Practitioner Profile: Ashley Whynot of Wild Child Forest School

Biography

Ashley grew up in a military home and spent most of her adolescent years moving around Central and Atlantic Canada. She spent most of her childhood outside playing in the woods and surrounding playgrounds with friends. Her dad retired and moved their family to Nova Scotia where her appreciation for nature and all living things began to flourish.

Ashley attended Carleton University in Ottawa and holds a BA in Psychology. She is also a level 3 early childhood educator and has been working in the childcare field since 2016. Once the pandemic hit, her love for outdoor play really began to grow. Building forts, using tools, and climbing trees, made Ashley eager to pursue her education in outdoor risky play. She is currently enrolled in the Forest and Nature Practitioners course through Child and Nature Alliance Canada.

Ashley is a strong advocate for outdoor risky play and knows firsthand the benefits Forest School and nature has on ADHD and anxiety. Her goal is to be able to offer a safe space for children to do all the fun things, in a supportive and natural environment.

The mission of our Wild Child programs is to provide child led, play-based learning through repeated exposure to nature, helping to foster a lasting relationship with the natural world.

Wild Child program brings fun environmental education and encourages staff and children to get outside, play games and age-appropriate activities to learn about their environment and the other critters they share their community with.

Interview

1. What brought you to forest school (your origin story if you will)?

I was working as a school-age educator in 2020 when the pandemic hit – I was in a tricky position as I had grades 3 to 5. If you do not know, children in grade 3 and under did not have to be masked while indoors, but grade 4 and above did. How do I explain to the children that one group is safe inside unmasked but the other is not? It was then that I made the decision to stay outdoors for as long as possible. And the results were incredible – we spent our afternoons building forts in the trees, creating with our hands and child-led games that centered around their creations.

I thought to myself, there must be a way to do this all day and not have to be limited by licensing in what children should and should not do in nature – which led to a deep drive into forest schools. We were not able to leave our neighbourhoods let alone the city, province, or country so my choices were limited to what I could pursue academically. I ended up finding Child and Nature Alliance (CNAC) who were offering a combination of online and in-person learning. While taking the course, I just so happened to come across the Wild Child program at Shubie Park. After speaking with the program coordinator at the time, Julia, she asked me to send her my resume and that led to my first summer at a Forest School educator.

From there I moved into the Assistant Coordinator position and was later hired on as the Program Coordinator. I could not be happier with where my life journey has led me to. I continue to look for new ways to bring our programing to our communities and my hope one day is to have a Forest School Practitioner in every school in Nova Scotia.

2. How do you define your role with children and what guides your current practice?

I define my role as a supporter of child wonderment – it is not my place to tell a child what their interests are, but to observe and expand upon their current wonderment. I like to explain it to people who ask what we do, that we do not program plan, we have our little Batman utility belts of skills, knowledge, and activities that we pull out when the time is right.

What that looks like:

A child wants to build a fort.

• Okay, what do we need? Help create a list.
• Encourage the child to find the materials.
• Hey, you know what? I have a cool knot that might help you build your fort; would you like to see it?

It is safe to say for all of my educators at Wild Child, that the children are what guides our programs. We go into each day with their interests in mind and consult with them on what they would like to do with their day. Forest School is a safe space for children to just be children and to have no other expectation than to have fun and find their joy.

3. How has your practice changed over time and why?

I started in the Early Childhood Education world later in life, having children of my own, and the job fit into my lifestyle of wanting to be with my own children. I spent a lot of time trying to check off boxes, I needed to have my Level 1, then my Level 2 and with my BA in Psychology I ended with my Level 3 – but it was never enough. I was not happy with myself, and it was not until I was diagnosed with ADHD of the Combined type that I started to question what really made me happy – the forest. I started to let go of having to check all the right boxes and question why things were done a certain way – when evidence clearly shows great benefits to risky play. I guess you can say my practice shifted from being a people pleaser, to what was important – the children and their connection to nature and each other.

4. What do you feel are some of the biggest misconceptions about what you do and what do you wish people knew?  

Wow – that we just play in the woods. I have had this conversation with my staff, that if someone were to walk through our base camp, we would look like we are just standing around doing nothing and just watching the children. But what people do not see is that we are constantly running through risk assessments and listening to the language the children are using. We can tell when a child needs our help, or they just need to work through some things on their own. Giving children the space to make those choices without an adult immediately jumping in to fix it is a skill that we as educators, need to work on.

