Our Mission

Our goal is to re-vision education by working with teachers to intentionally facilitate outdoor learning experiences for students marginalized by the education and outdoor industries in order to further promote educational equity and a connection to the environment.

Our Vision

• We envision a world where all young people attending school are physically and emotionally safe, feel belonging in their school and classroom communities, and realize their academic potential, regardless of race, class, gender, learning abilities, or other aspects of their identity. To us, this is what education equity means.*
• Simultaneously, we envision a world where all young people have access to outdoor spaces, feel belonging in them, view them as places of learning, and are consistently building a relationship with them that is rooted in their personal interests, unique experiences, and cultural histories, not in dominant, colonialist, and oppressive narratives. To us, this is essential to developing a population that can build a sustainable, reciprocal, and non-extractive relationship with the natural world.
• Finally, we envision a world in which teachers are valued for their time, their love for their students, and their innovative ideas. This comes both in the form of fair compensation; it also comes in the form of creating a culture within the profession that values self-care and boundaries, that encourages innovation and risk-taking, and that promotes authentic and not just authoritative relationship-building with students. To us, this is what a non-extractive work environment looks like.

*Inspired by the National Equity Project.

Our Conception of Outdoor Learning:

Outdoor learning is often equated only with outdoor play—think elementary school students digging in a school garden, playing with each other on a playground, doing nature art, etc. we believe outdoor learning has far more potential—it does not just have to be a place of play, and it does not just have to be a place of learning for younger students. It can be a place of engagement and academic rigor for students of all ages.

To us, outdoor learning is, at its most basic, learning outside. “Outside” can be a designated wilderness area—it can also be the basketball court next to a school building. “Outside” can be mostly green—it can also be concrete. Because “outside” is a variable and dynamic place, we think outdoor learning can look any number of ways. It can mean learning IN the outdoors, like when a class that traditionally happens inside is facilitated outdoors, or a group of students works together to navigate on a hike. It can mean learning ABOUT the outdoors, like learning about indigenous people’s relationship with a certain area, or learning about the ecosystem of a nearby park. It can also mean learning FROM the outdoors, like processing how an experience navigating an outdoor environment translates to other elements of our life, or using our observations of natural processes to inform how we interact with one another.1

We believe that outdoor learning has the potential to establish a new more equitable normal in schools. Not only is it pandemic safe; it has been proven to build community and improve students’ mental health and academic performance more effectively than classroom learning, especially if paired with culturally-responsive and trauma-informed instruction.2

• 1. Inspired by the writings of adrienne maree brown.
• 2. Children and Nature Network, 2016.

Regina was born in Ukraine, won the refugee lottery and immigrated to the US just months before the fall of the Soviet Union. She arrived the day before Halloween and as an 8-year-old thought that she had moved to the scariest place imaginable. After years of struggle, her family finally started figuring out how to survive in America and all soon learned English and found jobs. Regina graduated UCLA with a degree in engineering geology, but the biggest impact college had on her was through the Outdoor Leadership Training club she was a part of for nearly 10 years. It was during her time in the outdoors that she started healing and understanding the transformative powers of nature. It taught her valuable leadership skills and helped her find her calling in outdoor education.

During her time as an engineer she felt something was missing and began working internationally with a company that takes high school and college students on study abroad trips to the developing world. Her passion for teaching has always been stronger than her will to sit still at an office. While teaching physics Regina noticed how inspired her students became when doing any projects outside of the classroom. She began working on building tiny homes for the homeless community after research in equity on project based learning and that doing meaningful work would make students engage with science. Later, she started an Outdoor Leadership Training club at the school she worked at in Chula Vista. This club also proved to be transformational for her students. It inspired them to pursue professions related to the environment, it gave them the confidence to lead their peers, and, most importantly, it allowed them to heal.

Growing up in New York City, Anna didn’t discover the outdoors until college. There, she went on a freshman pre-orientation backpacking trip that changed the trajectory of her life. Participating then leading trips showed her the freedom of open and honest communication, the power she held even as a relatively small female, and the joy of being in close community with other people, all while being in the healing environment of the outdoors. Since then, she has worked as an outdoor and classroom educator, teaching ninth grade humanities, instructing outdoor and writing courses, leading conservation crews, teaching abroad, and directing free, student-led, afterschool outdoor programs. Outside of being an educator, she is an organizer for campaigns in fossil fuel divestment, wealth redistribution, and anti-racist education. She has a B.A. in History and Literature and an M.Ed., both from Harvard.