From WXXI news this is connections I'm Nicole Steven.

We are in what some call the dog days of summer.

The hot sunny days between July and August.

And this is a time when many kids are in camp.

A traditional summer camp might see kids spending several days or weeks outdoors hiking, swimming, and socializing.

But some local groups are turning the camp experience into something more.

They're built.

They're blending education with camping adventures.

They're turning local waterways and shorelines into giant classrooms to teach about protecting the planet.

Others are using community farms as a way to teach about sustainability and nature, as well as math and language arts.

Today, we're taking a closer look at the exploration that goes along with eco camps and adventure summer programs.

And we'll also discuss the changing nature of summer camp.

We have several guests joining us for this conversation.

I have a full house I love, and all four of my seats are filled.

We have Donnell Riley, Don, You Wanna Go by?

Don Donald Riling is the president of Save Our Sodus.

We have Frank keel fit.

Lizzie.

Did I say that right?

I've been practicing.

He's a community farm manager at Food Link.

I have Chris Whitmire.

He is executive director of Rochester Ecology Park Ecology Partners and Kira Stevenson.

She is a nature based learning coach and consultant.

Thank you all for joining us.

Oh, we're going to have fun today.

I love I love a full house, full classroom, I would say.

And of course, our listeners would like to join you in the conversation.

You can call us at 1844295 talk.

That's 1844295825 5 or 5 852639994, or email us at connections at WXXI talk.

Or you can just send a little comment in our YouTube channel.

Now we'll start with Frank and Chris.

Let's start with your organizations are working together on the growing food, growing good summer program.

Maybe I'm hungry.

Growing good summer program at the Food Link community farm.

Can you tell us about this this partnership and this program?

Sure.

So the Food Link farm has been around for about 15 years, but, earlier this year, we broke ground on construction to build our new edible education center, a greenhouse, and expand on our current land.

And in the meantime, we've been thinking of ways to kind of expand and grow partnerships.

So we reached out to Rocky College Partners earlier in the year and had a discussion about starting a summer camp there, and that's kind of where we have been in the last six weeks, five weeks now.

The summer camp has been going on, in the middle of construction.

So we've been able to successfully host, Chris's group, our Rocky College partners, in a a pretty fun and exciting camp.

You know, we thought it was such a fantastic opportunity that even though they said, you know, we're still in the middle of making this happen, at the farm, we said we absolutely want to be a part of this this year, because for us, it's it's a big piece of the model of our organization is that we can all do more together.

Yes.

And, you know, they have the farm, we have the educators and the and the expertise.

And so we were able to find 25 young people that have just been having an incredible time, but also we've been able to to blend that with learning and really realize the benefits of of nature based learning.

That is, is a core program for our organization.

Yeah.

And and Chris, I know, Rochester Ecology Partners is fairly new.

Correct.

Can you tell us about the development of this program, how it all started?

We were launched in 2022 and it was yeah, really new, right?

Yeah.

And so this this growth that we've seen has been absolutely incredible.

We knew that we were onto something.

I was a teacher in the Rochester City School District for a bunch of years and did a lot of work to get young people outside and connected to the community and saw how they really responded to it.

You know, in all grades, kindergarten through high school.

And so that's what motivated me to work with others to start the Rochester Ecology Partners.

And our core program is nature based learning.

And wild wonder is what we call the work that we do with schools.

And, you know, it's it's based on this, this foundation that, you know, young people can learn about the world around them, they can find wellness, and they can build community relationships through nature based learning.

And and a big part of our growth.

I know care is going to talk more about this.

So I'll leave this to her.

But that we've we started out in school 12 and in introducing what nature based learning would look like there.

And again, just saw this, this huge response from the teachers, from the families, from the students and saying, this is what we want out of education.

And for us, a big piece of of the growth of our organization and is that our community needs more connection, more connection to nature, more connection to each other, and that nature based learning is is the root to that.

And then once we get that, we can kind of get these feedback loops going that I'll talk a little bit more about.

But those are the two sides of our organization, our nature based learning and community connection.

And it's been great to see how everybody is just that's that's working for people.

People are seeing the value of it.

And I want to talk about the value of it.

Right.

You did say 25 kids, in the in the program this summer.

Can you tell me about these kids and what schools are from in the neighborhoods and.

Yeah, one of the things that has been just fantastic, I'm going to try and mix up the words I use here, but fantastic, incredible.

Although, you know, you'll hear me use really, really humble, amazing.

I just get excited to talk about these things.

But, the students that are in the program are from schools all over the community.

So not just city schools, not just our CSD, but they're, a mix of first through sixth graders that heard about it through our efforts, the the connections that we already had with schools.

So a lot of them are coming from the schools that we already work at.

But also just, it took 24 hours for the camp to fill up with a waiting list of about 20 students.

So there was something about it that really connected with people.

And I think it's the growing food.

I think it's the getting more connected to the food, but also a way for young people to have fun and live this experience that, we all remember.

