (and I think it definitely is!), but it's also a critical access point for the nature movement to continue to find solutions that get us closer to a sustainable system.

The Program Model Conundrum: When I first started learning wilderness skills with Tom Brown, Jr, John Stokes and Frank Sherwood, I registered for their training courses and learned from them in week long or weekend formats. When I later started to run my own programs, I used their 'program model' in the same way, and spent little to no thought about why or if there was a better model that I could use. My model changed when a school or organization would ask for a day long or half day experience, and I had to adapt to these new constraints that better fit THEIR model of education or programming.

I began to see that the length of time my own teachers and mentors used was fairly random, fitting in best with our own dominant culture's model of five days working, two days off, that has been capitalism's model for a hundred years.

Of course, the Forest Schools have their own models, and Homeschool groups have their own models, and Nature Centers have their own, and Wilderness Survival Schools have theirs, etc. and all of these are working, with varying degrees of success. It's hard to know if they are the 'best' model for teaching or offering these experiences, when we have generally done so little in the way of comparative studies. We also can't study the best model when we can't practically get outside of the dominant culture's work week model.

The program model problem seems on the surface to be pretty benign, but it does impact both daily life for Forest Educators, and the salary problem. When our programs are seen as 'one-offs' for most schools or nature centers, it's much easier to justify compensating them at lower rates and hiring staff seasonally, rather than year round. If a summer camp is just a 'camp', it's easier to justify it being seen as a perk or 'elective' rather than a vital part of our children's physical, emotional and leadership development. The program model directly impacts how nature connection is seen and valued, and leads to how funding and investment decisions are made.

I don't have 'The Answer' for all of these problems, and I recognize that there are lots of additional pressing issues that are worthy of inclusion as well. Any answers we offer will probably always be met with limited 'universal' success, but that's okay. The important thing is to begin looking at them and collaborating and listening to each other, so we can learn and discover ways to grow that are actually viable. My Forest Educator Initiative is working to address making more online trainings accessible and my upcoming Forest Educator Podcast is all about starting these dialogues and finding common ground across all of our diverse programs and experiences.

Would love to hear your thoughts and insights if you've made it this far! I appreciate your efforts to make this world a better place for us all, and for future generations!

Ricardo