Looking for the roots of children’s mental health crisis: A conversation with psychotherapist Louis Weinstock

I recently had a chance to chat with U.K-based psychotherapist Louis Weinstock, who has written a new book about helping children deal with the anxiety, depression, fear, and stress that seem to plague our 21st-century lives. The book, How the World Is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About It (Penguin, 2022), is full of real-world examples from Weinstock’s 20-year career as a therapist, and he offers practical exercises in every chapter.

Weinstock approaches the questions parents and kids face with compassion, humor, and a sense of deep connection to history, myth, and spiritual practices from a variety of cultures. The book is structured around seven patterns that can be seen all over the world and that “shape our lives in unconscious ways.” The patterns include victimhood, virtual reality (a desire to escape our bodies and live only in our minds), narcissism, scarcity, anesthesia, chaos, and hopelessness. In each case, Weinstock examines the negative “roots” of the pattern and the more positive “fruits” that can turn the pattern into something beautiful and nourishing. So, for example, the root of victimhood is a feeling of helplessness, which can, in the right environments, turn into empowerment and strength. The root of virtual reality is the desire to escape the confines of our bodies, which can, in the right environments, turn into a feeling of being at home in our bodies and in nature.

Weinstock explains that the problematic roots of each pattern always connect to an unloved, uncared-for part of each of us. As he says in the conclusion of How the World Is Making Our Children Mad, “The world is making our children mad because it is short-circuiting our capacity for love. And so the way to help our children is by reclaiming love.”

Here is a short excerpt from my chat with Louis, which has been lightly edited. I asked a few questions inspired by topics that come up often in connection with alternative education models.

Q: Can you tell me a little about your perspective on the movement to encourage “resilience” or “grit” in kids as part of school curricula? In your book you seem to question the value of those approaches.

A: I started questioning the ideas of resilience and grit because I saw the kids who weren’t adapting easily to the dominant systems of education were the ones deemed “unresilient.” These children were being sent to me as a therapist or came to me when I was teaching mindfulness. Essentially, it seemed that the goal of making the kids more resilient was to allow them to keep going through the system . . . and to make sure the schools were doing well in the league tables [evaluations]. 

I think the concepts of resilience and grit are problematic because they just look at the individual child but completely ignore what’s going on in the environment around the child. I’m not throwing out the idea that we need to help our children be “tough” and expose them to some reasonable risks so they can grow and develop. But from my perspective,  if a child is not adapting to a mainstream school, maybe their behaviors and symptoms are actually showing us adults something important that we need to listen to. Rather than trying to put them back in a box they’re uncomfortable in, we need to try to listen to those symptoms and see the intelligence in them. Maybe the children are showing us that something isn’t working in their environment, not that something isn’t working within them.

Q: You talk a lot about making sure children are sensing what’s happening in their bodies when they feel anxious, afraid, depressed. And I know that you believe that putting our bodies back in connection with nature is one key to feeling better and learning better. Tell me a little more about that.

A: Forest schools are quite popular in the UK, just as they are in the United States and Europe, but they are still alternative options, not mainstream. What is surprising to me is how much people still underestimate the impact nature has on our kids’ mental health. I ask parents how often their kids go out into nature, and often they say they do not go outside at all. So, I frequently make that part of a care plan. Research is showing that even 20 minutes a day is all that’s needed to make that connection, and it can be in a city park—there’s no need to seek out a wild forest. Often, time in nature is more effective than ADHD medication.

I think the reason time spent in nature is so good for us is simply because we are part of nature, and a lot of our modern way of living cuts us off from that part of ourselves. I used to have a practice on a houseboat in London and there was nature all around and I could use that during my meetings with clients. Since COVID, I see clients online, but I often give kids and parents a “prescription” to get out in nature and connect.

Q: Is there any particular change you see happening in schools today that you find especially good for kids’ emotional and psychological health and happiness?