And so there were a lot of families across the community that that said, hey, we want to bring our children to this.

Yeah.

If I can, you tell us about, like, a moment of stand up moment, throughout these weeks for you, what did you see happening when when the kids get this close to the, the nature and in this hybrid environment, I think just being there every day and watching the kids, embrace the space day by day.

And whether it's them growing their own plants and vegetables or just tasting a berry from a tree for the first time ever, it's cool to hear, like some of the comments, like I've, I've never had, I've never had a berry straight from the tree.

You have only a little plastic.

So just some of those comments and thoughts and just seeing them grow over the weeks and, and really love the space and take it as theirs has been really, really fun and exciting to see.

Yeah.

And I think I take that for granted because I'm, you know, I'm from the Caribbean, right?

I'm from the island.

So growing and picking your berries and climbing trees is something that we do for fun right at leisure.

Like go outside and climb a tree.

I think I took advantage of that.

So seeing kids, some kids never have that experience.

It that's that's wild to me to hear.

Really.

You know, especially with the location that the farm is in.

We're in the heart of the city, right on Lexington.

One of the most underinvested neighborhoods in Rochester.

One of the biggest investments in the area that we've seen in a very long time.

And to have kids come into that neighborhood and really enjoy and see the space has been so exciting, is really been rewarding to see the growth and the progress at the farm and just the excitement with all the kids.

And Rocky has been so great and helping us uplift that neighborhood, increase what?

What are some moments for you?

And it's it's the berry picking.

Yeah, it's I went over there the other day and they were just spread out along this, this, these berries.

And one student was even like deep in the brambles.

I was like, where did she go?

Oh.

And then they're like, they're mixing it up and we're making berry jam.

But another one is I didn't get to experience this, but there's some pictures of the children sitting in.

There's a little orchard there with some peach trees and apple trees, and the children sitting in the trees doing their nature journaling.

And they even gave it a name, and they're like, I'm up and my trophies and they're just seeing that as an opportunity for them to just just be and and enjoy their time is one of the moments that's really struck me.

And based on the first experience with with Growing Good, what do you see happening for kids next year at the community farm?

What do you what do you hope to expand on?

I think from this year on, we're going to finish up construction in the next few weeks.

Haven't been able to actually, host this camp construction that has given us some ideas on some fundraising plans to be able to have some more outdoor classroom space and then fixing up some of our playground area would be really ideal.

But once we finish up construction and completely finish our building, we're hoping to have more partnership with Rocky Colleges, but open it up to just general community.

Any schools, any organizations that want to get involved and utilize the space, host a host a classroom, or take a tour of the space?

We're really hoping to really engage that location and keep it active and make sure everybody knows that the farms there is thriving.

We're going to hopefully partner and educate, a lot of these students in the near future.

Yeah, yeah, I want to talk.

I want to talk about the space, get my imagination going.

How does this space what does it look like?

What did you plan on it looking like with this construction?

So in the past 15 years, we've had raised beds in the ground on makeshift off of donations from donated Wegmans cameras that we've used for the last ten plus years.

But this year, with construction, we've built a 160 brand new, wood garden beds with the help of volunteers.

Line them up.

We have a really cool, really cool stop motion video of us actually building the bed.

But so we have 160 brand new beds that doubled our growing space.

So instead of able to grow 10,000, we're able to grow somewhere between 15 to 20,000 pounds of food a year.

We have a new edible education center with a full demonstration kitchen.

Will be able to do nutrition outreach and nutrition education at that location, a 30 by 60 greenhouse that we're going to hopefully be able to help use, grow starter plants throughout the year for different community organizations in different community gardens, an orchard located in the back, a brand new parking lot.

Because one of the situations that we've dealt with in the past trying to get schools there, is that transportation isn't allowed.

If there's not an actual drop off location for busses to to drive through.

So that's something we wanted to check off and make sure we accommodated for the future.

And it's really hard to describe it.

I know just by telling you when you see it, if you see it in person, you'll be amazed.

And just like I said, this is a lot more than you've probably been able to to see a bunch of overachievers that's like, that's what I'm hearing that as far as Chris, for Rocky College, you how are you planning to utilize this space?

Well, you can see after Frank's description how we jumped at the chance to work with them.

Food link is has made an incredible education center there.

And one of the initiatives we're working on right now with Food Link in the Rochester City School District, is to get every third grader to the farm and to the Edible Education Center for a field study throughout the this coming school year.

And and so the city school district has, put some resources into that.

And we're working with some community partners to to find more resources to make that happen.

But we have a model, where we, we have these field studies where there are educational experiences that they have that are aligned with the curriculum, whether it's science curriculum or Ela curriculum.

And so we're building out those plans.

This this summer has been a great chance for us to develop our curriculum for the farm.

So we'll be able to bring classes in there and and not only have them just experience it.

