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Environmental Education Camp
At Camp Kirby our philosophy endeavors to create an exiciting learning experience that will have a lasting effect on your students. an adventuresome energy will set the stage for wonder and exploration while inspiring a new awareness and appreciation of ecology. Learning should be fun and innovative, interactive and exciting, safe and supportive. It should be a collaborative project that we share with teachers, parents, and administration. There are many facets to teaching a successsful program and there are just as many approaches to learning. We believe several components frame and consolidate our philosophy and form the structure for a positive and promising program:
- An Interdisciplinary Approach -- Our philosophy is grounded in a firm belief that the interdisciplinary approach to learning gives youth a well-rounded and valuable experience in making connections, understanding their significance, and applying information. The concept of the watershed allows us a broad spectrum from which we can integrate many different subjects and gives students a range of tools that will help them better understand ecological systems. This approach aims to tie tighter the themes of watersheds, wetlands, and human connections to them. Finding a balance of understanding between the human ecological imprint and natures' capacity to maintain its integrity under that influence is an important step in the greater process of making changes in the world. Considering this topic from many different disciplines and vantage points helps in putting the pieces together that form the great mosaic of natural forces, interests, and history that define the present. This valuable knowledge allows individuals a means to better anticipate and comprehend the impacts we make on the future as members of natural communities today.
- Experiential Learning -- We build respect through engaging positive experiences in natures' classroom. Intimate moments with nature can become powerful experiences that allow students a deeper look into their subjects of study whether they are skills in communication, writing, art, science, social studies, or mathematics. The field-based experience allows youth an opportunity to apply new knowledge and skills. it also lays the foundation for segues into more advanced lessons and more complex levels of thinking. In recognizing applications and implications of what they are learning, students gain a greater understanding of their responsibility to the whole and the necessary tools to make more ecologically sustainable decisions.
- Place-based Education --
Weather, tides, animals and humans affect the ecology. We give students new knowledge and skills that help them: to minimize and improve their effect on nature; to pass their experiences on to their family and friends; to make their communities a better place to live. Questions about our place lead to greater awareness and a sense of empowerment with regard to our social and environmental responsibilities as stewards of this amazing place.
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