A Rainy and Glorious Day
By Amy Keiper-Gowan | Creation Care Team
The girl stepped out of her 4th-grade school day at Cordata Elementary School, gave a big smile to Amy and educator Kate waiting outside the rented van. We made our way with the eight other kids to BCC and entered our “classroom,” the woodland behind our church building. She zipped up a raincoat she borrowed from the program and began decorating tree pieces for a name tag. She zoomed across the campfire clearing and into the reeds, as she played a muddy “Eagle Eye,” hiding behind logs with another girl with whom there is a growing friendship. During her forest investigation, she tramped with increasing confidence through the brambles to find evidence of living things changing form. She knelt down in the dirt, not caring that her skirt got dirty.
“Look at this!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, holding up a huge polypore fungi. “This is growing on that log that’s falling apart…do you think the fungi eats something off the log? Does it make the log break down more? I’m bringing this back to show everyone!”
When it was time to document her learning in her nature journal, she slowed to a snail’s pace; her writing was huge and misshapen, and she struggled as she painstakingly tried to spell: “I learned….”
I quietly offered her assistance. She volunteered to help me move the Legos around to demonstrate that matter never goes away in an ecosystem, it just re-invents itself.
“I made a rabbit with my Legos,” said the girl.
“…And when it gets eaten by the osprey we saw earlier, it doesn’t just disappear,” I added. “Its body breaks down. Its atoms are like building blocks; after breaking apart, they come back together to make something new.”
“Like part of the osprey,” she said, pulling apart the Legos and re-building them as a bird.
As we dropped her off at her apartment complex, she looked back at us with a big smile, her hair still damp from the rain. “I wish I could do this school every day.” She ran to her mom, who waved at us from the apartment stairs.
It’s a comment we hear a lot.
This is Otters Den Nature School.
Otters Den Nature School is a registered Bellingham nonprofit working to make high-quality
outdoor learning accessible to children regardless of family income. Our outdoor programs
combine environmental education, science, social-emotional learning, stewardship, and—just as importantly—joy.
Bellingham Covenant Church has helped provide this experience to this student, through providing grants from the Mission Catalyst Fund to Otters Den Nature School (ODNS), the outdoor space to meet, volunteer help, and other forms of support. I serve as Director, and BCC members Nancy Lewis and Doreen Olson serve on the board.
This fall, nine students are participating in Outdoor School through October 22. Children play
movement games, practice sensory and wilderness awareness skills, identify birds, keep nature journals, and investigate the ecosystems around them. They participate in instruction aligned with Washington State learning standards, turning the outdoors into a living classroom. Students might collect pond samples, for example, and use their observations and data to draw conclusions about water quality.
Students also learn from Whatcom County field professionals, such as biologists from the Whatcom Amphibian Monitoring Network (WAMN). These experiences introduce children to Washington STEM career pathways including conservation science, wildlife biology, forestry, and natural resource management.
We don’t stop at providing quality outdoor education. We are helping to bridge an equity gap to outdoor classrooms.
We are working to reach children who have historically had the least access to these opportunities. This year, 16 of the 18 children total we have served across both spring and fall programs have received full scholarships.
Where We Are Going
Beginning next year, our plan is to offer two 12-week Outdoor School seasons—spring and fall—with programming designed around the needs of local families, including families who live 60 percent below the annual median income. Most of these children attend Cordata Elementary. Transportation and scholarships will help remove significant barriers. One measure of success is if we can provide full scholarships to 25 percent of our students. (This is an unusually high percentage for environmental education organizations in Bellingham.)
To make this work sustainable, we need more than one-time grants and fundraising campaigns. We need a community willing to invest alongside us for the long term.
We invite you to become part of that community. We invite you to become a monthly donor, an annual giving partner, or to consider making a multi-year donation. We also invite you to consider volunteering your time or to pray for the students, staff, and board. These are great ways to practice gratitude for all God has done in your life through access to nature and to demonstrate the love of God to the less-privileged in our community. Thank you to all your generous support!
Learn more and donate at www.ottersden.org.