And again, that that joy that comes from, you know, pulling a pulling a tomato off of a vine or something like that, that they'll also the teachers and we'll be able to see how they're meeting their educational goals by, by having students there and in ways that aren't possible in a classroom, in ways that, you know, I personally think are a lot more powerful.

And there's a lot of evidence to that, that they're a lot more meaningful and powerful to have these experiences in real life than to read a book about a tomato.

Yeah, we were definitely going to explore explore that point that you just made, Chris.

But I want to talk to Don Rey about Save Our Sodus.

What is Save Our Sodus?

Rick.

Cal, thank you for having us today.

This is really a treat to be with these folks.

And they're all my heroes.

Yeah.

Cara WXXI, we're big ego people.

Yeah.

Oh, I know, yeah.

With the last show with Jasmine, we had a marvelous conversation.

Save our soda.

Started a little over 25 years ago, with the focus at Sodus Bay, New York, which is east of Rochester.

It's, 20 miles east of Webster.

That's easy.

Easiest way to say, And the bay was dead below 25ft, so that so much pollution had flowed into the bay.

It's six miles long, and it's one of the most beautiful bays in all of Lake Ontario.

So the organization started to fight for, fight the anti-pollution.

And today the bay's is really good shape.

We work with Cornell Water Research Center.

We work with Suny, ESF, Suny Oswego.

Each of our all send research teams out to work with us on water quality.

But I'm here today because we we've had some gifts given to us that, I called Kira almost immediately when I found out this gift was coming, that I knew was going to really not only change our community, but it was going to open doors for kids.

Yeah.

And, that's why I said I'm the new kid.

I'm following these guys around like a little brothers, you know?

And just saying, you know, you got to teach me.

I got to learn.

I need to know how you're doing this.

And everyone has been so generous.

Kira has really been a mentor to me.

And as as as April, doctor.

April.

Lumina.

I wish you could be with us today, but of course, she's in Mexico teaching 80 science teachers.

You know, she's from University of Rochester, and she she has been such a connector teacher, to other leaders, to other educators.

So we're just in the beginning stages.

But this this one gift changed everything.

Yeah.

And now you have eco boot camp, and and you're doing something with microplastic education programs.

For some, for something new.

That's that's big stuff.

We're running hard to keep up with the opportunity.

Right?

Isn't that how it happens?

So.

So, doctor April Lumen had a student in her class.

And were you one of her students, Kira.

Years ago?

That's right.

Yeah.

We're not.

We don't know how long.

Yeah, but.

Yes, yes, but one of her, one of her students was, Doctor Ellen Lloyd, who was, I think, principal at Soda School and then ended up as the superintendent of the Marion School District, which is one of our 11 rural school districts in Wayne County.

So we we're also partnering with Doctor Sammy Romanek from University of Rochester, McGrath lab, and she used the microplastic expert.

So we for the first time, this was so cool.

We were able to take top researchers, post-doctoral researchers, take them out to a rural school and work with 50 kids studying in microplastics.

But it was not lecture.

It was just like the the guys are talking about with the farm.

The kids dissected fish.

They sifted sand.

They did water sampling at the end of the program.

It was a two week program.

We discovered that there were, as there were microplastics found in every single fish that we pulled out of the out of the bay.

There was also microplastics in every single scoop that we checked at the beach.

It was.

And so the beauty of this is and this is what excites me, these same kids are writing for a national education journal.

They'll be published in eighth grade and 12th grade.

They're going to be published nationally as Microplastics Researchers.

Wow.

So we're looking for a way not only to impact the kids lives, but to boost the academic opportunity for these these superintendents.

And they're amazing people.

Mike Pullen at North Rose Wolcott, where we're, we're taking a whole bunch of his administrators and teachers on Wednesday night out on, so to speak, because someone gave us a 50 passenger tour boat, 50 passenger.

And I'm like, at first I didn't know what to do with that gift.

Like, it actually scared me a little bit.

The donor called me and said, I like your idea of eco tourism working with kids.

So, you know, I like to buy a boat.

And I was thinking like a nice little pontoon boat.

Ten, 12 people and.

Right.

And so but as we're talking in the conversation, I'm realizing, oh, he's not he's like giving me something as big as a farm, you know, and, and so at a certain point I said, well, how many people?

And he said, oh, 50.

I want 50 people to be able to sit at tables and chairs, and go out in the water.

And then, you know, this.

And then I started getting like, shaky.

And I said, finally got up my courage.

And I said, how much are we spending?

What's in our budget?

And he said, well, I don't want to go over a million, but we can if we have to.

So he gave me instructions.

Find a boat like the Rose Loomis.

It was a historic boat that had been in the bay 30 years ago.

We searched America.

We searched the Caribbean.

We searched, the West coast.

We found no boat.

So a year later, I'm sitting on $1 million gift that I can't spend.

And then one of my board members raised her hand at the January meeting, and she said, why are we not looking at the original Rose Loomis that had been on the Bay?

