September 12, 2024
As schools across the country embark upon a new year together and talk of curriculum permeates my world both as a parent and an educator myself, I find myself returning again to our why at A Thousand Mornings, because our “curriculum” will look quite different than that of any typical school and perhaps even other forest schools. At its simplest, a curriculum refers to the information, learning standards, and skills students are expected to acquire during their time in class. Through the traditional lens of learning, this usually looks like amassing a seeming reservoir of academic knowledge.
At a forest school, one might expand that view and imagine all the nature-inspired things their children might experience– plant and animal identification, tying knots, tracking, shelter building, nature art. Certainly, these elements weave into our experience at A Thousand Mornings and, perhaps unlike other forest schools, they are not our focus. Rather, my deep belief is that our most essential work surrounds relationships– those with our peers, our caregivers, our environment, and, of course, ourselves.
As I first wrote this year, my mission here has to do, pretty simplistically, with communicating and sharing love. That is not to the exclusion of nature; I do not take for granted the incredible container we have for our daily experience, and truly, nature itself is such a perfect example of love, embodied. It is steady and rhythmic, but at times surprising and severe. Hardship and challenges are as filled with meaning as joy and ease. Everything moves in unison; everything cascades into each other. It is the true embodiment of all that is cyclical, interconnected, regenerative, nourishing, and ever-expanding. To me, this is love.
And yet, our work doesn’t lie in naming every plant and weather pattern around us, but rather in creating relationships with those plants and patterns. Do we notice when the acorns fall in autumn and the squirrels snatch them away to store in holes created by the woodpeckers? Do we see the creek rise and fall and change the timber of its voice so dramatically throughout the rainy season? Do we hear the call of spring when the nasturtium and oxalis emerge in unison? Do we feel in our bones the agitation of wind, the quiet of hazy mornings, the sticky lethargy of heat? Are we paying attention?
As our namesake Mary Oliver once said, “Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.” My belief is that if we learn to pay attention and create these kinds of deeply thoughtful, reciprocal relationships, then we have become primed to acquire whatever information becomes necessary at a later date. We have learned to notice, to see, to feel, to love and with that imprint of attention can quite easily welcome in whatever it is we must more traditionally “know.” Our curriculum is in awareness of self and other, and the infinite forms those relationships can take. We “teach” it by practicing it ourselves and just as all of our teachers are different humans, so will our exact way of teaching be slightly different. But the work is the same; the work is in love and in presence.
Part of what drew me to this work after a decade in classrooms was the reality that the work of maintaining a physical space– rotating toys, prepping activities, cleaning, displaying children’s work, creating sensory bins and art projects– is in itself its own job. It can be beautiful work; it is a skill, and in my opinion, it takes away from the experience of truly being with children. There was never time to do both well and unfortunately most people are understandably judging the caliber and quality of the school by what they can see with their eyes.
Rarely do our children crave the most exciting or beautifully crafted experience. Always, they crave our attention and connection. And so I have resisted using too much, or really any, of our energy creating or maintaining the space itself. My mission at forest school has been to strip us bare of all the majority of the stuff and to return to just being together. I care about the quality and presence of the energetic container most of all.
If our tarp offerings seem incredibly simple, occasionally repetitive, or off-brand for a forest school, it is intentional. In my perspective, the things offered each morning are a small touchstone to help children transition from their parents to their teachers when needed. They are opportunities to practice fine motor skills or hand-eye coordination, to tinker, or quite simply, to do something fun. I strongly resist the need for everything to be “educational” or so purposeful or to have some projected outcome. I believe it’s a perfect objective to just have fun, to enjoy ourselves, to create ways to be together and enjoy life.
Our curriculum is learning about joy, love, emotional literacy, and connection.
This won’t be for everyone. For some, it's too esoteric. The fear of letting go of factual acquisition, even if it leans towards the more natural, is too great. It doesn’t fit a blueprint that already exists; it’s hard to track growth, because it’s a very, very long game. And yet, I was moved to write these words this week, because I am so in awe of how present, connected, and loving our friends truly are. A good majority of our population this year are returning students and watching them model for our newer friends the ways in which we ask for turns, offer comfort, problem solve, and greet each other with joy each day fills my heart with gratitude.