I was just thinking and writing about this recently and considering how much things have changed since I was a child. When I was at school, if you were emotionally dysregulated you were sent to the naughty corner or given the slipper. The shoe of one of my classmates was used to smack people right at the front of the classroom. It could not have been more about shaming children, and it was the norm.

But now, my young daughter is learning about “zones of regulation,” a concept that is now a model used in schools around the world. The model uses colors to help children understand and describe the emotional state they are in. For example, yellow means they are feeling silly and funny. Green means they are feeling good and ready to learn. Red, of course, means they are angry, and blue means they are sad. This is such a non-shaming way of talking about feelings, and I think it’s quite positive.

I’d like to thank Louis for the conversation. You can order his book from any bookstore and read his blog here. He is currently working on a new charitable project called Apart of Me, that uses a mobile app and games to help children learn to deal with grief and loss. The most recent addition to that project is an app called Nadiya, specifically for Ukrainian children who have faced the trauma of war.

“At Apart of Me, we use technology only to enhance real-world connection and relationships,” said Louis. “We don’t want the future of kids’ mental health to be them looking at a screen alone in a dark room.”

Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial

Media Monday: 6 Weeks to Mother's Day, a film about alternative education and unconditional love in Thailand

Media Mondays are back. There is so much interesting and important creative work in film, books, podcasting, and other media related to alternative education these days, we’d like to highlight it for our Alt Ed Austin community. One project that is uplifting and inspiring us at the moment is a documentary film called 6 Weeks to Mother’s Day by Marvin Blunte, currently available to stream on Amazon Prime and Kanopy.

The title doesn’t reveal the fact that the film documents a radical approach to education—a progressive, loving school in rural Thailand. The “mother” in “Mother’s Day” is the school’s founder, Rajani Dhongchai, known as Mother Aew. 

Moo Baan Dek, often called Children’s Village School, has been around for more than 35 years and is run on a democratic model, inspired by the Summerhill School in England combined with Buddhist teachings. They grow much of their own food, use solar energy, and have few modern amenities.

Most of the students Mother Aew and her staff nurture are poor, many are orphans, and about half have emotional, physical, or learning challenges. They study subjects they choose for themselves and make decisions in an all-school student council. They are able to pursue academics and practical skills that will enable them to live full and independent lives. In one especially powerful scene, Mother Aew offers warm, respectful acknowledgment of a student’s decision to transition from living as a boy to a girl. The school receives some support from the government but is sustained primarily by contributions.

The students are in tremendous need right now as a result of the pandemic. Even small contributions are tremendously helpful. Marvin let us know that he is still in contact with Mother Aew, and she’s always excited when a contribution comes in from outside the country and puts it directly to work providing food, clothing, books, and other materials for the kids. You can find information about the school here, which includes a page for donations.

I had the opportunity to talk with filmmaker Marvin Blunte while he was staying safe at his parents’ home in New York state a few weeks ago. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.


The film is a fascinating look into a beautiful community of kids and educators—and inspiring! One of the interesting choices you made was to have no narrator and no explanations of what is happening. Viewers are just immersed in the day-to-day life of the school. Could you talk about why you made that decision?

I’ve always been a fan of observational style filmmaking. The work of a French director named Nicolas Philibert is one of my models. He made a film called To Be and to Have, about a little rural school in France in 2002. When I was trying to come up with how to approach Mother Aew’s school, I went through a variety of options, including having a host or narrator to explain the place.

But if you look at a lot of films about other cultures and countries coming from the West, they’re often skewed with the filmmaker’s opinions. I didn’t want that. I wanted to present exactly what the school is like, and when the teachers and students saw the film, they seemed to think it was successful in that. They were initially worried about what I was going to film, and I warned them that it was my right as an artist to tell the story as I saw fit. But in the end they were thrilled.

I understand you kind of stumbled upon the school while working on another project. What inspired you to go back multiple times to make the film?