And it had been through a $450,000 restoration, and a couple of weeks later she was on a bus, 55ft boat was on a truck headed from Appleton, Wisconsin, back to Sodus Bay.

Wow.

So that's our gift.

And I said to the community, this wasn't given to save our Sodus.

This was given to all of us.

Yeah.

And so right away, you know, I called Kira and said, help me.

Help you.

You care is saving.

You're you're the savior here, right here.

Left.

Because you you were working with all three of these organizations to to develop programing.

Can you tell us about what it takes and what goes into developing these programs for the for the kids and working with these organizations?

Well, I think first of all, thank you for having me.

And it was interesting to get the email and see everybody's names because, I'm connected with with everybody here.

And so when you ask, you know, what does it take?

And it takes community connection.

Right.

Chris and I have been working together for six years, I think now pre-pandemic, you know what?

It really started with a conversation about, what if, you know, and what if this imagination of what if we could get kids, all kids connected with nature and what does what does that look like, and how do we do it?

And the impact of that.

And Frank and I just spent the last year, working with our first graders at school 12, learning about growing their own food, putting gardens to bed and waking gardens up.

And, and we had the pleasure of also having, Farmer John, aka the professional grandfather come into school 12 and work with our, our students, every three weeks throughout, throughout pretty much until they got pretty busy in the growing season.

And then Don and I were connected with April Lumin.

April had asked me to come out and do a Nature Connection kind of workshop with college or pre-service teachers, and Don happened to be there and, kind of worked through the workshop as well.

And, and then we were connected.

So so it takes vision.

It takes a little bit of risk, which I believe in for, for all kids, you know, there's a good there's, there's benefits that come out of climbing those trees.

Right.

I'm a big fan of climbing trees and climbing things and playing and going on water trips.

Right.

Scary.

Those things that, you know, we we had our I had the, you know, the privilege and the benefit of, of growing up that way and the impact that it had on me personally and, and how I raise my, my children now and my family and where we go for respite and, and, relaxation and connection and personally to, you know, I've had had my own, experiences in life where, where nature has been a huge part of, of my healing process.

So, when you ask how it is, it's really about connection and getting the right people who see the power, behind our kids being able to engage with with nature and natural spaces and, you know, it's not it's it's not equitable for all.

Currently, we know that communities do not have access, and there's so many barriers that are in the way for this.

And it's crucial right now for for holistic wealth, for academic growth.

And all of our communities that this is something that we, we put all of our energy into and come together around.

So this is kind of a beautiful table to be sitting at really for me.

Oh, you're thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah.

So so so Kira and I guess is open to all of you.

How do you balance outdoor learning with academics like math and science?

And how are we creating that balance?

It's my favorite, record.

Could I go back to the last thing that, Kira said?

Because this is really triggering, you know, amazing stuff for us.

First of all, Doctor April told us that the kids, you'd think that rural kids would have more access to farms.

Yes.

Right.

They don't, they don't.

And so April told us two years ago, Doctor April said, that she brought kids down to the water from one of our rural school districts a couple of miles inland.

One out of two kids had never seen Lake Ontario.

They had no.

So they so these kids are standing there in wonder and they had two questions.

This is a quoting April.

The first one is what is that?

They have no comprehension of that much water.

And then their second question is who does it belong to you.

And so we've been teaching the Native American principles.

Well, of course it belongs to you.

This is yours.

This is the we are all stewarding in this together.

So over that was a ten year study, by the way.

And then as I met Kira, just to brag about her a little bit because I'm so grateful she's given so generously to us.

Kira said to me, she started sharing with me the studies that if you can get a child that was either from trauma or poverty or trapped in poverty, and you can get them into an experience of nature, and you guys all know this.

You know, I'm I'm the little kid following you.

They it changes them.

It begins to transform their life.

It begins to open their trajectories of what their future might look like when they're back home.

They're trapped and they're oppressed.

And their and their worlds are often dark.

Get them out in nature.

Get them to the farm.

I'm having this privilege of working now with 11 school districts, to say how many of your kids can we get on the water every year?

Wow.

So I yeah, we have we have academics, we have outdoor learning, and we have, Native American principals.

Yes.

Right.

All of this are coming together with how how are we seeing this play out with with the full link.

And I want everyone to chime in on how these concepts come together and create this experience for this, for these kids.

I just, I think, finding the partnerships like Carol's mentioning, getting everybody there to, to really learn and see what's possible.

Our partnership earlier in the year has really opened up full eyes because, fueling does so much beyond just the farm.

I mean, the farm team were a very small team, but we're a small arm of a full length.

So to be able to have a space like this, to partner with the community and be able to teach sustainability, give lessons that I know as a as the alumni, I didn't have the opportunity to have when I was in high school or elementary school or whatever, just being able to embrace that and create those partnerships and really, really kind of change the trajectory of where we're heading with nature based learning and outdoor activity has been.

It's been amazing, and I think that's what fueling wants to do with the farm is just a vision outside of just tangible food, that creation of sustainability in the knowledge that we're going to teach these children.

