Children read pages from a book stationed along a trail in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, part of the Story Trail event put on by the Mountain View Timberland Library.
Children read pages from a book stationed along a trail in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, part of the Story Trail event put on by the Mountain View Timberland Library.
Students visiting the Cispus Learning Center pose near a waterfall in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
Children hike along a trail in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, where pages of a book have been stationed at intervals, as part of the Story Trail event put on by the Mountain View Timberland Library.
Students visiting the Cispus Learning Center help each other over an obstacle.
Students visiting the Cispus Learning Center stand in a circle as part of an activity at the site.
A wide-ranging group of civic and private leaders in East Lewis County is putting forward an ambitious vision — a program to provide outdoor education opportunities from Kindergarten through 12th grade for every student in the White Pass School District.
The group is seeking state funding for the plan, which would bring students to places like dairy farms and fish hatcheries, snowshoe trails and ropes courses, Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens.
“This idea, Outdoors For Life, is making sure that every single grade level has the opportunity not just once, but multiple times throughout the year, to go explore the outdoors,” said Chase Buffington, general manager of the Cispus Learning Center. “Testing is great, being in a classroom with four walls has its place, but we’re also preparing kids for the real world, and they should be aware of what’s out there.”
The applicants are seeking $62,000 in state funds, to be paired with $28,000 volunteered locally, to start the program. The request is through the No Child Left Inside grant program, established to “provide under-served youth with quality opportunities to experience the natural world,” which is funded through the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office.
The group’s application was submitted April 1, and they’re expecting to know by mid June whether they’ve been approved for the funding. According to Mary Prophit, manager at the Mountain View Timberland Library, an initial review of the application by the state agency provided positive feedback.
The proposal was brought together this winter by a wide swath of East County leaders, who brainstormed together and spent lots of personal time on their own compiling the finer details. The organizations represented included Cispus and the library, the White Pass School District, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, the White Pass Ski Area and Mount Rainier National Park, among others.
“Experiential education is really important for developing students’ sense of self, interpersonal skills, their ability to problem solve, their confidence,” said Amelia Donahey, a teacher at White Pass Elementary who helped craft the proposal. “Those are my favorite times with kids, when we get to laugh and I get to see different sides of them and parts of their personalities. … All of these partners have a lot of knowledge about our local environment and can help us think about really exciting and creative and fun ways to help kids learn.”
Multiple leaders involved in crafting the proposal mentioned the plethora of outdoor opportunities available in and around East Lewis County, noting that many local kids don’t get to experience much of their “big backyard.”
“White Pass School District is surrounded by opportunities for outdoor education, but they haven’t been able to because of funding,” Prophit said. “The goal is that every kid from Kindergarten through 12th grade has some kind of outdoor education experience. Hopefully, by the time they’re in high school, they’re comfortable being outdoors.”
According to the grant proposal, the median household income in the project’s service area is below $38,000, less than half of the Washington average and well below Lewis County as a whole. More than two-thirds of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch.
“We really believe that this is a great program for kids, to get them outside and energized with learning that takes place in the outdoor environment,” said Paul Farris, superintendent of the White Pass School District. “We know that it really helps kids that might have social, behavior, economic or health barriers, and we look forward to being able to try to provide these opportunities.”
One of those nearby opportunities is Cispus, an outdoor learning campus in the national forest that’s part of the Washington School Principals Education Foundation. It hosts 12,000 students a year from around the state, offering things like hiking, a ropes course and leadership training. The proposal submitted to the state would bring White Pass students to Cispus at least half a dozen times in their academic careers.
“Sometimes in the education world we can see a lot of quantitative data, but what you’re getting out here is the qualitative material,” Buffington said. “We don’t have cell service out here. They realize you can slip on a rock and scuff up a knee.”
Another nearby partner is the White Pass Ski Area, which will provide ski trips, snowshoeing and after-school discounts. White Pass general manager Kevin McCarthy said it’s part of the organization’s ongoing efforts to get involved with local schools. He noted that many participants have gone on to become employees.
“It’s not about getting more skiers or snowboarders,” he said. “The real value to me is to get kids outside their existing four walls and realizing there’s a lot to offer out there. We provide them an experience that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to participate in. … I’ve had teenage boys come up to me crying, giving me a hug at the end of it all, because they’ve never had these opportunities.”
Those involved with the Outdoors For Life plan credited a pair of other local initiatives with laying the groundwork for the collaboration. The first, Discovery Team, has since 2000 provided White Pass students with summer jobs doing work with the Forest Service, garnering career skills, environmental know how and a paycheck.
Story Trail, the second, started last year, a collaboration between the library and the Forest Service, with book pages blown up and placed in increments along a mile-long trail, giving participants a mix of exploration and literature.
Donahey noted that she’s seen the opportunities Discovery Team has provided for local high schoolers, and credited Prophit as an “outside-the-box thinker” who worked to create Story Trail and helped focus the varied passions of everyone involved in the grant proposal. Those success stories, along with the potential of the grant, could give East County a signature feature as a destination for outdoor learning.
“To be a pie-in-the-sky dreamer here, I think our school could be a highly desired school that people want to move to and be a part of our district because of the place we live,” Donahey said. “This is a great step to utilizing the resources around us to give kids an education that is totally different from what they would get somewhere else.”
