Photo Credit: Rob Wade

The winter landscape can be a powerful teacher. Through SnowSchool students and educators explore their local winter wildlands on snowshoes, and along the way the natural world provides ample opportunity for rich experiential learning. With their curiosity in the drivers seat, students examine snow crystals under macroscopes, perhaps cut snow blocks for an igloo and fervently dig snow pits to track the depth and density of their local mountain snow. Here, kids and teachers can work together to follow wildlife tracks in the snow, and engage in rich discussions about how winter wildlife adapts to this beautiful but sometimes unforgiving environment. Exploring winter wildlands in this way is an experience we think could benefit every child across the snow-belt.

It likely goes without saying that its been a tough winter for many schools, educators, students and their families. Despite the array of pandemic-induced challenges facing education programs this winter, SnowSchool sites and educators across the country have shown strong resilience and an impressive ability to adapt to challenging circumstances. In snow-covered forests, mountains, parks and schoolyards across the country, educators and teachers have found ways to introduce kids to the wilds of winter. For example, despite the pandemic and a historically destructive wildfire season, students and teachers in Northern California’s Lost Sierra (pictured above, courtesy of Plumas County Unified School District) still made regular field excursions from their schools to their local snowpack to go snowshoeing, explore winter ecology and track snow water content!

In a typical winter our network of 70 sites (and growing) engage 35,000 students in snowshoe-powered explorations of their local winter wildlands, many for the first time. Check out some other good news and happenings from SnowSchool programs across the country below!