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Hooray! It’s the first week of the school year!

Happy 5th. Birthday*, Outside School!!! 🥳 🍰 🥂 💞

We just wrapped up our fifth summer camp at Alvarado Park, and already I’m looking forward to seeing the kids again next year!

Lisa Sigurgeirson Maxx and I have been following each other on social media for years. So when she asked me to be on her podcast, of course I answered that I would! 

Today we’re celebrating the last day of the school year by having our families join us for pizza. I can’t believe another school year has passed already!

This rain these last several months has been incredible! I’ve never experienced so much since I started teaching 100% outdoors in 2007. It’s so cool to be able to actually view the watershed filling up from the bottom up (except for runoff).

I was thinking about how the things that’ve kept me going the most over all these nearly 21 years of teaching are words. I remembered this because I got a note from one parent, who let me know their child was sad to learn that they hadn’t signed them up for summer camp again this year.

I always feel honored to take part in thesis and dissertation research. I participated in Steph N. Dean’s dissertation, “A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of Teachers Who Implement Outdoor/Environmental Education within a K-12 Setting,” at George Mason University.

We recently had some experiences that led me to believe we are doing the right things, according to others we interact with. We have been fortunate enough to:

Do you have a place, in the world,

Last week, as we started our walk up into the hills with stepping aside and looking slightly away so we could seem less threatening. We wanted to let a cow pass, walking along to meet up with the rest of its herd.

Woohoo!!! I love cruising around up in the hills, making constant new discoveries.

School is starting up again! In the last couple of years, I’ve really ramped up the work of giving back to the Alvarado Park/Wildcat Canyon by setting goals for litter pickup and invasive species removal.

Summer camp was so amazing this year. When I started doing these camps, I thought it would be a preview for potential school year families.

Woohoohoohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Summer camp is here!!! I have some amazing new families whose kids have eased right into the general state of things, and I feel so grateful.

This month, Jilliann Rodriguez M’Barki, an Outside School parent, wrote a wonderful article for Ten Strands. In “Preparing Future Generations to Protect Our Planet,” she shares her life journey, and I feel so fortunate to be part of it!

It’s been a busy time, with some late school year enrollments. The hills are just now turning brown, having been green for months despite the severe drought.

It’s gorgeous out there, up in the hills. This year’s interesting precipitation patterns and temperatures have excited the flora and fauna- blossoms and birds abound!

Recently, some students of mine were complaining about a school’s motto they’d heard, “Grow into great.” They were completely incensed at the news that they were not born great.