The forest within

My Forest School journey began with a serendipitous encounter (which I will be forever grateful for) with Lorna on a social entrepreneurs programme back in 2020. After hearing her talk about Greenwood Growth, I couldn’t help but be intrigued actually having never heard of Forest School previously. Lorna welcomed me along to a session at Tegg’s Nose.

I’ll never forget the moment I entered what I thought was a familiar place and saw it so remarkably different. No longer was it a place where I just walked my dog, it became a place of awe and wonder. A place where we built dens for the forest fairies, picked leaves off beech trees for a summer snack and turned branches into whittled creatures, spoons or even a table.

I was hooked. It didn’t take me long to make the decision to qualify as a Level 3 Practitioner. I began my career as a secondary school teacher but left with a heavy heart when I realised the systemic pressures of the education system conflicted with my true reason for being in the classroom. Forest School seemed like the perfect solution. An opportunity to positively impact a child’s present moment, in a natural setting, where they can just ‘be’.

We’re human ‘beings’ not human ‘doings’ and as a society we don’t take enough time to just ‘be’.

3/4s of children in the U.K. spend less time outdoors than prisoners. Instead they spend (as do we) approximately 7 hours a day on screens, mostly indoors at school or at home. If you’ve found your way to this blog then you may agree that children should be climbing trees, not walls.

Natural spaces are proven to restore us, make us more empathetic, more creative and more engaged with our environment. This has never been more important as the climate crisis intensifies.

What I didn’t bank on when I signed up to the training, was how much Forest School would help me with my own healing. My reconnection to nature has transformed the way I see our world. Understanding the forest is like learning a new language. You pick up on new words which eventually form sentences and then suddenly it all makes sense. It’s no longer a sea of green but a magical place where you recognise every flora and fauna plays its part, from the trees towering above us to the mycelium beneath our feet.

Forest School helped me open my eyes, ears and heart to Mother Nature. It invites my inner child out to play.

Where else could I call creating art with leaves, mushrooms and blackberries, turning acorns into jewellery and drinking hot chocolate brewed on a campfire my job?

Forest School doesn’t have to be in a forest. The site I actually work in is a field and whilst this presents a challenge, it’s still possible to spark curiosity in a child’s mind from a leaf changing colour. You still see the pure joy in their face when they finally get a flame from using a firesteel and it can still be a place where they express themselves and process their emotions.

I’ve seen a child start the academic year frightened of dirt, full of anxiety, crippled with self-limiting beliefs. By the end, ‘I can’t’ disappeared from their vocabulary, the field became their friend, and now they mindfully play through the sessions with a smile.

Forest School isn’t a place. It’s a mindset. This is the forest within. And you can learn to harness it wherever you are.

This, now more than ever, is what we and our children need.