AWSP Blog

November is National Native American Heritage Month. From all of us at AWSP, Cispus, AWSL, and Outdoor Schools Washington, we thank you for sharing your stories and allowing us to embrace your culture. We, as an organization, have been honored to serve and learn from our tribal partners throughout Washington state. With principals in every school, we work to engage in every community of tribes across Washington. Honoring their culture and history, we have more work to do and welcome shared opportunities.

Bumblebee Haven Garden is situated on Okanogan School District property in rural, North Central Washington. Started a few years ago by a now retired teacher, local native peoples, and local Conservation District, students K-12 have the access to learn about vermiculture (growing soil from compost from worms), tending to land, and most importantly, growing food next to native plants on native land. The land was once a meeting place for the peoples of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, which encompasses several different tribes. Since starting the garden, teachers, students, and community members create soil to create windrows of tomatoes, potatoes, different types of squash, and others, along with native plants for pollinators. Each Tuesday during summer and harvest season, people of all ages meet to harvest and work in the windrows. Some get to take a bit of food home, but mostly, all harvested food is donated to the local Okanogan Food Bank.

On March 18, 2021, the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Cispus Learning Center came together in the mountains of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest to partner and build for the future. We believe knowledge is power and when you build emotion into a hands-on experience, it will stay with you forever. We hope to pass down the message that we are more than people, but also caretakers of the land.

In this episode of AWSP News, we discuss our new website, the Healthy Youth Survey, joining a Networked Improvement Community with a clip from Jason Smith, the Gender Odyssey Conference, cultural items for tribal students during graduation, a tip from Dr. Roz, UW's Leadership for Learning program, and high five and hug data.