At first I didn’t understand anything because almost no one spoke English. I didn’t understand what was happening or how the school worked. One of the kids kept following me as I was walking around taking photos on my first trip. I kept trying to shoo the kid away, and I indicated to one of the teachers who spoke a little English that I was sorry about this student following me and not being in class. She said, “He’s following you because he’s interested in what you’re doing. Is he bothering you?” I said he wasn’t, and then she told me this is part of the democratic school process. He was learning what he wanted to learn. 

I left the next day to go to Cambodia to cover another story, but the school kept spinning in my head. The kids were in charge! They showed me around, served me my food, seemed to take full responsibility for me and, later, when I returned, for my crew. I went back for a short time to teach photography, so they could get to know me. I didn’t want to be a novelty—I wanted to become invisible while I filmed.

When you were filming, did you live within the community or go in and out?

We stayed in a traditional Thai home on the outskirts of the village. Part of the philosophy is that the students need to learn to farm and take care of themselves as survival skills for when they leave. I think you could put them anywhere and they would survive. But they do have some electricity that they generate so that they can have a computer lab—and so I could charge my cameras!

Beyond the portrait you show us in the film, what else would you like people to know about the school?

Well, I would encourage people to take a look at the school’s Facebook page for updates. I left some cameras with the students who were interested in photography last time I was there, and they’ve taken to social media.

Now, with the pandemic, they’re unable to get many donations and aren’t able to pay their teachers. You see in the film that a huge part of Thai culture is giving—the students themselves are taught to be generous as part of their Buddhist training. Unfortunately, it’s become almost impossible for others to give to them, but Mother Aew has created a project where the students are making face masks for the surrounding communities to protect people from the virus. That generous aspect of the culture is something I wanted to show people through the film.

6 Weeks to Mother’s Day is currently available on Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, and Kanopy.
Être et Avoir (To Be and To Have) is also streaming on Kanopy.

Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial

Citizen of the World: Nioucha Homayoonfar’s Memoir of Childhood in Iran

Contributing writer Shelley Sperry is back with an insightful and relevant interview with children’s nonfiction author Nioucha Homayoonfar. I hope the conversation inspires you to get your hands on a copy of this beautiful memoir and share it with the young people in your lives. It’s a great conversation starter on the reality and diversity of immigrant experiences.

A while back I had the pleasure of talking with Nioucha Homayoonfar, an Iranian-American author whose memoir of her girlhood in Iran during the 1980s revolution came out earlier this year.

Nioucha’s story mirrors that of so many young people whose lives traverse two different cultures and communities, and who are caught up in larger historical forces as they also try to navigate their own evolution from childhood to young adulthood. I’m tremendously grateful for the chance to talk with Nioucha about her life and her book. Stories like hers, written specifically for young readers, provide human context for the complex events our kids learn about in school and news soundbites. I can’t recommend this dramatic, tender, and often funny memoir more highly—for kids or adults.

Here’s a slightly shortened and edited version of our talk:

Nioucha Homayoonfar, author

How did you decide to write a memoir for a young audience rather than adults?

That decision evolved organically. When I started writing, the voice of a young person just came out—not the voice of an older person looking back at her life. I really liked that voice, so I stuck with it. I hadn’t thought about the age group or my audience at first. I just knew the story I wanted to write. I did some research, and at the time I was starting to write, in 2008–2009, there really wasn’t anything like this available. Now I see it as a great opportunity because I feel young people should know more about what is happening in other countries, and what it’s like to live there.

The work you do in your day job deals with international relations too, so that perspective must be very important to you.

People have always told me I’m a citizen of the world. After 9/11, the circumstances were so tragic and horrifying, and there was a new thirst for stories from other countries and other cultures to help make sense of the world. 

And that’s true of children as well as adults. Many classrooms, including the school my own kids attend, have students from dozens of different countries, and it’s phenomenal. I see that my kids and their friends want to understand how people and events are connected. 

Why did you decide to write nonfiction, rather than turning your story into a novel?