When I was teaching, I did some work with with senior capstone classes and did a lot of research around what future readiness looks like.

Well, like, what do students need to be future ready?

And something that that I attached to is this idea of forces that they need critical thinking skills.

They need collaboration.

Creativity and communication skills.

And we see all of that come into play when we do this, this nature based learning, you know, the creativity.

We ask them to build a shelter out in the forest and to see what they come up with out of that.

In the collaboration, I, I think back to the, the program we have this this summer, but we see it in classrooms all the time.

But with with the summer, we brought students together from all across the community that may not have that opportunity to get together.

And so they're learning how to work together.

They're learning how to make jam together.

They're learning how to, you know, do these these small projects that they have.

And so, you know, that's a that's a really important piece for our community, but also individuals.

This is to be able to have these skills where we can imagine something new and different, like imagining a farm like that, on Lexington Avenue is something that Food Link was able to do and make it happen.

Right.

And imagining that there would be a boat that would fit 50 young people, to go out and see what's going on in Lake Ontario is, is huge.

Because what we also really see, and how this benefits the academics is that young people don't have the experiences to attach the academics to.

So you're trying to read and you're reading about a lake and you've never seen a lake, and you're reading about the fish that lives in the lake, it's hard to imagine what you're reading about or yeah, I have all these examples all day long.

But, you know, we get we go a core field study that we do is is down into the Seth Green drive and down into the Lower Falls Gorge.

And to see those rock layers and and to to imagine that 450 million years of, of rocks are right there, that you're walking through that, is pretty amazing to actually experience it.

But you need to experience that if you're going to go think about fossils and which ones are older and younger and the different in the different rock layers.

When you get to a science camp.

And so these sorts of, of nature based experiences are where education came from in the first place to help people understand the life they were living.

But now it's kind of been flip flop to where they need the experiences to understand the academics that they're being asked to to know and right.

And they it's for lots of reasons.

Like Kira said, we just need to really focus as much attention as we can because this is essential.

It's not a nice thing, you know, it's not like, oh, it's really fun.

If kids get to go outside like it is essential to their healthy development and it's essential to the healthy development of our communities.

And so that's why we're all so passionate about it.

Oh, and I know you don't want to follow behind Chris.

I know you don't hear us.

Yeah, we do a good job.

We do a good job.

Each other.

Yeah, we we've been working together long enough.

We know how to how to ping pong back and forth.

But, you know, I want to touch on a couple of things.

And the academic piece, of course, with being rooted, in public school and all different private schools.

All right.

All of our education for our children.

My, my road to nature based learning really came from as a science teacher, seeing a disconnect that my high school students were having to some really basic concepts and understanding and processes of our natural world.

And it was bigger than electronics, right?

It was bigger than well, maybe it's they all have cell phones.

And had started to do some research through the master teacher of New York State Master Teacher program.

And when Chris and I sat down and really talked about, you know, what is nature based learning look like for the Rochester area?

And I say the Rochester area and and greater, I guess I can start to say greater Rochester area as we move out towards Wayne County.

But, we came up with three foundations and it is academic growth, holistic wellness and community connection.

But that is also with like people in planet right.

And so when we're talking about math and we're talking about writing and all of the different standards that need to be met as educators and teachers, everything is through an academic growth lens.

But nature based learning also allows educators to meet students where they're at.

And the goal is that every student has an opportunity to show growth.

And one of the results we've seen after we've just finished year three of nature based learning at school, number 12 is we have a 100% engagement, and we also have 100% engagement in nature journaling and writing.

And that is with all of our children.

And that to me as an educator, is incredible because I tried to be that science teacher that was engaging and and, you know, Miss Fun and Miss Frizzle as much as I could, you know, but but there were always boundaries to engagement for kids, right?

Because of what they bring with them.

And we know that when students are have the freedom to make some choice and to experience different things in terms of the whole, whole, holistic wellness, moving their bodies, breathing fresh air, getting sunshine visually or sensory taking in information.

It is such a better way for them to learn.

And then the community connection piece, you know how we talk about nature and instead of us being a human top down species, right?

It's taking those indigenous practices and and I am by no means an expert on speaking to this.

I am definitely still learning.

But instead of a tree being an IT, it's a living being.

So teaching and using language with students that all of these things are living beings that we are all a part of.

And so you're not alone, right?

And you belong in these spaces.

It has completely shifted the culture at school 12 the way that the students speak.

And an article just came out recently about, words of nature or story have disappeared over the last several decades.

So words like moss and tree and bird have started to disappear from books and stories.

And that to me is, like criminal, right?

And so by having our community connections in this way, that language is coming back the way our students speak about our natural beings is inclusive, and that is inclusive of each other as well.

So, you know, to me, when we talk about the impact of nature based learning, it's not this is not just a frill.

This is not just a nice to have.

This is this is a right for all of our children.

Yeah.

