Around 11:30 last Monday morning, I finished packing the last of my wool socks and friendship bracelet string into my suitcase, and I clomped down the Simmons dormitory steps in my hiking boots on my way out the door.

A little under an hour later, I found myself in the passenger seat of a car speeding through the woods on the gravel drive of Camp Blue Diamond, and soon enough, I arrived at Week 1 of Outdoor School as a new person — I mean that literally; for the rest of the week, my nature name would be Aspen (after the beautiful species of deciduous tree found throughout the Western US), and I would know the other counselors only by their chosen nature names as well.

For those who don’t know, Outdoor School is a program run by the Penn State’s Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center that brings local fifth-grade classes to the central Pennsylvania woods for a week of environmental education, exploration, and fun. It earns its counselor participants 2 credits of general health and wellness (RPTM 140), and it counts as 75 hours of community service. It’s run every semester, and personally, I knew as soon as I heard about the opportunity that it was something I wanted to do. And after a day of counselor training, I was overwhelmed with excitement as Juniata Valley’s fifth grade class arrived in a big yellow school bus on Tuesday morning.

As soon as the kids arrived, I was launched into a blur of ecosystem science, campfires, exploration. Throughout the week, I made friends with an entire grade of ten-year-olds, helped my learning group leader (LGL) teach the kids about air, water, soil, plants, animals, and decomposers, and ate more cheeseballs and applesauce than I have in all the rest of all my 19 years of living combined. Even as I felt at times like the days were chaotic and unpredictable, I always went to bed in our Barn Owl cabin feeling pleasantly exhausted from the day. Now, back in State College for over a week, I miss the simplicity and childlike wonder of Outdoor School, but I am also grateful for all the things I’ve learned from my experience as a counselor there. For my passion post this week, I felt it was only fitting to list a few of the ways my eyes were opened by this special group of kids:

1. Minimizing food waste is easy! (Also, food tastes better outside) — After each meal, the whole camp collectively weighed our food waste, and though it fluctuated between 1.25 pounds at our best and 5 pounds at our worst, a cafeteria full of roughly 80 people was able to minimize our waste enough to fit in a small plastic bin at every meal. Given the pickiness of the average ten-year-old, the zero food waste goal at ODS reminded me how doable it is for us as college students to reduce our impact on food waste, too.

2. Having a purpose improves our mood and self-esteem. — Before we weighed our food waste after each meal, each table had an assigned camper (and sometimes counselor) who was responsible for setting the table, bringing out the serving dishes full of food from the kitchen, and cleaning up dishes after the meal. As the week progressed, I watched the kids’ attitude turn from “You mean we have to get to breakfast 15 minutes early to prepare for other people to eat before we can take food?” to “Is it our turn to be hoppers yet??? Well, what about for lunch?” It was nothing short of inspiring to watch how assigning these kids a little bit of responsibility and then personally thanking them with the rest of the table after each meal made them feel like they (and their contributions to the group) were important and valued. Back on campus, I now find myself missing the songs we sang before and after each meal, and I especially miss the family style of dining and all the crazy conversations I had with the kids all week.

3. Having a fresh start helps us open up, be curious, and smile more. — I don’t just mean this about the nature names we counselors got to choose for ourselves. Do you remember the mean kid of your fifth grade class? What about the kid who was always causing trouble or kid who was always talking to themselves? One of the coolest parts about Outdoor School is that even though the fifth graders come to us with these labels within their own grade, none the counselors or staff at ODS know or care about these labels, and we’ve also never met the kids attached to them. This means that each kid receives the same expectations as everyone else, and they are each treated with a growth mindset, graciousness, and encouragement regardless of their history before ODS. As the week progressed, I watched some of the kids who I later learned were the usual “trouble makers” of their grade blossom and flourish during our lessons. Their teachers were shocked by these students’ behavior, and it only served as a reminder that many times, labeling someone without giving them a fair chance only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. On a more comical note, I was also reminded by this spirit of freedom and opportunity that when curious or engaged, the average fifth grader asks about fifteen to twenty questions per hour. Multiply that by ten, and you can probably estimate how much quiet-time I got last week…

4. It feels like magic to make magic happen. — So much of what we do as counselors at ODS prioritizes making the entire week a positive outdoor experience for kids who normally may not have that opportunity. And whether I was expecting it or not, at times, proving that experience for them proved itself to be really difficult, frankly. Kids say things they don’t understand the meaning of. They form cliques and they can be bullies. But through it all, they wear their emotions on their sleeves, and they are good people at heart. So even after the exhaustion of the week, remembering the moment when a kid told me that they were having more fun on a hike learning about decomposers than they have ever had at school before has made it all worth it. Dressing up in crazy costumes to quiz the entire cafeteria about the “mystery animal”? Worth it. Feeling a little bit silly singing and dancing with other 20-something-year-olds about saluting penguins? Worth it. Sitting in the library Starbucks for hours on end this week to catch up on a week’s worth of missed work for 21 credits of classes? Worth it. But more than anything, coming back to State College knowing that, even if only for just a week, I’ve helped teach these kids that there is so much more to the world around them than they ever realized?

So. Incredibly. Worth it.

I would do Outdoor School again in a heartbeat, and I plan to apply again for the coming fall semester. If any of you are interested, please reach out, and I am more than happy to talk with you about it.

Until next post!