Camp Schools for All

'Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a (CAMP)fire.'

*This post has been slightly amended from its original version. Since my goal is to mainstream nature-based learning, I am trying to create an audience (and coalition) of everyone. As such, party politics really doesn’t (don’t?) have a place here. Sorry about that and thanks to

Thom Markham

and

Benjamin Katz

for reminding me.

I had a fantasy the other day that involved converting every nature-based summer camp into a year-round PK-2 elementary school. Thanks for reading Learning by Nature! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Tl;dr (Too Long, Didn’t Read)

You can skip this if you’re going to read the rest.

• Nature-based summer camps should become our national early childhood education program.

• We should develop “Camp Schools” to serve all 17 million students ages 3-7 (preschool to 2nd grade).

• Some core tenets of Camp Schools will include: serving all students (upholding ADA, Title IX, etc), developing a whole-child oriented national curriculum, inspiring teachers with a sense of shared responsibility to students, and ensuring all Camp Schools (and all school-schools!) have access to nearby nature.

• Let’s stop filling pails and light some educational (camp)fires 🔥 instead!

Read on for the deets!

Daydream

My daydream started on the way home from day 4 of summer camp with my daughter Clara (5). Shark helmet on, feet drawing speedy circles, she pedaled her pink bike homeward and talked about unicorns eating pizza. With a 5-year-old’s characteristic sequitur-less-ness, she asked,

“Mama Unicorn?”

“Yes, Baby Unicorn?” (She has self-adopted the name Baby Unicorn. Clara’s ‘Baby Unicorn’ schtick is not my fave thing, especially when accompanied by baby voices and requests I find difficult to honor like ‘Pretend I was just born today.’ Anyhow…)

“What’s your favorite thing?” she continued.

“Salsa and chips?” I offered, thinking we were talking about our favorite foods.

“Is that really your answer?” She pedaled onward and I biked alongside, self-conscious about my answer. Should I have stuck to something healthier? Kale? 

Clara continued, “Today we drew our favorite things. Guess what mine was?”

“Umm…ice cream?”

“No! It’s green.”

“Lettuce!”

“No! It’s what Baby Unicorn eats all the time. It’s a tree.” I was glad for the hint before I could go even farther afield with something like “kohlrabi” which everyone knows tastes like broccoli stems and is nobody’s favorite food let alone the fave of a mythical, horned, horse-like creature. 

“An aspen tree?”

“Yes!”

Upon entering our house, she ran to her purple unicorn backpack and grabbed a folded and slightly crumpled piece of paper, unfolded it, and set it on the kitchen table. 

Look carefully at the sky. At the top, dutifully transcribed by her counselor, Miss Tanya (whose day job is as a Kindergarten teacher in a public school), it says,

“My favorite thing is being in nature.” 

Tears filled my eyes. I snapped this pic and sent it to the camp director. His response? 

“Mission accomplished.” 

I agreed. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than for Clara to keep going to camp for the rest of summer.

And then he started texting about the Picasso quote. The one about how ‘all children are artists and the trick is to remain one once we grow up.’ He waxed on about the many awesome characteristics of kids – resilience, curiosity, creativity…

And then:

“Our approach to education beats those things out of them.”

Without a pause, I texted back: 

“Yes.” And then…

“Camp should be a yearlong school.” 

And thus began my fantasy. 

Camp Schools

Having worked for several years in a Title 1 (read: high poverty) public school district, I feel guilty saying this:

I believe a year-round Camp School would outperform our public schools.

Let me be clear. This is not because the educators would be better (I’ve already said the amazing Miss Tanya is a public school teacher during the academic year – as are many of Clara’s camp counselors), or because the students would be different (the vast majority of campers are, in fact, from the same public school district in which I worked). 

Here’s what would be most dramatically different:

• 🦉Style: play-based, inquiry-based, place-based, student-driven, NATURE-BASED 

• ❤️‍🩹Focus: on whole children – on their mental, physical, and social wellbeing.

• 🦅Freedom: liberation from the accountability albatross (excessive testing, turnaround clocks, arbitrary and out-of-touch measures of success) that dog down our educators and,

wait for it…

• 🌲Setting: Nature. Outdoors in nature. Or, where/when that’s really hard, with as much nature indoors as possible.

Camp Schools for All

Let’s move beyond this singular Camp School to a bigger day dream: Camp Schools for All. Here, I’m drawing from @Mara Gay’s playbook in her NYTimes op-ed Summer Camp for All. The rationale Gay uses for making summer camps available for all kids in the US boils down to 3 sides of the same coin:

1. “The kids are not ok.”

2. Camp can be really GOOD for kids.

3. Camp can be good for our democracy! 

“At its best, camp can offer children a chance to learn outside the classroom, drawing them from their computer screens and helping them build stronger relationships with other children, themselves and nature. For children living in poverty especially, summer camp can be a great equalizer, giving them a chance to pick up essential life skills — like swimming — often not taught in their communities. At many camps, children from diverse backgrounds forge lifelong friendships, develop a deep connection with and respect for nature and learn to work as teams to overcome big challenges. These are values our democracy desperately needs.” - Mara Gay from Summer Camp for All

This. The “at-its-best” is what my daughter is experiencing this summer. She’s growing confidence and friendships. She’s forging a “deep(er) connection with and respect for nature.” She is beaming and tired from a good day’s play each time she comes home.

