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If you want to teach kids to be good stewards of the conserved environment, experts say, get them to appreciate natural spaces while they’re young. If you want them to improve their self-reliance and emotional wellbeing, give them opportunities to engage in physical challenges in an outdoor setting. And to enhance the ability of students to work with their peers, group outdoor adventuring can do the trick.

The common thread? Get kids outside. That is why a developing program, co-coordinated by 91��Ƭ�� Extension and the Southeast Land Trust (SELT) and partnering with local school districts, is leveraging outdoor experiences to provide multiple benefits for schoolchildren.

Making Connections

“Our broad goal is connecting youth and adults with themselves, others, and the land,” says Kristin Eberl , a field specialist for Extension who first began discussing the idea for the program with SELT education program manager Lizzy Franceschini in 2023. Her interest at Extension is in supporting social-emotional health, while Franceschini is tasksed with molding the next generation of land stewards. Both objectives are met by getting school groups into the woods and engaging with ATLAS.

Photo courtesy of Epping Middle School/Susan Gualtieri.

The programming takes several forms. There are camps, including a week-long summer camp and a one-day experience in the winter, which each serve around 20 children. ATLAS is developing an educator training program, currently capped at 20 participants, in which teachers come to Burley Farms to be trained in the curriculum and learn how to incorporate nature-based experiences into their own lessons. But the farthest-reaching element of ATLAS is the partnership with local school districts, which currently engages with nearly 900 students.

Representing the first class of the ATLAS school program, Epping and Raymond school districts have been making monthly visits to Burley Farms for experiences that can only be had in natural landscapes. This winter, students in kindergarten through 8th grade, have identified animal tracks in the snow, learned how to cross-country ski, and cooked s’mores at a campfire.

“The foundational goal is to develop that sense of self, to be able to recognize the connection to others, and to develop that sense of responsibility to the land and feel safe within it,” Eberl says.

SELT previously had programming for young people, Franceschini says, but was looking for a way to reach more children — particularly those who would be prohibited by the charging of a fee.

“We wanted to make nature-based education more accessible to everyone,” Franceschini says. “By offering this service, we’re able to bring this program to every kid regardless of their economic background.”

Unlike a field trip, which is typically a one-and-done visit, ATLAS engages with the same groups of students month after month, year after year. The repeated visits develop a sense of familiarity and comfort, even for students who initially felt anxious about spending a day in the woods. 

“For SELT our main goal is creating that nature connection, creating the land conservationists,” Franceschini says. “Who is going to steward this land once we’re gone?”

Fresh Air

At Epping Middle School, the monthly visits to Burley Farms provide benefits that are seen for days and weeks afterward. While there, students engage with activities they generally can’t in a regular school day, such as scavenging the forest floor for materials they could use in an art project, or building a shelter.

And the experiences are having the intended ripple effect.

“It builds kids’ confidence, strengthens connection with peers,” says Nick DeGruttola, counselor at the school. Students develop determination and resilience, and practice respectful interactions with teachers and ATLAS instructors, and they bring those sharpened skills back to school with them, which he says “helps them with every minute of the day.”

This is now the third year of Epping’s involvement with ATLAS. DeGruttola and Susan Gualtieri, assistant principal, say it has become part of school culture. Once teachers started to see the benefits, they bought into the program. Students have begun to look forward to their monthly day spent in Burley Farm’s woods.

“As a school and school community, we know that kids don’t spend enough time outside,” says Gualtieri. “We’re modeling and showing kids that being outside is beneficial. We need to show kids the benefits, the power, of being outdoors.”

For the first two years, ATLAS staff took the lead in guiding Epping students through various activities during their visits. This year, EMS teachers are starting to lead some stations, with the idea that facilitation can eventually be transferred entirely to the school.

The Inaugural ATLAS Class

SELT and 91��Ƭ�� Extension have enough capacity to only work with a couple of schools at a time, and each school will take several years of participation before it’s ready to take over on its own.

So far, the first cohort to engage with the ATLAS program has provided encouraging returns.

“We see kids getting more connected to nature, more comfortable being outside, and we’re seeing them connect better to each other,” Franceschini says. “We’re seeing great results, we’re hearing from other schools who want to access the curriculum.”

The ATLAS curriculum, once it is ready, will be made available for others to access. And, once Epping and Raymond are ready to take the ATLAS reins, other schools can be brought in as the next round.

“Our goal is to make the program accessible to everyone,” Eberl says. “For the schools we’re working with, we have a model of up to eight years we’re working with them. Our goal is for schools to fully embrace ATLAS' principles by integrating nature based practices into their teaching culture, so students continue deepening their connection to the land, to self, and others.”