Keeping It Real8thMarch
Today our world has a different view of children than the one held for nearly 100,000 years of humans living on this Earth. Back in the day, we never needed a manual, a book or a guide about how to raise our kids.
What's changed? Well, for the most part we're raising them alone. Not only is it difficult without the Aunties and Uncles or the Grandmas and Grandpas you once found in a real village, but compounding that loneliness and isolation is the fact that children no longer spend time outside immersed in the complexity and simplicity of nature.
There's a wound left behind when we're not allowed to catch frogs in the pond, when we're unable to sit under shady trees on a summer afternoon and when the double-paned glass of a school window separates us from the spring robins hunting for worms in the grass.
Nowadays, just like every other human need unfulfilled by our modern culture, there exists an entire philosophy, movement or industry that replaces this urgent desire to connect to the natural world. While camps, curriculum and science field studies are well-meaning, outdoor education only acts as the band-aid to seal off a passion inherent to our very DNA.
Thus, we require more than a plan, more than a program, much more than a school to turn back the overwhelming tide. We require a brand new story to tell to the world, one where we stand up to the mediocrity and fight back against the cages imposed on our children. This is not a mission for only educators, journalists or child psychologists. No, this one needs to be led by parents, by those Aunties and Uncles, by our Grandmas and our Grandpas. In this race to save the Earth we must see families truly leading the charge.
Featured programs...
Spring Open House March 27 Come meet June Rzendzian, our new Portland Youth Program Director. Also, chat and play games with all our Trackers youth staff. Tony (me) will be baking cookies and Mary, our Executive Director will teach kids yoga at 10am. Please contact Molly to RSVP for kids yoga, otherwise simply show up between 10am-2pm.
Spring Break Camps PPS Break & Waldorf Spring Break
Spring Woodworking Courses
Spring Home School Programs
Summer Nature Camps Day camps for ages 4-13 and overnight residential camps for ages 8 and up.
