SOL #3

I was connected to the same school for 29 years as a teacher, counselor, and principal. My life revolved around school functions in which many family members participated. My husband, his parents, our son and I graduated from this same school, lived in the small community and still do.

I left 9 years ago with mixed emotions, I took a leap of faith into a larger world. I still work in education, with a different perspective. I'm not involved in the daily minutiae of the classroom, or even one school. I work for the conservation outreach and education department of my state. I concentrate on teachers from 9 counties in my region of the state. My goal is to help people discover nature. I find relevance for conservation education in literacy, math, reading, science and writing. That is the easy part. Nature readily involves children and adults. Nature calms the spirit, soothes the restless and provides focus, but all that is another post.

Visiting classrooms, providing professional development and teaching others how to explore nature has been a great fit for me. It has been a valuable learning experience. I'm finding it difficult to stop. I think I'd like to merge the best of both worlds by creating a school where the subject matter is nature, where students spend lots of time observing, journaling, collecting, analyzing and synthesizing data to make sense of the natural world.

Maybe in another life!