Earth Partnership for Schools

EDUCATION + ENVIRONMENT + HANDS ON = SUCCESS

Northwest Passage is proud to announce a new partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum to bring Earth Partnership for Schools to our campuses. We’re grateful for the Arboretum’s investment in our program and our kids. Since we serve kids across the country, and the nation, we’re proud to be exposing hundreds of kids each year to such a great core curriculum. Our Executive Director, Mark Elliott says, “We are looking forward to plugging into the experience and wealth of knowledge that Earth Partnerships will bring to our commitment to creating hands-on, environmentally focused, flexible educational opportunities for our clients.”

Earth Partnerships for Schools (EPS), “collaborates with diverse communities to create vibrant outdoor learning spaces using a curriculum-based ecological restoration process. Through facilitated relationship-building and dialogue, communities identify their shared stewardship vision and the ways EP can help make it a reality.” Northwest Passage has identified a beautiful 20 acre site as its stewardship project and has the goals to bring it back to its prairie roots.

“Everything came together to allow us to be able to make this commitment to our clients, Education Director Andy Flottum says of the prairie restoration initiative through Earth Partners. “Our outdoor classrooms are nearly finished, the pledge to the National Park Service to increase pollinator space was approved, and our desire to bring more flexibility and capacity to our educational curriculum was made a top priority. With all these things in place, we just had to make the connection with EPS and the rest is history.”

“We are devoted to meeting our kids educational goals while transforming mental health through the healing process. It is our belief that time spent in our natural environment will improve both mental wellness and capacity for learning. We hope to send kids home with a greater dedication to their education.”

“Using hands-on experience to foster learning and practicing skills by working through a long-term project that requires our students to really dig in to investigate and engage with a challenge and solve problems helps to connect our kids to the knowledge we want them to walk away with in a strength-based approach.”

Experiential Coordinator, Ian Karl, one of the staff charged with the implementation of this new curriculum is a naturalist himself and sees the obvious connection between Passage’s commitment to getting our kids all the tools possible to live a therapeutic lifestyle well into their independent lives. “If we can empower our kids to improve their world and learn from it, we’ll be fostering healthier lifestyles.”

What will this all mean for our students? Ellen Race, program Director at Prairieview and Assessment says that curriculum will be filtered through a project based, environmentally themed lens. “Our classrooms often have kids with varying skills in math, science, and reading. Now couple that classroom with a project done together that has tasks at varied levels for everyone to be successful? A child at a low-functioning level may do measuring, while a student who functions at a higher level may assist their group mates in calculating the measurements and mathematics, while another student may draw out the space, and yet another will write a narrative of the groups efforts. What you have is a win/win for students, teachers, and parents.”

The educators at Northwest Passage work every day to find new and exciting ways to teach our students. While we do use a classroom for some activities, we believe that getting them active and outdoors helps the learning experience, along with their overall physical and mental health. This partnership with Earth Partnerships for Schools will get them outside where they can see and touch the materials they are learning about and then return to the indoor or outdoor classroom where they can reflect on what they have learned.