Mission, Values, and Approach
Why are we “here”?
In a tech-dominated and global environment, we humans are losing our key connections.
Our Youth
Our children grow up increasingly disconnected from natural rhythms, their inner Selves, and each other. They suffer unabated physical, mental, emotional and social strains, causing them to miss opportunities to define and seize their dreams. As adults, they have little concept of these losses, and live lives that are less curious, less meaningful, less joyful. Some eventually find their way to fulfillment, and many never do.
Our Adults
Parents, teachers, and organizations all try to do their part to create a world where children grow up to be happy and healthy. But even as adults, we struggle with our own health, our relationships, a belief in our purpose.
No one taught us how to safely navigate a world of ultra-processed food, social media, instant access to nearly anything we want, and devoid of green space. We must wade through the noise, sifting and experimenting, trying to find what works - usually, driven in reaction to fear or pain.
Our Schools
Occasionally, the knowledge and hopes that adults have for children become mandates or one-stop-suits-all solutions for schools. But all too frequently, information, processes, and desired outcomes become disconnected and distorted as they make their way from governing systems designed to be efficient into operational systems desired to be effective.
Information is incomplete and applied out of context.
Processes are incompletely designed or incompletely implemented.
Desired outcomes are misaligned with practiced rewards.
Under the pressures of failing performance, leaders become coldly rational or emotionally overburdened, creating top-down strain through schools. Eventually, frustration, anxiety, hopelessness, and loss of health overwhelm educators and administrators. All of the stress destroys the safety of the instructional and physical environments.
Students fall between the cracks.
But what if we could…
…improve teaching and learning conditions despite mandates, budget constraints, and limited time?
The science from multiple fields shows us the way to build healthy, high-quality instructional environments, and healthy, high-functioning schools, by creating a foundation of a healthy brain-body connection within each individual and value-oriented relationships between individuals.
We can. We must. We will.
“Nature By Nurture” guides our approach.
Every human is a system-within-systems.
“Nature by Nurture” refers to the scientific phenomenon that individuals are a biological system - the product of heredity, physiology, and the physical and social environments in which they live and learn.
In our work, we honor each individual as a system, and we honor the variety of environments - or systems - in which individuals operate.
All environments matter.
Externally, youth are immersed in two to three types of environments during key years of development. These include both physical and social elements of home, school, and community.
If our children are to learn well, and to live well, then the physical environment must support biological health, and the adults around youth must be able to show them the way.
To immerse the full system in many elements is to create resilient, high-functioning humans.
Human development and performance are inextricably tied to the brain and body’s relationships with natural phenomena - such as water, air, sunlight, darkness, and temperature.
By their presence in the physical environment and through their impact on individual physiology, natural phenomena also critically influence the social environment.
The human system must be immersed in healthy, natural processes to perform to the high levels that society demands.
Values that guide our process.
Be purposeful.
Be curious.
Be mindful.
Be a guide.
Be empathetic.
“Live, lead, teach with joy and energy.”
Our MISSION:
To help school and district leaders improve instructional outcomes, health and joy for staff and students by establishing and strengthening outdoor education in schools, through strategies that honor each unique system, including its community and goals.
Our VISION:
Educational environments that are healthy, joyful, and curiously energetic, so that every student can live and learn well every day.
Our UNIQUE VALUE:
A systems-based perspective that points to a human-centered path for overcoming persistent challenges, and the expertise to help you customize a plan and pull it off.