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Stories from my personal journey learning about and delivering Nature-rooted programs across three different countries

Forest Schooled Evolves... Again

Caylin (Forest Schooled)
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Well, I’m dusting off the ol' Forest Schooled keyboard. It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog here. Life moves and sways, shifting where energy was once placed into other facets and callings. But I’ve missed it, missed writing, sharing, and connecting with all of you. And I thank you for your patience as things have gone quiet here over the past several months.

As you hopefully know, that’s partly because I was channeling my energy into publishing my book (which is now available on Amazon btw!) And I was so busy writing, editing, designing, re-editing, re-designing, questioning the whole project entirely, reassuring myself that it was worth it, re-writing and re-editing again.... that time did not stretch enough for me to create new content for the blog. The other significant factor was I moved countries (again!) and have been in a process of adaptation and adjustment that has required a lot of tending to. And that’s ok. It’s ok to pause sometimes and take a minute (or several months) to recalibrate. I’m reminding myself of that often in this busy, over-scheduled, sometimes over-whelming, world.

So now that the winter months have started to set in and the weather and darkness force me to slow down and take stock, I find myself ready to take some time to tend to this space of reflection I created years ago and share where perhaps it may be headed in months to come....

But before that, here’s a little Forest Schooled recap in case you need it. After living in the UK for several years where the seed of Forest School was planted for me and Forest Schooled the blog was born, I moved to New Hampshire, USA in 2017 (I wrote about that shift in Forest Schooled is Evolving... So What's Next?).

After 2 years of working towards a masters degree and creating Forest School programs in my “spare” time (see blog series Starting a Forest School program from scratch and the website created for those programs Tracks Forest School) I graduated in May 2019.

Like many students who start to grapple with the impending end of their studies, the haunting question came up, “What’s next?” For me that ended up being an opportunity in Canada.

So here I am now, living in Ottawa, Canada. Still very much living and breathing Forest School, while also learning, adjusting, and adapting to a new place and context where what it looks like in practice is a little different. The significant teaching in this for me is that place matters. A lot. (I wrote about this more in the blog post Exploring what Place-based means in Forest School). And I’m enjoying the process of relearning what Forest School means in a new place (alongside learning how to purchase car insurance and find a dentist... let's be real).

With that said I have lots of new blogs brewing and some are already half written. I look forward to posting them as my schedule and energy levels allow. Will this be once a week like I used to when Forest schooled started? Likely not. But they will come, even if it’s at a slower and steadier pace. I’m okay with that. I hope you are too.

With much love and gratitude from a soon to be very snowy Canada,
Forest Schooled

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