Design Features

How would we ensure at-its-best-ness of our Camp Schools?

I almost hesitate to mention this because it’s become such a trope. And…most of us who work in education know that by age 15 Finnish students outperform U.S. students (and most students from around the world, actually) on international assessments of reading and math — in spite of delaying school start until age 7! I acknowledge that Finland is different than the U.S. in many ways — especially its relatively homogenous demographics and massive social safety net. Still, let’s take this opportunity to co-opt some elements of the Finnish education system we can emulate (@Sam Chaltain - what do you think?).

1. Delay start to school-school until age 7.

2. Provide high-quality childcare and pre-school for ALL.

3. Add a degree of national coherence for our Camp Schools’ curriculum (something our formal education system lacks because of varying extremes of “local control”) 

4. Inspire teachers with a sense of shared responsibility to students (rather than accountability pressures from outside and on high).

Regarding #1: Delay start to school-school until age 7. Camp Schools will be our answer to early childhood education. They will be for kids ages 3-7, roughly preschool-2nd grade. Kids then enter school-school (which, of course, features lots of 🌿📚 nature-based learning¹ and engaging pedagogies). Note: before they attend Camp Schools, our youngest learners should have nature and play-based day cares — but that’s too far outside my wheelhouse.

Regarding #2: Provide high-quality childcare and pre-school for ALL. Camp Schools will serve ALL learners. They will be available to all and publicly funded. And, they will have a mandate to actually serve all. Just as the Office of Civil Rights holds our existing public schools in check with laws like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (no discrimination on basis of race, color, national origin), Title IX (no sex discrimination), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1972 (no discrimination on the basis of disability) – Camp Schools will be subject to the same laws.

We must guarantee all students have access to nature at their Camp Schools (and their school-schools and day cares — but I digress). Let me be clear here: I understand we wouldn’t be able to (or want to!) simultaneously have 17 million 3-7 year old kids² pack their nap sacks and head to forested, pond-filled, sleep-away camps for 9+ months of the year. This is where nature-based learning³ in nearby nature⁴ comes into play. We will need to creatively access and activate nearby nature spaces for learning, especially in urban areas. In many cases, we will need to BUILD and GROW NATURE SPACES near schools⁵ — which WE NEED TO DO ANYHOW since 100 Million people in the U.S. lack a green space within a 10-minute walk of home. And, by-the-way, if we have all 17 million 3-7 year olds in Camp Schools requiring less in the way of trillions-of-dollars-brick-and-mortar-school-facilities and maintenance, we will have more than enough resources to create amazing parks and green schoolyards where they’re lacking.

Regarding #3: Add a degree of national coherence for our Camp Schools’ curriculum. This is an amazing opportunity to put an “American twist” on Finland’s early childhood education scene. Let’s write a campy (in a good way) national curriculum for ages 3-7 to prepare students for school. Note: I do recognize that a lot of summer camps are religious — that won’t do for Camp Schools. Clara’s camp — the source of inspiration for Camp Schools — is NOT religious. Like Clara’s camp, our national Camp Schools will feature some of what Gay highlights above.

At Camp Schools, children:

• Build strong relationships with other children

• Build strong relationships with themselves

• Develop essential life skills — like swimming

• Work as teams to overcome big challenges

• Develop a deep connection with and respect for nature

Regarding #4: Inspire Teachers: We already have many incredible educators in our schools (and camps!). Let’s inspire them with responsibility for whole-student wellbeing (see #3) instead of threatening them with accountability pressures that too often diminish teaching quality and motivation. With Clara’s camp as the model, I know this works. The counselors ooze a sense of investment in their campers’ growth — in friendships, in forging connections with nature. They also act with a deep commitment to equity and an abiding respect for children.

And, lest you worry the students won’t learn-learn, like good camps already do, our Camp Schools will grow academic skills and school readiness. These skills will be embedded in stories and songs, the making of friendship bracelets, the digging in mud, the gazing at clouds, the watching of bugs, the lighting of a fire.

“Campfire” by Substack’s “paint-mode” AI image generator

Which all reminds me of by William Butler Yeats’ oft-quoted adage:

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire 🔥."

Let’s light some educational (camp)fires 🔥 for all.

You with me?

Until next time,

Becca

1. Nature-based learning is learning outdoors or bringing elements of nature indoors for learning.

2. Number extrapolated from kids population data found at: https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/101-child-population-by-age-group#detailed/1/any/false/1095,2048,574,1729,37,871,870,573,869,36/62,63,64,6,4693/419,420

3. Nature-based learning is learning outdoors or bringing elements of nature indoors for learning.

4. Nearby nature = can be accessed by students and educators through human-powered locomotion such as walking, biking, or rolling.

5. Check out the GREAT work being done in this area by Green Schoolyards America and Trust for Public Lands.