And when you, when you, when each of you talk about this nature based learning, for me what comes to mind is like, wow, only 25 kids.

It feels like all kids need to experience this.

All right, where are we expanding these programs?

How can we get.

I think we should move all classrooms outside.

Right?

I think you're right.

Am I speaking your language?

Yes, absolutely.

Why only 25?

Like, it's heartbreaking to me to know that only 25 kids through the through the summer get to experience this?

Well, this was a pilot program.

This.

Okay.

Right.

Okay.

You guys.

Yes.

And what our goal is, is scale.

And there are a couple of different approaches to that.

So with our organization, we in the last school year provided 8100 nature based learning experiences to children across across Monroe County, 8000, 8000.

And so much.

Right.

And that there is it's hard for us to come up with the number of students because a lot of students do things with us 2 or 3 times, they get outside 2 or 3 times.

So that represents about 3500 students that have gotten outside with us in this last year.

And so we're we're working as hard as we can to get, you know, and go ahead and shut me up, Chris.

No, no, no.

But I ask that same question everywhere we go.

And the other the other part of our approach at Rochester Ecology Partners is this idea of integration and that we're not trying to do it all ourselves.

Right.

There's this whole infrastructure of schools and education that we can shift to be more connected to nature in their community.

Organizations like Food Link and Save Our Sodus, that want to partner with the education system to provide these experiences for young people so that there are thousands going to the Food link farm, that there are thousands of children who get to go out on that boat.

And we just what we really need to do is, is to get our whole community to acknowledge and support and shift the resources.

That's the other part of we live in a community of of huge abundance.

There is there are abundant natural resources, there are abundant financial resources, there are abundant social resources.

And we just need to move those resources into the direction of of what works.

And so that's where we're always trying to elevate the research behind all of this.

There's a whole national body of research about how nature based learning, getting out, just getting outside.

I mean, even just seeing trees in a classroom.

There's research that said that students do better when they can see a tree from their classroom window.

And so getting that research out there, but then also showing this, this pathway that happens when it starts with a kindergartner getting outside to play.

And then that leads to high school students that right now this summer, we also have a program with the University of Rochester's and so long acronym.

So I it takes me a second.

But Finger Lakes environment children's environmental Health Center, they're environmental health ambassadors.

They're 12 high school students that have been hired through the summer of opportunity.

And we've partnered with the U of R, and they've been doing research into environmental health.

And this Thursday at the public market, from 10 to 12, they will be displaying their research, their community research around that.

And so really everybody understanding where these pathways are and their role in supporting that pathway, so that then once those high school students graduate, if they want to become educators with us, that's an ideal situation because that's just but they don't need to be they can be city council people.

They can be lawyers.

They can be accountants or whatever.

But even just as parents be able to to speak up and say, and that's where we're finding a lot of the support, is the parents speaking up and saying, we'll go do workshops with teachers and they say, yeah, yeah, this is fine for my classroom.

But I also want my child to have these experiences.

How do we make that happen?

And so that those are so those are some of my answers of yes, everybody as quickly as we possibly can.

It really is the root.

Yeah.

Let's go outside.

Right.

And that's, you know, a lot this year I've been doing professional development with, with educators as well and trying you know, one of the main things that I focus on is having educators connect themselves.

And I've had the privilege of being substitute camp counselor this summer and, and took, the, the high school students that Chris was just talking about, kayaking the other day and bringing attention to those students that when they got off the bus, you know, they're high schoolers, they're tired.

They're they're not really, you know, they're lacking a little bit of energy.

They're like, we're going out kayaking.

And within ten minute less than that, five minutes on the water, they're laughing.

They're feeling joy.

They are, you know, excited for all of the different wildlife they set, all that wildlife we saw, you know, and that we got to get up close to.

So that connection piece first, I think is a vital piece that we do with our youngest community members all the way up.

Okay.

We're we're actually going to take we're going to come back and speak about we're going to actually have a word from one of the students that participate in the program.

And I want to touch on a mental health aspect as well.

So we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back.

We're talking about eco camps right here on WXXI.

I'm Evan Dawson, coming up in our second hour, a conversation about ALS.

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And we're back with connections on WXXI.

We've been discussing how summer programs in our region are trying to connect kids with nature in teaching about the natural world and conservation, and we do have a clip from of Ramona Gilmore.

She's a second grader and is a sound bite from the growing good summer program.

Do you know Ramona?

Yeah, yeah, I see all smiles.

She's one of the participants.

Our reporter, Jeremy Mole, spoke with, Ramona last week at the camp, and she says she enjoyed learning about plants and pollination.

She also really likes the games they play, such as, one where the children act out pollination using beads and cups.

Oh, we got to talk about that.

I, I you got my mind racing.

Let's hear what Ramona Gilmore had to say.

That's really fun.

That's the best thing about camp.

It's really, really, really, really, really fun.

Really, really, really.

I felt that, and it just touched my heart.

You know?

