Developing Connection to the Natural Environment in the Land Stewardship Program

Under the guidance of Land Program Coordinator & Class Teacher Katherine Nickel, the first grade class calls a small and peaceful copse of trees behind the main building on the Pine Hill campus their daily classroom. The trees and leaves are walls and ceiling. They are surrounded by natural sense impressions and they work with natural found objects to support their lessons. Cedar stumps are their stools, and the dirt ground can be a perfect morning lesson book. Found sticks are made into letters and counting acorns is a first math lesson.

While the benefits of time in nature, connection to nature, learning in and through nature are well researched and documented, Katherine Nickel shares several important foundations for our environmental based-pedagogical approach.

Making the Land Healthier

A primary reason that we work with the land is to develop the understanding that we can help to make the land healthier. Through our land work, the students can actively participate in healing the land, essentially becoming land stewards. In doing so, the students observe and respond to what that land is asking for.

In the autumn, we are focused on the harvest of fruits and vegetables, and the preparations needed for the earth to properly "rest" for the long winter ahead. We can see that a sustained rest will provide the future energy and stamina for a vibrant spring and summer. We give the students the opportunity to sense this same resting need in themselves.

Sharpen Observation Skills

This partnership with the land also encourages and calls for us to be deep observers. In the sciences at a Waldorf school this is called a phenomenological approach. Our careful, non-judgmental observations of natural phenomena trains our senses. What do we see, hear, smell, feel, and even taste from the land?

This autumn our students harvest the beans that are "going to seed." Through careful observation they can see and feel that all of summer's energy is now stored up in these bursting beans (seeds) and that we can sense a future bean plant patiently waiting for the spring.

As our students have this insightful observation of beans or berries in nature, they can also bring those observations into the wider world. How carefully can they observe nature around them, the happenings of the world around them, and ultimately, the other social beings that they interact with everyday?

Developing the Will Capacity

When students spend time in nature through the Land Stewardship Program, they are physically working with nature and deeply developing their will. (And just wait for the development of endurance and perseverance when the weather gets a little colder!) This foundational connection with nature that begins in our early grades supports a strong developed will and innate connection to the natural environment as the students get older.

The opportunities to engage with the land on the high school campus mirrors the younger student's nature-based curriculum and will development. In high school, we teach ecology and surveying skills as well as metaphorical themes: students find their way through the forest with a map and compass, or get muddy feet as we work together to pull in the harvest. Tremendous empowerment comes from being able to do things and make things for oneself, and will is required to see these tasks through.

High Mowing is situated on land owned by the school's founder and farmed by the same family for seven generations. We carry on this rich tradition through our Land Stewardship Program. Across our campus, we are reminded that our world needs us to care for her. Our students develop the will capacity and deep appreciation to be the stewards she requires.