In March 2018, I started working with Wildsight to create a brand new education program called the Columbia River Field School (CRFS). After six months of brainstorming, planning, networking, and organizing, our efforts bore fruit when we journeyed by canoe for two weeks with sixteen local youth from the headwaters of the Columbia to its confluence with the Kootenay River, learning from the land and its people all along the way. We met with more than twenty guest experts and covered a rigorous and wide ranging curriculum that touched on perspectives from the various fields of geography, ecology, hydrology, technology, economics, politics, history, culture, and outdoor leadership. We strengthened our connections to the land and built connections with each other. We thought critically, but spoke from the heart. By all counts, it was a huge success.
Since that first trip in 2018, the Columbia River Field School has continued annually. Explore the journey for yourself through our interactive Story Map, below!
We are also working to cultivate a community of alumni and support them with continued opportunities to stay engaged and build from the base of knowledge that they acquired in the Field School.
Recently, we have expanded out work to teachers/educators through Wildsight’s Teach the Columbia curriculum and our Teach the Columbia Field Courses. Teach The Columbia (TTC) is a curriculum package meant to help educators engage their students with many dimensions of the Columbia River watershed — past, present, and future. TTC is primarily intended for high school students but includes lesson extensions suitable for college courses as well. Educators working with younger students have also found it useful as a base from which to develop age appropriate lessons. It currently includes 11 lesson plans split into four different cross-curricular modules, which can be accessed and downloaded for free. The lessons are intended to be flexible and adaptable; use all eleven or pick and choose individual lessons. Each lesson includes an overview, guiding questions, learning goals, materials and suggested preparation, detailed instructions, an appendix, BC curriculum links, and optional extensions.