Every week at NorthBay, kids discover that vultures are more interesting than TikTok and it gives me hope. NorthBay is an outdoor school that’s been blending environmental education with social-emotional learning for 20 years. It’s time to share some thoughts and stories from the field because yes, the internet definitely needs one more opinionated blog. So here is NorthBay Reflections: a blog about connecting kids to nature.
If you love teaching and know that some lessons can’t be fit into a textbook, this blog is for you. If you believe that being outside matters and that helping kids connect with nature is good for everyone, this is for you. Teachers, parents, outdoor educators, curious humans who care you belong here. I hope this is a space where we can connect authentically with each other as humans who share a beautiful planet.
At its heart this blog is about connection, so let’s get to know each other! I’m Ian. I’ve spent years exploring, teaching, and often getting muddy alongside students. In outdoor education, we talk about being a “guide on the side” rather than a “sage on the stage” and that’s exactly how I hope to guide us here. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a little lost along the way and find something way cooler than what we set out to discover.
I became a teacher because kids are awesome. I opted out of working in a traditional school because the world felt too big and beautiful to spend all day inside. Give me thunder and lightning and let me escape the buzz and cold white light of fluorescent tubes. I’d rather be surrounded by trees than cinder-block walls even if there are mosquitoes involved.
Early in my career, I found my way to NorthBay. It was one of the first places I could bring my whole self to work. I got paid to ask big questions and explore through forests and beaches in search of answers with curious middle schoolers. We counted deer droppings, paddled (and occasionally flipped) canoes, caught frogs, climbed trees rigged with ropes, and explored hills that left us muddy, exhausted, and exhilarated.
I taught at NorthBay for years, went to grad school, then moved to East Africa for a different job. I came back to NorthBay, because… well, it’s pretty damn special.
Along the way I had some kids of my own. They are wild and rascally and, if you have kids, they deal with many the same things. The incessant draw of screens, the social pressures of school, growing up in a society that is terribly divided.
Now, as NorthBay’s Director of Education, I spend some days buried in spreadsheets and emails instead of team building in the woods but I still spend as much time outside with students as possible. And this blog gives us a place to step outside together. To ask big questions. To explore. To reflect.
Most of NorthBay’s students, whether from the heart of Baltimore City or the backwoods of Cecil County, have spent little time outside in wild places. A lot of kids spend more time exploring the darkest corners of the internet than their local park. The statistics are scary: kids in America spend an hour on a screen for every one minute they spend outside. But here’s the good news:
Curiosity is alive and well.
Wonder is alive and well.
A deep desire for authentic experience is alive and well.
Give a kid a net, a bucket, and a wetland and they know what to do.
So welcome to NorthBay Reflections. We’re headed towards discussions of why we do outdoor learning and how we do this work in a changing world. We will celebrate how awesome kids are and how beautiful the world is. Let’s have conversations about how to meaningfully connect kids with nature and with the power of their choices.
Who knows where we’ll end up?