Her voice is so cute.

Oh, gosh.

So let's talk about Ramona Gilmore and this pollination.

And the kids like her having really, really, really, really fun times, at the growing good summer program.

So, it's cool to hear that that clip, because they have been doing so last every week.

The camp does a different theme.

And last week, having be a pollinators theme.

So I was able to observe them participating in different pollinator games, like the one you mentioned.

But on top of that, midweek last week, we were able to use some of, food links, could be soups that we actually had.

So we were able to actually allow the students get into bee suits and harvest honey in the actual bee boxes with, with our staff.

So all the kids got their suits protected from the bees, pulled out some frames, they were able to eat and taste honey straight from a bee box with the wax on it, so it kind of did a full circle.

You learned about pollinators.

You see pollinators every day.

They know what they do, the ins and outs of what pollinators are good for, and then they were able to actually go and experience that on their own.

And it was really cool to see how how fun and how brave the the students actually are.

Yeah.

Don, is bee in your boat?

Yeah.

Not what I want to talk about.

Why is this so important for anybody?

Want to chime in?

Why is it so important for kids to be to experience this at such a young age?

You know, one of the things I guess I would insert here is that when we were beginning our process, the first person we called was Chris, and he spent a hour and a half on the phone with our team and started pointing us in directions.

There's there's a community behind all this, Raquel, that who are so generous and so kind, and they sort of draw you in.

They adopt you as family.

They make you part of their own, and suddenly you have access to their knowledge and their skills and sometimes resources that that they could use for themselves.

They share with others.

So we're following that same model in Wayne County, for example.

I'm being really careful because the boat is bringing a lot of excitement to the community.

But I keep saying S.O.S.

didn't go get this.

S.O.S.

was given this.

And by the way, the real heroes in our community, RJ Rask up in the Community Schools program, you know, and working with all the different schools throughout the district.

And, and so we've got to be careful.

It doesn't make us the star of the show.

We're not all right.

But our job is to be there to serve and to help.

So I just wanted to put that in because the folks like this, they they deserve somebody to like, go knock on their door or hug them and thank them, you know, for all that they do.

And, you know, I had to just mention, you know, the the mental health aspect of it, all right.

Because we're speaking about nature and all the positive things that you're doing with connecting to academics.

But when it comes to mental health, you know, mental health has become such a trending, yeah, a crisis.

Are we are we thinking about mental health at all when we're exploring this, these programs?

Yes, yes, 100%, 100% that and that that is inclusive of our Holistic Wellness Foundation is where that comes from.

And you see the evidence of it.

We kind of borrowed a term from a friend of ours at Urban Ecology Centers in Milwaukee, and we call it radical joy.

Because joy is continuous, right?

Happy happiness can be fleeting.

And we were seeing these things in all of our children at school.

12 and Joy kept coming up, but it wasn't big enough.

It's that I'm so, so, so happy, happy, happy, right?

Really, really, really, really, really, really great.

And so where does that radical joy come from?

And it comes from that connection of nature that decreases anxiety, helps with depression.

Is a combatant for loneliness, right?

You may not be.

You may be in a room full of people and be incredibly lonely.

But if you are able to connect with a bird and a tree, you know a tree.

Trees are.

It's amazing to see kids really become, guardians of their trees.

Right?

And so, and then just even how your brain responds to, to being in fresh air and blue skies and hearing sounds of nature.

Right?

That's genetically that's how we're supposed to be.

And so mental health, we cannot discount the impact that that has as well.

And there's a ton of research too that supports that as well.

And it doesn't it like I think you told me, it affects, blood pressure and, respiration rates all change in nature.

Yeah, yeah.

And do we have is there research that points to like academic success, like when the school year starts?

Right.

It reaches 30 kids.

Research shows that kids do better academically when, when they experience these, this, this, this during the summertime when they go back to school.

Yeah.

The Children and Nature Network is is a national organization, and they have a whole research arm that is gathering up all of the research around this.

And we've done some research of our own to, to to digest it.

And yes, I mean, one of the biggest things that can happen is attendance goes up.

You have to be at school to learn.

And so when students know they're going to have something that's engaging and brings them joy and makes them feel free, they want to come to school.

And then there's also the engagement.

You know, it has.

And once you're engaged, then you can start to learn.

But there there is a growing body of evidence nationally.

But then even locally, we're working with, different folks within the universities at the U of R and Suny Brockport.

To do research into the work that we are doing here.

And April Lumen is another great connection to what it means to do inquiry based learning.

And I think that that's also another piece where we're bringing in all of these pedagogical approaches that people know work, but are really hard to do in a traditional classroom.

It's really hard to do projects if you're trying to get everybody to sit in a row and be quiet for 45 minutes, you know?

But we're like, I had a, individual story of this that really impacted me, like two years ago when I was first meeting Chris and Kyra.

A young man who's at today and, junior executive in a construction company here in Rochester, grew up in the inner city, and his father was a drug addict.