I started out writing some short stories and personal essays. I think a nonfiction author is just who I am. If you want to hear the true side of a story, take Nioucha with you, my family says. She can’t lie or hide the truth. As a reader, I also gravitate toward authors who write from their own dramas and hardships. That feels genuine and pure, so that’s what I aspire to as well.

But having said that, once I had a book contract, I did decide to take some things out. I had to realize that I wanted to remove things that might be hurtful to people I love. 

You’re very hard on yourself though, and honest about your own anger and mistakes. Did you draw on diaries for the book?

As a child, I used to keep some diaries as “someone” to talk to, or a form of therapy. I lost them years ago, but they were written in Persian, so I hope whoever found them just tossed them away. I did write more diaries after we left Iran. I still have those in a box and have not opened them yet. Those were tough years, watching my parents struggle when we first moved to the United States. I just haven’t found the strength to revisit those, but I know that I will look at them eventually because I want to draw on them for another story.

That would be a valuable story for a lot of kids right now to read. 

Yes, the issue of immigration is so important right now. It doesn’t matter when you move from one culture to another, it’s still very hard. I find the thought of my parents’ move here with two children really terrifying, now that I have two kids of my own. I think about that a lot now. Migrating is one of the hardest things people can do. We went from stability before the Iranian Revolution to suddenly feeling like the rug was pulled from underneath us in a matter of moments. I carry that with me, realizing that life can turn upside down so quickly. The Syrians are living that right now.

How did you access your memories from so long ago? You talk in minute detail about food, clothes, and music—and then in the next sentence there’s a dramatic political event.

My memories are really intense from that period because of the heightened intensity of life. One day we could be enjoying a wonderful meal with family or coffee with friends, and the next moment we could be running to hide from bomb sirens. Or the religious police could come and arrest people in front of you. There was an element of danger just renting your movies or buying some music because you had to deal with the black market. All my memories from that time are still vivid and detailed. Even now that I live in the United States, I still sometimes panic when I hear a siren. The biggest trigger for me is fireworks. It’s a beautiful thing here, symbolizing family and picnics, and joy—I really have to calm myself down when I hear them, though. 

Do you have advice for parents who want to help their kids embrace the world and be citizens of the world like you?

What I do with my kids is bring them often to the local libraries and museums with exhibits about other countries and periods of time. Of course, I love National Geographic’s line of memoirs celebrating people from other countries, which is the series my book is part of. Nawuth Keat and Martha Kendall wrote Alive in the Killing Fields about surviving the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. There is also so much available for kids on video. You can find series in French and Spanish and other languages on Netflix, with subtitles.

I grew up reading novels by writers from other countries, and that really takes you outside of yourself, so I think most of all I would encourage parents and kids to search their libraries for those stories.

For more information about Nioucha and her story, check out these links: 

• Author Chat with Nioucha Homayoonfar at YA Books Central 

• The Iranian Revolution Forty Years Later at Connecticut Public Radio

• Author Pens Coming-of-Age Memoir on GirlTalkHQ

• Nioucha’s Facebook page

Shelley Sperry
Sperry Editorial

Alt Ed “on the air”

We often tell our kids that it’s important to try new and scary things, from calculus and Beowulf to roller skating and brussels sprouts. A few weeks ago, I tried something new and scary, and the result was a truly delightful experience that you can actually hear for yourself now. I was honored to be a guest on one of my favorite education-related podcasts, Ba Luvmour’s Meetings with Remarkable Educators.

I already knew and respected Ba as a colleague, and he immediately put me at ease, as he does with every guest. His warm manner and deep engagement with all things related to alternative education are on full display in the interview. We talked about the development of Alt Ed Austin and about some of the big questions that parents and students face today—and ways to help answer them. I even had a chance to mention a book I’m working on called the Alt Ed Explainer. We also discussed ICARE, the exciting new alternative school accreditation project that my partners at Enlight Ignite and I have the honor of collaborating on with Ba and his work and life partner, Josette Luvmour, at Luvmour Consulting.