We are becoming ever stronger, clearer, more connected, and more aware. My gratitude this week is for you, as you read this. Thank you for choosing a childhood of joy and connection for your children; thank you for helping to heal the world with your willingness to lean into the ineffable; thank you for allowing a curriculum of love. I am so grateful.
September 28, 2023
Our whole group of teachers gathered socially this week and our conversation, which inevitably spiraled in content around the topics of early childhood, play-based learning, and nature connection brought me emphatically back to my core beliefs in creating A Thousand Mornings Forest School. While I often believe those beliefs to be fairly transparent, it still seems relevant to reiterate them here, through the lens of our experiences at school this week.
My core beliefs are that:
Play is learning
Play is essential for developing integrated, curious, healthy humans
Nature is our first and most important teacher, and
Less is always more.
Some people might choose a play-based preschool as a sort of exception— with the belief that in these early years there is permission to take reprieve from actual learning, a small space in which we can allow children to play before they do the "real" work of eventual academic learning in a more traditional setting. Quite to the contrary, the things we do daily are very much learning, not just in spite of the fact that they are fun, engaging, and self-initiated by our friends, but in fact, because of those realities.
A child too small to climb Oakalyptus, dragging a small log over to its base to give themselves a boost, is both a problem solving technique and a full body workout; this is a wonderful example of how children develop executive functioning skills, which are necessary to do any multi-step process successfully in the rest of life. Climbing a tree itself requires motor planning, hand-eye coordination, and stabilization of the core muscles, all of which are necessary for writing. Riding a log as a "tree train" as a group requires communication and cooperation, honing children's social skills, creativity, and language development. Painting or rolling playdough or even pinching beads out of the dirt builds fine motor skills. Sorting beans by size or shape is a pre-math skill.
Everything we are doing is intentional and yet the most brilliant part is that it requires absolutely nothing of us. Children are hard-wired to learn.
Recently I watched my friend's seven month old baby attempt to crawl. He repeatedly folded himself forward from the sitting position and put his hands beneath his shoulders, placing himself in tabletop position and then rocking back and forth. Not only did he do this on his own, he clearly loved it. In this moment, I was struck by the aforementioned reality which I frequently revisit: we are hard-wired to learn, to progress, to evolve. No one sat down and instructed this baby on the mechanics of crawling. No one pushed him to crawl before he could even sit. No one chastised him for not crawling early enough, well enough, precisely enough. Rather, when he traveled through a series of preceding developmental markers, he arrived at the moment of testing out crawling and was allowed to experiment, fumble, assess, and persist. Eventually he will crawl and it requires no direct instruction. Eventually he will also walk, run, climb, and leap. What he needed was space to move freely, some gentle cushioning should he fall, joyful encouragement from his parents. What he needed was trust.
My deep belief is everything can be learned this way. Sometimes we'll need specific information, refined techniques, or support. But the pathway there never begins with force. It begins with the desire of the learner. What we are doing at school is cultivating desire, cultivating love, exploration, curiosity, joy, exuberance. With that energy, anything is possible.
And nature is just the most organic backdrop for it all. When we have less stuff, less artificial stimulation, less transitions, less interference, less expectation, less words, it all flows so much more easily, so organically.
This week our friends played camping and ice cream shop on repeat. They played with slime and playdough full of fall flowers. They celebrated the arrival of fall with a real tea party and a visit from Little Witch Hazel. They pushed each other in the hammock, played instruments, twirled ribbons, pretended to be birds, trailed baby trolls through a treehouse, made mud, practiced using real tools, blew bubbles, hunted for snails on the trees, and swept the forest floor. This is all learning.
It's my anthem. If you've been with us for years now, you've heard me say it over and over again. I'll keep saying it yearly, monthly, weekly, with the hope that this idea permeates the universal consciousness. What we are doing daily at school is fun, but it's also essential. It is the return to simplicity, to the way our bodies and brains are meant to learn, to our core being, to nature. It is learning. And for this reality and all the joy it brings, we are so grateful.