Becky Palmer has learned that when it comes to teaching, you can do it your own way.
“I never expected to be an entrepreneur,” she says.
After some rewarding experiences living and working in Jasper, Alta., during the summers while going to school, and then teaching in Mongolia and China for two years each, Palmer and her now-husband moved back to Barrie to start a family.
And they both got jobs as teachers in the Simcoe County education system.
But Palmer already had some hesitation. While working on her education degree, she believed there was a disconnect in the way education was being delivered and felt a need to be outdoors. She missed the reverence to the land and sharing with the children what she experienced while teaching in Mongolia.
Feeling over-stimulated by the confines of the classroom, with the lights, bells and announcements, Palmer retreated outdoors to teach her classes and sit under the shade of tree where the students would do their math and other exercises on a white board.
“As an adult with lots of practice, I was struggling to self-regulate and so were the 30 students in my class,” she says. “Once my kids were school aged, I realized I did not want to put them in this system,” she says, citing the moment she decided to explore alternatives.
Palmer came across the 'forest school' concept as an alternative to the brick-and-mortar version and took a deep dive, learning all she could about outdoor education. A plan slowly started to develop.
Barbara Sheridan took a similar path to developing her Barrie Forest and Natural Learning School for children aged three and up, many of whom are home schooled. She had been working with families to develop home-school education programs while her son attended a Waldorf school in Toronto.
But when her family moved to Barrie, they didn’t find a similar fit. Research led her to explore inquiry-based learning and, inspired by European forest schools, she found training at Cedarsong Nature School in Washington and opened her school in Barrie in 2012, which she runs two days a week in Springwater Provincial Park in Midhurst along with two days online.
“I knew my kids learned best through play,” says Sheridan, who had a newborn as well as a 2.5-year-old at the time. “Just being outside helped them so much.
“They’re learning how to learn … so that when they had an idea they had all the skills.”
Building on her undergraduate degree in psychology, Sheridan earned a master's of education in sustainability, creativity and innovation while running the school, which has 12 to 17 students.
In the decade-plus, she has seen an explosion in forest schools, launched by others looking to provide alternative methods of teaching.
The program is nature-immersed, so they’re outdoors the entire time.
Every day is different. They might discover a clay patch and create sculptures. They’ll learn about water displacement at a stream or create a shelter with fallen brush.
And much of the day is directed by the children themselves.
'We have a rhythm'
“We have a rhythm to the day that depends upon the kids,” says Sheridan, noting the children will chat, have a snack or read a book. “All of this is very much based on children’s interest.”
The online portion is inquiry- and project-based learning. Various subjects are naturally incorporated into a project or inquiry that the kids pursue. Inquiries are fairly short, about a week or two long, but projects can span a session or even a full year, says Sheridan.
Since it’s a home-school program, she works as a coach and facilitator for the kids and the families meeting in the morning to set goals, followed by an afternoon check-in.
Meanwhile, having returned to Barrie, Palmer and her husband had discovered a wonderful resource in the 100-acre Moondance Organic Gardens in Angus, where they had been subscribing to in-season vegetable baskets.
Palmer began thinking about how they could partner up to offer the kind of education she envisioned.
Moondance offers workshops, events and other programs and its owners were interested in expanding when they approached Palmer for ideas in the winter of 2022, during the pandemic lockdowns.
“I leapt out of my skin,” she says. “And then we dreamed up Rewilding Education.”
They developed a land-use agreement and co-exist happily on the 5th Line property.
It all began with a two-hour Saturday morning program in the spring of 2022 to gauge interest called ‘My grownup and me.’ The two-hour program took visitors through the farm where they would learn about the farming process. That attracted more than 20 families.
The drop-in program, where the parent stays, continues to run on Wednesday, Fridays and Saturdays.
Palmer then launched a summer camp for eight children. And a school with six students, two of which were her own, then followed.
Now into its third year, the students number 60. The program is packed in the summer with 30 children coming daily.
“We’re not a private school; we're also not child care,” explains Palmer. “We’re really in this grey area.”
So they operate as a recreation program one or two days a week. It’s an attractive option for children who are home-schooled and looking for a change during the week. Some attend regular school on the other days.
While Palmer says there are many advantages to not creating age-specific program, there is an exception for the younger children, most of whom are experiencing something out of their home for the first time and need a slower pace.
“There’s no bells, there’s no looking at the clock. We just flow through the day,” she says.
There isn’t even a set time for lunch. Instead, the children take their backpacks with them to conveniently have lunch where they happen to be on the property.
Palmer has since added "nature babies" a program for new parents with pre-walking babies, which involves nature walks, that is proving popular.
Up until this year, programming was limited. But Palmer erected a Mongolian yurt, providing indoor space that allows year-round education.
“It fit perfectly with the whole philosophy of our program” living in harmony with the Earth, she says. “That’s allowed us now to run the full year.
“As much as I loved teaching, it never felt right. Something was missing. I really struggled to reconcile how pubic education works.”
While Palmer says she’ll never get rich running the school, she feels it's an “incredibly rewarding” experience, bringing her vision to life and offering a program that aligns with the way she wants to live and how she wants her kids to grow up.
Sheridan believes her approach to teaching nicely sets the kids up for whatever the future might present.
“The jobs we have today, no one can imagine,” she says.
