Celebrating40Years in the Outdoor Classroom - The Chewonki ...

Health issues have added another, and much more serious,
layer of complexity. Katie sits on a state committee dealing with
the epidemic of overweight youth. “One-third of Maine
children are overweight or obese, and it’s taking a terrible toll
on their fitness,” she says.
Food allergies are also on the rise, resulting in students who
need custom-designed menus and sometimes even separate pots
and pans and dishwashing stations. Outdoor Classroom staff
put an enormous amount of time into coordinating such needs.
And then there are the medications. Katie recalls the days
when asthma and Attention Deficit Disorder were as complicated
as things got in the Outdoor Classroom. Today the staff
routinely works with students who have diabetes, bipolar
disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and other serious
conditions. “It used to be that when a group arrived they might
hand us a zip-lock bag with a couple of inhalers in it. Now it’s
not uncommon for a school to hand us a duffel bag—a large
duffel bag—of meds when they get off the bus,” says Katie.
As challenging as the administrative and student management
issues are, Katie feels Chewonki is managing them well.
The Outdoor Classroom structures its activities so every
student can participate, and although it’s requiring the staff to
make more and more accommodations—and even to add staff
positions—Katie wouldn’t have it any other way. “What the
growing behavioral and medical needs say to me is that
providing kids with outdoor experiences is more important
than ever,” she says emphatically.
What Katie comes back to—what worries her most—is the
drop in enrollment, particularly from public schools. “Even a
relatively minor budget cut can make the difference in a
school’s ability to bring students to Chewonki,” she says. Katie
hates to lose a school, but if current trends continue, she
10 / Chewonki Chronicle
expects to see it happen more and
more frequently. She cites the cases
of Bath Middle School and
Woolwich Central School, both of
which have come to Chewonki for
almost 30 years—until this year.
“It’s a shame when the schools
closest to us can’t come,” she says.
Chewonki is working on a
strategic response to address the
situation. “The bottom line is that
we need more financial aid,” says
Chewonki president Willard
Morgan. Willard would love to see
Chewonki be able to serve all local
students within a certain geographical
distance, and he and Katie have
initiated discussions with school
administrators. “I hope we’ll be
successful,” says Katie.
So does William Shuttleworth, superintendant of Maine
Regional School Unit 1, which encompasses five midcoast
towns. Shuttleworth believes passionately in the value of
outdoor education and says he is “fighting like crazy” to find
funding for it. “For too long,” he says, “we somehow forgot
that some of the most important learning happens outside of
these brick buildings called schools. When students have a
canoe paddle in their hand, or are scaling across a ravine or
working with a team to identify wildlife and trees, they begin to
learn a lot about themselves as being competent, capable, and
confident.”
JOCK MONTGOMERY
To spend a day, or even a few hours, in the Outdoor
Classroom is to understand how much this program
has to offer—especially in an age when Nature
Deficit Disorder is a recognized pandemic. Visit the Chewonki
campus on almost any school day, and you will see kids living,
playing, and learning in the out-of-doors. They might be
catching frogs or watching earthworms, snowshoeing across a
marsh, climbing in the Barn, running across a field, cooking
tacos over an open fire, or meeting Aquila, our resident Golden
Eagle. You will see them engaged both in organized adventures
and in simple, unstructured play.
Katie Tremblay sums up the value of all this in two simple
sentences: “The more time children spend outdoors, the more
they care about the environment. And getting children to care
about the environment ensures that we will have a future
generation of environmental stewards.” ■
For more information on the Outdoor Classroom, or to
schedule a program, contact Katie Tremblay at 207-882-7323
or ktremblay@chewonki.org.