Project WILD Training for Our Nature Counselors
It’s training time at camp right now! This is the time of the year when camp counselors, adventure staff, activity leaders, and individuals with various roles and responsibilities flock to Falling Creek for necessary training, orientation, and essential prep before campers arrive in less than two weeks.
One of the areas Falling Creek prides itself on is our nature programming, where campers are involved in hands-on learning activities at the F.A.R.M., the nature hut, and everywhere they step. They may simply be watching a squirrel run across fallen leaves in the woods, or they may be examining tracks that a black bear left in the dirt while they slept. In any case, one of our primary goals is to foster a love of nature so that kids can learn more about the world in which they live and build deeper connections to the natural environment.
“Connectivity—that’s what it’s all about,” says Zora Rhodes, a volunteer for Project WILD who facilitated a training session on Tuesday to certify staff from Falling Creek and surrounding camps in youth environmental programming. While she is retired from her career as chief of the education division of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Rhodes continues to devote her time to helping others understand the importance of building relationships with the plants, animals, insects, and natural elements all around us.
“Kids need to feel like they’re part of nature. It’s been studied and proven how essential the natural environment is to children’s psychology,” Rhodes explains.
With her, Rhodes has brought several books related to these topics, explaining the significance of a child’s imaginative and creative developments as they relate to nature. The training shows us that learning about and involving ourselves in nature can be more than purely scientific, though—it can be creative, exciting, and engaging.
During the training, staff were asked to participate in a few of the structured activities found in Project Wild’s K-12 Curriculum & Activity Guide.
In groups, they were tasked with forming their own small communities with unique cultures and customs, to imagine life when all resources—water, food, plants, trees—were renewable, and then to compare it with the state of today’s world.
First-year counselor Beans, who was a camper for seven summers at FCC prior to joining the staff team this summer, said that he found himself enjoying the training activities as much as a camper would. He said, “Shifting into the adult world and being in college zaps creativity and child-wonder with stress and workloads… but the ability to shift into a camper’s point-of-view instantly lights that fire again, and every counselor should strive to have a camper’s wonder and imagination by engaging with what the campers will be engaging with all summer long.”
Beans wasn’t the only person engaged in the training. As Rhodes handed out trinkets from a tote, the participants marveled at the objects, curious to know why they were examining these odd things: a turtle-skin boot, a crocodile purse, a wallaby pelt, ivory carvings, elephant tusks, seashell jewelry. When Rhodes told them that these items had been confiscated from the Fish & Wildlife Service and asked them why that might be, lightbulbs went off. Hands were raised. Answers were offered. They were learning how to be excited to learn again, understanding what it means to make a group effort, to listen to one another, and to reflect on their own behaviors. All this to better understand how they might create opportunities for campers to be this excited when they arrive in a few short weeks.
At the end of the training, the staff transitioned into leadership roles, forming groups to lead activities for each other. Each group brought its own style of engaging the participants, but in all the groups, the one common factor was fun. For some, this training helped them reimagine teaching about nature to youth as something to be excited about.
Ella H., the Falling Creek activity lead for F.A.R.M. and Nature, says, “My biggest takeaway is that you can have fun and fully utilize activities that might initially be geared toward a younger audience or for primary lessons. You can adapt it and make it work for anyone. [Rhodes] was very insistent on telling us how the biggest part of the job is being adaptive.”
For Ella, the most exciting part about being involved in helping children foster deeper connections to nature involves having fun with it! “It reaffirmed that being silly is sometimes the best way to carry out activities. You can learn so much while still being silly. It’s fun for college students, for little kids, even high school students. I’m going to remember that forever.”
At the end of the training, Rhodes emphasizes our role in ensuring that children are able to develop good relationships with the natural environment.
“In order to save the planet, so to speak, people have to care for it,” she says, “and in order for people to care for it, they need access to learning about it, and that’s where places like camps come in, to bridge that gap.”
What Else Have We Been Doing This Week?
Staff are discussing lesson plans, getting certified in their specific activities, learning Wilderness First Aid, practicing silly announcements, and playing Evening Program games!
In between the training there’s been plenty of time for fun too. Check out our social media for more photos and updates!