There are days that the children will play and engage will us all day and there are days that they just need supplies, and we are more than happy to fulfill both of those roles. Independent, confident play is a big part of Forest School.

5. How does open and collaborative communication with the families of the children in your program impact your practice? Do you have any tools that you use to support relationship building with families?

Coming from the childcare world, having apps to communicate with parents was a priority for me. I did not want to rely on social media to communicate and creating email lists is daunting. I found Procare, which I really enjoy. It is tailored to childcare, but we use the tools that are relevant to our practice.

We share pictures and videos on the app, and we can write up incident reports that the parent will receive in real time. In our waiver form, parents have the option to opt in or out of pictures being taken of their child, but also to only share them through Procare. This way they can see what their child is doing, but do not have to worry about their child being on social media.

We still have Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to help share our content, but the pictures and videos are only posted with parental consent, and we ask the children too.

6. How are you attempting to address issues of inclusion in your practice? Challenges and barriers you face? Support needs as a practitioner? Success stories? Issues currently on your mind or conversations currently being had with your colleagues?

Inclusion is a huge topic in Forest School, and we have had many conversations on what that looks like for us. To run our programs, we need to have low ratios, 1 adult to 6 children over the age of 5 and usually a max of 12 children over the age of 5. With children under age 4, it is 1 adult to 4 children. We do not have funding for one-on-one care, so if we have a child that needs that support that leaves one staff with 11 children – which is not a safe ratio from children climbing trees, using tools, and having a whole forest at their disposal.

Then there is the issue of accessibility – our Bedford Location involves a difficult hike up to our basecamp; it is not meant for those who are not used to being outside for hours at a time and hike as a family. Even our Cole Harbour location is a bit of a hike for those who are not used to it. We are looking into finding a permanent home for Wild Child, but it is not an easy task.

That said, we have had children with ADHD, Anxiety, Autism, and Cerebral Palsy attend our programs with enormous success. We never want a parent to feel they must edit their child to be able to attend our programs – we ask openly if there is anything we should know about their child to make their time with us an enjoyable experience. That means we need to know if your child needs to have a safe space to go to in order to self-regulate or if they are a runner and we need to stay close. We have had to pull in another staff in the past, but it is not always an option. And at that point, we need to talk with the family members about safety and if the program is the right fit, right now for them. The safety of the child and the staff are my top priority.

If we had the funding that child care centers and schools have, this would not be as big of an issue as it is currently. We are solely run on program fees, grants when we can get them and donations. It’s a stressful position to be in, especially when all you want to do is foster a connection between children and nature.

7. How are you attempting to decolonize your practice? Challenges and barriers you face? Support needs as a practitioner? Success stories? Issues currently on your mind or conversations currently being had with your colleagues?

I have felt that running a program which focuses so much on connection with the land cannot be done without bringing in decolonization. The Mi’kmaq are the original people of Mi’kma’ki and they knew how to live off the land in a good way. I have been connecting with Mi’kmaw people that I have had the privilege of meeting through workshops, I ask questions and seek their guidance when they allow space for me.

I would love to be able to offer Mi’kmaw led programs for youth, but funding is a barrier that makes these dreams hard to obtain.

We have had the honour to host Brady Googoo, a Mi’kmaw youth from Millbrook at one of our summer camp programs. He spoke about his traditional dancing and brought some of his regalia to show the children. He is also a talented lacrosse player and brought his stick to pass around. He spoke so eloquently about his passions and kept the children and staff engaged and in awe. It was important to me for the children to see a youth so passionate about his culture, so often guest speakers are adults. It is important to bring in youth to speak – children connect with them on a different level.

Anything else/final thoughts?

Final thoughts, I wish there were more government support for what we do. Children spend so many hours of their day on a schedule, being told what to do and when to do it, they desperately need an outlet like Forest School to just be a child – with no other agenda. How incredible would it be if every child got to experience Forest School once a week throughout their school year. We need to honour children and allow them to explore who they are and what is important to them without interference from the adult world.