AWSP Blog

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.

There’s nothing like more than a year of pandemic learning to make us examine past practices and consider better and healthier ways! One change your school might consider is making a purposeful effort to take learning outside. In the report “Back to School: Back Outside” (Kevin J. Coyle, National Wildlife Federation, 2010), research shows how a “green hour” built into classroom routines has a positive impact on students’ focus, attitude toward work, behavior, connections with others, and even standardized test scores.

Ready for some good news? There’s state money to help send your fifth- and sixth-graders to Outdoor School next year. We are working with a team of learning centers and camps to get money allocated in this year’s state budget.  To help us plan and budget, we need to find out who is planning to host an outdoor school for their students. You can help with this process now by completing this Outdoor Schools survey. This information will helps us to plan for the 2021-22 school year as well as give us information to seek further funding for the 2022-23 school year and beyond.

Teachers and principals were happy to hear from Cispus, AWSL, and AWSP the last couple weeks. Our team delivered adventure backpacks to the teachers and principals pictured above: Dan Garry, teacher at Washington Elementary; Kira Duncan, teacher, and Shannon Richards, principal, at Oakville Elementary; and Amy Dunnagan, principal at Mossyrock Elementary. Other recipients include Wade Iseminger, teacher in Ocosta SD, and Todd Graves, principal in Ridgefield SD.

Outdoor school, the big camping trip - those 6th graders are going to embark on a weeklong adventure in the outdoors. Each student, no matter what social standing, is headed to the great equalizer: the wilderness. Yet, this is not happening for all. As a matter of fact, it is not happening - yet. A lot of talk has been placed on the social emotional learning of a child and the equity platform in education. While wonderful programs are being created and the buzz is in the air, we have to stop and consider something. The picture cannot be painted if you don’t have a canvas to lay down the work. What did our leaders receive that made them the wonderful people they are today? What canvas in the late 90’s and before were priority then and not today? The truth is, some things in education we had right and turned away from - one of which was the camp experience.