Written in gratitude to our many dedicated supporters, many of whom give to and trust our program because of their own transformational experience being in nature and observing birds.
I would start this story with, “where it all started,” but I honestly can’t decide. What matters the most in this story are the relationships built, the people involved, and how they came together to try out something new and support young people during an incredibly difficult time. When a large school district in Salinas, CA reached out to Bird School in December looking for support in bringing “small cohorts,” of students back to school campuses at the start of the next semester, many months of imagining a meaningful response to this moment finally became real. There are students who, for many different reasons, were unable to show up for their online classes. The district was looking for a way to safely bring these students back on campus, and provide not only supervision (their teachers would still be instructing all of their students online), but an enrichment opportunity to create community and a sense of place for these students. Because of the relationship Bird School has built with this district over the past three years and the shared hope to provide the students with ample outside time, both for safety and mental health reasons, Bird School was asked to participate in the students’ return to the schoolyard.
Over the following three months, Bird School and the district science curriculum coach would rehire and hire new leaders, design a semester-long outdoor enrichment program to be delivered in 15-30 minute, “nuggets,” between students’ online classes, and welcome three groups of no more than 14 students each back to two middle school campuses. For some of these students, it would be their first time ever stepping foot on a middle school campus. For others, it would be their last semester on campus, having missed the second half of their 7th grade year, and beginning of their 8th grade year.
When the pandemic closed schools in March 2020, we made it our number one priority to support the students who would need our program most when the time came to reopen. This wasn’t quite as simple as waiting around for schools to reopen. In fact, it may have been a bit naive at the time to think that our program would still exist for that reopening moment. Over the course of a year, our organization went from having nine employees to none, and inspiring thousands of students outside to working with about 100 students virtually. The Bird School's return to responding to the needs of students with in-person, outdoor programming is due to the thoughtfulness and ingenuity of many people that care deeply about these students. We plan to highlight some of those people and stories here on our revitalized and reimagined blog.
Over the next few months, the current Bird School team will be providing some reflections and insights on what has worked and what hasn’t as we bring an outdoor, experiential science program back to a large public school district in California. We want to tell this success story for all those who continue to support us, and also to illuminate some of the challenges we face as we try to meet the needs of students and their families in a system that has many challenges even without the impact of a global pandemic. We hope that by sharing some of our process, we might connect with others working in a similar realm and in some way be of support. There is so much work left to do in response to all that has ensued over the past year. If you’re interested in following along, please be sure to check back here for more.
-Kevin Condon, director of The Bird School Project