If you listen to the show, please drop me a line via email (teri@altedaustin.com) or Facebook (facebook.com/altedaustin) and let me know what you thought. You can find this episode and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you prefer to listen. Please also consider supporting! Meetings with Remarkable Educators with a small donation via Patreon.

Many thanks to Ba for the chance to talk about what I love with a new audience.

Are we nearing a tipping point for a new model of education? A talk with Peter Gray

Peter Gray is a true pioneer in exploring alternative education models, a serious researcher in the field of education and play, and an inspiring parent and activist. He speaks and writes eloquently without academic jargon about the needs of children. He’s currently on the faculty of Boston College in the Psychology Department, with dozens of books, articles, and blog posts to his name. His most recent book is Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. And that title says it all! We also recommend a recent article that clearly explains the differences between progressive education models—which we know a lot about here at Alt Ed Austin—and self-directed learning. You’ll also find a whole universe of helpful resources on the Alliance for Self-Directed Education website.

Peter will be speaking at several locations in Austin at the end of April (listed at the end of this post), so we decided to take this opportunity to let the Alt Ed Austin community know a little bit more about his philosophy and predictions for the future. Peter is a passionate advocate for play as the most natural and powerful way children learn. And he is leading a national movement for self-directed education through the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, as he discusses in the interview below.

Tell our readers who might not be familiar with your work how you got started in the field of education research and alternative schooling in particular.

As a researcher, I was originally doing brain research, looking at hormones in the brain and how hormones affect behavior. But when my own son was nine years old, he reached a crisis point in school, in the fourth grade. He hated school, and they didn’t know what to do with him. We decided we needed to find something very different from traditional schools for him as he had always been rebelling against it. And so we found the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts.

Since then, Sudbury has become a model for self-directed education. The Clearview Sudbury School in Austin follows this model. Sudbury and schools like it are places where children are free to play and explore and do what they want to do. There are children of all ages, and the rules are all made by children themselves—the opposite of typical schools.

When we enrolled my son, he was immediately happy and thought this was just what school should be. But I was concerned that he might be living in my basement for the rest of his life. Fathers tend to need more convincing than mothers about this type of education. I see that all the time. I needed some evidence that it worked. I tried to convince some graduate students in the field of education to do a research study, but no one was interested, so I decided to do the study myself. The results impressed me. Graduates of Sudbury who wanted to go to college did go to college. Others went on to various careers and they were all happy. None of them regretted going to Sudbury, which comforted me as a father and intrigued me as an academician.

All of this launched my interest in play, and I began to study why children all over the world have this drive to play and play in certain predictable ways, which we now believe are part of natural selection and designed to make them ready for adulthood.

I’ve been pursuing these ideas for many years, and I’m now concerned about what our coercive schooling system is doing to our children in terms of time taken away from play and creating anxiety. Now I’m not just a researcher; I’m also an advocate for what we call self-directed education. We have an organization called the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, and we educate people and promote these ideas, whether through schools or through homeschooling and what is sometimes called “unschooling.”

Are you hopeful about the future direction of self-directed education in the United States? Where do you see our education moving in the next few decades?

The biggest barrier to self-directed education that has to be overcome—and I’m hopeful about it—is that the great majority of people just don’t know anything about it, don’t understand it, and don’t see how it will work! Most Americans are third-, fourth-, or fifth-generation traditionally schooled. School has a certain meaning for us, and there’s a lot of social propaganda about how important it is, so it’s not surprising that most people in our culture believe that school as traditionally defined is essential in order to be successful or not become homeless. We hear that all the time. But I think that the barriers can be overcome.

