School of the Wild

I graduated from the University of Iowa a long time ago, so I receive Iowa’s alumni magazine periodically. In their Summer, 2022 issue, the magazine featured a one-page article on the university’s School of the Wild.

According to the article, “School of the Wild teaches youth about the habitats of Iowa and the importance of protecting and caring for their environment. In small groups, participants study the wildlife of prairies, wetlands, and woodlands, as well as learn basic outdoor adventure skills.”

“Traditionally, more than 1,200 elementary and middle school students headed each year to the Macbride Nature Recreation Area near Solon, Iowa, for one week of school, focusing on ecology, natural history, personal growth, and team building. Now, more than twice as many students at schools across the state participate in School of the Wild at their local parks within 40 Iowa counties.”

“Abbie Craig, who spent her student-teaching semester educating kids across Iowa about nature and conservation, says School of the Wild can help improve their self-image and confidence. ‘We are changing the environment and leveling the playing field a little bit, especially for those students who are struggling in school and haven’t had great school experiences. At School of the Wild, it’s not glaring if you have a reading deficit, it’s not glaring if your writing skills are a weakness, it’s not glaring if you have trouble sitting still,’ she says. ‘When you give those students the opportunity to have five days in the outdoors, the improvement in their self-concept and how they view themselves by the end of that five days is pretty impactful.’

When I worked in the Houston Independent School District, we offered “magnet programs” to kids. In fact, Houston was one of the first school districts in the country to offer this type of program. A “magnet program” was a “school within a school” where kids would spend some of their school time focused on a specialization, like business, math and science, law enforcement, performing and visual arts, and other interesting subjects. Even though the real reason these “magnet schools” were created was to integrate Houston’s schools when other cities were forcing their kids to get on busses against their will, some of these “schools within a school” became extremely popular.

But many didn’t. Many schools suffered from low transfer rates because their “magnet” just wasn’t strong enough to attract the number of kids required to build a vibrant program.

Why did some succeed while many struggled? It seemed the popular “magnets” allowed whatever the specialization was to permeate throughout the learning day. Kids learned reading, writing, and problem-solving skills, but they didn’t feel like they were going to school to spend time improving their “3 R’s.” Instead, kids felt they were spending their time exploring their passions – business, math and science, medical careers – and reading, writing, and problem-solving improvement came along as a bonus.

The other reason some “magnets” succeeded while other struggled was because of the learning leaders connected with the specialized focus. I remember reading a report some time back on why some of New York City’s small high schools were popular while others struggled. The researchers pointed to the “Pied Piper effect” when it came to popular small schools. Popular New York small schools had one or several adult learning leaders that young learners just loved to spend time with and learn with. Again, kids in those NYC small schools improved their reading, writing, and problem-solving skills along the way, but that wasn’t why they came to school every day. The “magnet” for those kids was the ability to spend time working on what interested them, alongside a trusted and respected mentor.

What if School of the Wild became their own learning organization, instead of serving existing schools as an add-on? What if Schools of (I’ll let you fill in the blank here) were created whereby young learners could spend large amounts of time working on their passion(s) while spending the right amount of time building their reading, writing, problem-solving, and character skills?

It seems like we might have all of this backward. Instead of spending most of the day learning what a state legislature, a state board of education, or a school board consider important, why don’t we create learning organizations where young learners can spend large amounts of time working on what excites them, and then support that work by building strong skills in reading, writing, and problem-solving?

I’m sure there are lots of kids in Iowa wondering why they can’t spend more than five days at School of the Wild.

I’d be wondering the same thing.

Til tomorrow. SVB