His older brother had was in prison.

His other brother had had been killed.

And so this little this little boy at ten, 11 years old, would grab a group of his friends and they would ride north to get to the water.

And I don't think the water in itself is magic.

Just so we say that it's I think a farm is is magical as a lake.

But this, this was their opportunity.

So they rode their BMX bikes, however many miles that is up to share a lot.

They did that every single day, all summer long.

And and I said to him, so where do you live now?

And he said, oh, I live on the water, up in Greece.

And I said, well, what was the in-between story?

And he said, going to the water saved my life.

Yeah.

I said, and so that's that's the mental health factor we're looking for, right?

We we want to give them a sense that their life could be bigger, that there's greater opportunity, that you're not stuck.

And and I think they experience love with their radical joy somehow with the community and so on.

It's just it's so much fun to be a part of this.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if anyone else wants to to share any, any stories or may your personal stories.

Have you did you go to camp when you were younger?

I know Kira, your pipeline.

You you you went through this?

You were a student of this.

Were you at nature camp and what type of camps were you at?

And how did that influence your upbringing and your take on life and your experience academically?

I'll just bounce real quick that I grew up in the Maplewood neighborhood, not far down the street.

My friends and I would ride our bikes over to the lower Falls and yeah, and get into all kinds of stuff over there.

And and that's a big piece of my approach is like this, this nature isn't far away from, you know, we are unique in Rochester that we have a wilderness gorge in the middle of our city.

But then there's there's nature everywhere.

And I was lucky enough to be a Boy Scout and have a family that took me out camping and things like that.

But it's that that for me that it's it's recreating that exploration, that discovery, and the students, young people don't have the freedom that they used to have, even just that piece of like, being allowed to to ride my bike.

You know, my parents didn't know I was down by the gorge all the time, but ride my bike wherever, right?

Ride my bike wherever I felt then led me to to new and interesting things and again, imagining something different, as just part of everyday life.

And so I think that that was an important piece for me.

And then it's free for you guys to have the passion for this.

I know it had to stem from childhood done or.

Yeah, I did.

You have a 50 cedar?

No, no, no, we had a little junky boat that we kept trying to keep trying to, sink.

But I had a flashback when Chris was talking of Boy Scouts, and I'll never forget.

I must have been.

I don't want a ten year old waking up in the woods in a tent for the first time in my life, and hearing the wind through the trees was a little cool.

And.

And I lay there as a child, feeling a sense of wonder like, this is the most amazing experience ever.

And it brought me back after that, I so I, I don't know how you guys feel, but something tells me that if we can even sometimes get them one experience, it's worth it.

Yeah, it would lead to others and lead to hunger and and I can I can kind of jump on that in terms of that sense of wonder.

And so it.

For me, yes, there were, there were periods of my life throughout that were really connected with nature.

But I think that, you know, my experiences, my own experience.

Right.

And very unique and a very different time than, than it is now.

And so it doesn't have to be that big, doesn't have to be that same experience.

Right.

But that having that time to have freedom and wonder and discovery, and it doesn't have to be, you know, on a big boat or a camping trip, it can honestly be watching a bee on a flower or noticing that, the air smells or feels different on that first smell.

And when we were talking to you a little bit about the research, and we're looking at our youngest youth in the city and play.

Yeah, right.

And where has that play gone?

Yeah.

And what what we need to do in terms of change is we need to be able to have a community that is rallying around kids playing, and that it is okay to climb trees and it is okay to go with a lower for, lower gorge.

And how do we make these spaces too accessible for all and safe for all, and kids riding on their bikes where they can be safe riding their bikes?

And so to me, it's really about even those small, intimate moments that kids can have with each other and our community and our natural spaces that then can grow from there.

And that's really it's it doesn't have to it's not hard, you know, when people are like, well, how do we do this?

You know, and we're doing it at school 12 with 800 students and all 800 students get nature based learning.

But I jokingly but not jokingly say, open the door.

Yeah.

You know, like right there, I know, I know, Frank, I don called farms magical, right?

Do you have in your childhood did you receive and you do a lot of farming where farms magical for you.

So.

So growing up.

No, I was actually, I was at Edgerton Rec Center, a kid.

So the rec center was about as close to a camp or farming or anything I really was able to do.

But that kind of has been an inspiration for what we want to do at the food farm over the next year.

Anyways, with camp winding down with Rocky Ecology Partners having their last day of camp this Friday, where we probably going to start right back up next week, we've had, Rocky or not, City of Rochester rec centers potentially hosting a couple summer day camps before the end of summer this year.

So just using the farm for that space and continuing to build that for us.

Oh, I felt like I had some nature based learning today.

I want to thank my guests for stopping by.

Donald Riling, Frank at Keel Fit.

Lessee, the fit.

Lastly, I was I was doing great.

Chris Widmyer and Kyra Stevenson, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge about nature based learning with us here at Zee.

Thank you, thank you.

You.

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