In the most recent statistics available from a few years ago, we saw that about 3.4 percent of American children were homeschooled, and the trend is increasing. In the past homeschooling was done primarily for religious reasons, not to add freedom to children’s lives. But now the reasons for homeschooling tend to be more about improving the learning environment, making children happier and less constrained. I think that as homeschooling becomes more common and not so weird, we’ll see the numbers increase rapidly.

We also think somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of homeschoolers are pursuing “unschooling,” but I prefer the more positive term of “self-directed education.” Both homeschooling and self-directed education allow children much more time in the day to find hobbies, discover their own interests, make friends, get involved in community activities, and all the things that are important to learning. And now there are more centers being opened to create communities and support for families who are doing this.

I see it all as a grassroots movement, and we’re heading toward a tipping point. The next stage is that there will be enough people doing this that they have some political clout. I’m not sure, but that will come when somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of families are embracing self-directed education. So what leads me to be optimistic is that we always see social change occurring slowly, gradually, as courageous people do non-normative things, but over time we reach a tipping point at which everyone knows someone who is doing it, and it no longer seems weird. It no longer seems like it’s something you’re going to be blamed for doing. That’s when real change happens. The most recent analogy is the acceptance of gay Americans and same-sex marriage. For education, I don’t know if it will take 10 years or 40 years, but we’re on a trend, and I think it will happen.

The other thing that makes me optimistic is that self-directed education is easier than ever before. The Internet has made it easy. When schools were started, there were only certain people who had knowledge and you had to go to institutions where knowledge was sequestered in order to learn. Really and truly, the Internet has now made schools obsolete. We haven’t as a society come to terms with that, but all children know that any information they need is available to them at home or anywhere by Googling it.

But what we still need is community. So i have hope that libraries will become the replacements for schools. I’d like to see libraries become community centers for activities—places for learning, recreation, and friendship. We are suffering from being isolated from each other, and there’s real value in connecting with others, especially for kids. Schools aren’t solving this problem right now.

What we’re trying to do at the Alliance for Self-Directed Education is to change from individual people trying to solve a problem to an organized movement tackling the problem. We want people to see themselves as part of the same movement, whether they’re doing unschooling at home or sending their children to a Sudbury-style school. We’re trying to create local groups to support each other.

Are there places in the country that are pushing forward faster than others in this movement?

I’m not sure we know exactly—we don’t have all the information. But it’s interesting that in Austin you have a Sudbury model school and Abrome and many unschoolers. Austin may be one of the places where there’s a real concentration of people who are interested in self-directed learning.

What new projects are you working on right now besides the Alliance?

I have a new book in mind but am not far enough along on it to talk about it. It will be about the obsolescence of schools and how their functions have been taken over by other, more efficient means.

I’d also like to mention another organization I’m involved in, which is called the Let Grow Foundation. This is run by Lenore Skenazy, who wrote the book Free Range Kids. She is concerned that we’ve really excluded kids from public spaces, and we’ve developed irrational fears about letting children be free to play and explore the world. Utah just recently passed the a “free range children” law, so the idea is gaining momentum. Lenore is the main force behind this, but I’m conducting some research and supporting it.

Thank you to Peter for taking time to talk with us! He will be speaking at four events in Austin at the end of April, so if you’re interested in his thoughts about where education is heading, you have some terrific opportunities to listen and ask questions:

What Is Self-Directed Education, and How Do We Know It Works?
Wednesday, April 25, 7pm at Abrome

Smart Schooling Book Group Discussion with Author Peter Gray
(on his book Free to Learn)
Thursday, April 26, 6pm, at Laura Bush Community Library in Westlake

Play Deficit Disorder: A National Crisis and How to Solve It Locally
Thursday, April 26, 7pm, at Laura Bush Community Library

The Biology of Education: How Children's Natural Curiosity, Playfulness, and Sociability Serve Their Education
Friday, April 27, 7pm, Clearview Sudbury School

Shelley Sperry
Sperry Editorial
 

Cockroaches, coyotes, and connection: A talk with Barbara Croom of the Austin Nature & Science Center

We’ve been thinking an awful lot about experiential education here at Alt Ed Austin lately, and maybe you have, too. Unfortunately, as my daughter moves through high school, there seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities for the sort of amazing outside-the-classroom experiences she had as a little girl. That’s unfortunate because many teens are desperately searching for inspiration for future careers and for their own creativity. And that’s part of what experiential education is all about.

