Hopeful By Nature

Joyful Persistance – How a coalition of 700 Californians got an outdoor learning bill further than anyone thought possible – and what they're doing next (Part I)

Craig Strang almost didn't take the class that set his entire career in motion — he thought "five units for a beach field trip" had to be a scam. Fifty years later, he an

Closing the Nature Gap: How Policy Gets Kids Outdoors | Jackie Ostfeld, Sierra Club Outdoors for All

What if the thing standing between your kid and a national park pass isn't belief — it's a budget line? Jackie Ostfeld has spent 20 years finding out, first as a naturali

Teaching STEM in Spanish: Reclaiming Language as a Superpower | Ciencia Para Todos

For years, Odalis Avalos believed that speaking Spanish as her first language was a disadvantage. Then she helped teach a lesson about bees to a room of bilingual element

Hummingbird Parenting: Jamie Lynn Langley on Risk, Nature Prescriptions, and Play Therapy

Jamie Lynn Langley had just finished teaching a room of therapists how to help kids safely assess the risk of climbing a tree — when to stop, how to guide instead of forb

Retired Twice - And Still Passionate About Outdoor Learning

Celeste Royer has retired from environmental education twice — and she’s still working, this time on a bill headed to the California Senate. Celeste spent over thirty ye

How Human Disturbance Threatens Sea Otter Survival | Gena Bentall, Sea Otter Savvy

A sea otter has no blubber. No fat reserve, no savings account — just fur, and a metabolism that burns through calories almost as fast as it can eat them. Gena Bentall i

Building a Marine Conservation Career From the Desert | Julianna Acuña, University of Arizona

Julianna Acuña grew up landlocked in Tucson, Arizona — and fell in love with the ocean anyway, on childhood summer trips to San Diego. One afternoon, swimming out further

Why We Only Protect What We Love | Aaron N.K. Haiman, Author of Birds of the California Delta

Aaron Haiman was six years old the first time he met an ornithologist, wandering the East Bay Hills near his childhood home. That was enough. Twenty-some years later, he'

Earning Trust: Marco Wendt on Wild Animals, Belonging, and the Power of Listening

A Cinereous Vulture named Clarence didn't like most people. For sixteen-year-old Marco Wendt, working his first summer job at what's now the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, ea

Nature Deficit Disorder & Teaching Kids to Self-Regulate Outside | Amy Reyes-Hauff, Get Wild Wyoming

A ladybug landing on a dysregulated child's arm shouldn't be a behavior intervention strategy. For Amy Reyes-Hauff, it worked anyway — one example of what she calls a "ba

Son Como Las Piedras -- A bilingual environmental educator on reclaiming the language he almost lost

Scott Shepherd grew up jealous of his cousins, who spoke Spanish at home with their godmother — until the language was deliberately removed from the house out of fear it

Begin With Yourself - Why Every Kid Needs to Climb and What Sensory Processing Taught Me About Teaching My Own Classroom

Scott Shepherd has ADHD, and he didn't have real language for what that meant until he became a teacher and started building accommodations into his own classroom — timer

It Doesn't Discriminate -- Building Careers in Conservation for Young Adults with Disabilities | Susie Schroer, AmeriCorps YES Initiative

A sigmoid colectomy took nine inches of Scott Shepherd's intestine and nearly a year of his mobility. For twelve months, he was a member of the disability community he'd

Run Away From Home What a Himalayan concept, a phone ban in Thailand, and a rain-soaked rafting trip taught me about designing outdoor programs that actually meet people where they are

Ghar Se Bhago. It's a Hindi phrase that means run away from home. But not away from something — toward something. The discomfort of the unfamiliar. The growth that waits

It Starts With One - How two Australian risk managers are using community for conservation

The beach where Scott Shepherd learned to surf is closed. Not occasionally — up to 300 days a year, Imperial Beach in San Diego County is posted as unsafe for swimming. D

We're in the Goo -- What a blind father, a broken wood stove, and a bed bug infestation taught two dads about raising outdoor kids

Alex Terry's father has been blind most of his life. He couldn't drive, couldn't see the trailhead signs or the snow conditions. But he could get excited. And when a youn

"From Fear to Frontier" | Forbah Sandra N. — Leading Ocean Literacy and Environmental Education.

She learned to swim two years ago. Now she's teaching kids in Cameroon to dive. Forbah Sandra Ngwemetoh grew up in Limbe — a coastal city on the edge of the Atlantic, in