Forest School Leader
2024/2025 Colorado Cohort
Welcome to your Cohort Page. This space will be used to share materials with you as you go through your journey in becoming a qualified forest school practitioner
We are excited to work with you as you nurture communities within their local, natural environments, aiming for a deeper kinship with non-human communities.
The space we hold and our role within our forest school communities allow them to witness their journey, celebrate who they are and what matters to them, reflect on their experiences and be part of a community of fellow learners.
Our Journey
There will be play, challenge, patience, celebration, and reflection. During our time together, we will centre our practice not just on understanding the culture that we are working to create but also on living and embodying it.
The training will allow us to collectively explore our values and aspirations and the role that these will play within our future forest school communities. It will ground this in knowing the land, the crafts, the pedagogy, and the legacy of the time that we create together.
As well as working towards being a professional, we will aspire to be purposeful with our practice.
Timeline
Initial Training (June 2024)
Being introduced to forest school practice.
Emerging a New Practice (July 2024)
Reflecting on your training.
Being in a Community of Learning (Aug 2024-April 2025)
Regular online support sessions.
Regular articles and resources.
Cycles of unit completion and feedback
Visiting your Forest School Community (June 2025)
Training Team
Paul (Lead Trainer)
A highly experienced forest school trainer, he has trained over 4,000 practitioners worldwide. With a background in countryside management, social forestry, and bushcraft, he has learned from indigenous communities like the Ngati Tuwharetoa Maori, the Sammi, and the Aboriginal Bibulman. Holding a postgraduate degree in Outdoor and Experiential Learning, his research focuses on fostering kinship with nature. He is pursuing a PhD and brings a unique perspective to forest school training as an ethnoecologist. He founded the Centre for Ethnoecology, offering workshops and adventures to promote connection with the natural world.
Cassie and Erin (Course Support)
Erin and Cassie are the founders of The Wild Ones and your hosts for this training! They have been running a forest school for the last several years. While collaborating with other outdoor practitioners, they saw a need for a training program to instil the same confidence, practical skills, and knowledge they gained. Erin and Cassie are currently exploring routes to become trainers, offer training in the United States, support others who share the same passion for collaborating, and bring safe forest school practices to our communities.
Communtiy of Learning
We are all learning all the time. A community of learning recognises the experience and understanding of all its members. During the course, while we will be guiding us through the training and qualification, as a community of people, we are all equally invested in that shared journey.
We look forward to learning together.
There is no such thing as a silly question, except the one not shared.
We will be open to sitting with the unknown.
Share with the community when you can.
Ask the community when there is a need.
If in doubt, play.
Warning - Part of the training team is from England, and as such, it basically being a place of hilltops and valleys, troll swamps and haunted forests; there will most likely be words, sentences, and even complete paragraphs that you will not understand. Do not worry about this. There are many ways of speaking within England whereby if you are from not within the same ‘Shire, you would not understand. Or, alternatively, he is playing up to this and making up words purely for his own entertainment. Please highlight this as and when it occurs and they will explain the point again, but in “American English”.
Articles
Documents
The Qualication
The qualification underpins our practice. Designed to help you develop, reflect on, and evidence your ability to nurture meaningful forest school communities, this portfolio of evidence will also gain you formal recognition as a practitioner.
Click on the button to view the qualification guide.