This week I had a chance to talk with one of Austin’s premier experiential educators, Barbara Croom, who runs the school programs at the Austin Nature & Science Center (ANSC). She helped me understand a little more about why experiential learning centers like ANSC are usually filled with elementary and preschool students rather than teens:

As students get older, the rules and expectations for teachers increase, and it becomes more difficult to request funds for extra enrichment like they would find at ANSC. Students and teachers have to worry about passing tests. And buses often are spoken for by band directors and athletic coaches. But we do sometimes have older students who come on their own to work on science projects and papers, and our staff members are happy to help them.

Here’s the rest of our conversation:

What are some of the programs students respond to most enthusiastically?

Well, we’ve done our Wild about Wildlife for 40 or 50 years! Nothing connects a child to nature like touching a snake or a bunny or a cockroach. Those are instantaneous connections that are not forgotten. We have some staff members here who vividly remember coming as first-graders to see the cockroaches!

It has evolved over that time, of course, and now it’s about an hour-and-a-half program where students rotate through stations where they can touch and learn about live mammals, birds, and reptiles. They also see and hold pelts, skins, and skulls. Older children begin to learn about evolution and adaptations of animals to their environment. Other programs during the year involve geology and fossils, astronomy, and aquatic ecosystems. We try to follow the standard curriculum topics so that we can support what teachers are doing in their classrooms with our hands-on experiences.
 

What’s the role of your staff of educators?

What’s most important is that they connect with the children as quickly as possible. We stage the environment so that happens: Everyone—staff and students—sits on the floor at first, in a horseshoe shape—“crisscross applesauce” style—so that our educators can make eye contact with every student. We want to create a comforting atmosphere so kids aren’t intimidated by someone towering over them. We say hello and start chatting about the animals or geology, and soon the kids are enamored.

The key for us is to have people who love teaching. Many of them begin with us and then go on to school settings. They all have undergraduate or masters degrees, some in the sciences and some in other subjects, but all of them spend time in intensive training before they begin. And they are involved in experiential studies too, just as the students are. They go to the Hill Country to dig for fossils. They get their own hands-on experience learning about reptiles, plus discussions with experts from around the state. They are lifelong learners—just as we want the kids to be.


How do you know what level the children are at in their science knowledge?

We ask a few questions and let them ask questions so that we quickly understand where they are, then we start “coaching” them while they’re handling the animals or the rocks or other materials. We help them realize that they can understand a lot just by observing, touching, and listening. We ask them to compare skulls and see if they can suggest reasons the coyote has a long skull and a snout that’s very different from a rabbit’s or a human’s, for example.

Can any child, including one with some special needs, have a good experience at ANSC?

We make all our programs inclusive now. It’s a process we’ve been working on for the past 8 or 10 years. We provide extra staff and help for children who may be on the spectrum. We have a staff member who is learning American Sign Language, and several special programs for students who are hearing- or sight-impaired. This is a priority.

Do you have many homeschooled children visiting ANSC?

Yes! Hundreds! We have a monthly homeschool program that lasts four days, and that includes children from preschool through high school. We do such a variety of programs, and our staff are so good, that even if children end up in a classroom setting when they’re older, their parents bring them back for the homeschool events!

And finally, do you have a philosophy related to the kind of educational experiences you offer at ANSC that you want to share with parents and kids?

Mindfulness! As an educator my goal is to connect children and adults with nature and science. I believe that if you come to it mindfully, the connection will happen. Even a child who is afraid to go for a walk in the woods at first—with mindful attention that connection will happen.

Shelley Sperry
Sperry Editorial