When Oregon launched Outdoor School for All in 2017, Straub Outdoors found itself at a crossroads.
The Salem-based organization could continue providing high-quality outdoor school to mid-Willamette Valley schools that were mostly higher-income, with fewer students of color.
Alternatively, Straub could pivot its outdoor school programs to serve higher-need schools in the area, including schools with Title 1 funding and diverse Latinx communities.
They chose to pivot.
“We realized that the highest and best purpose of our organization was to serve those schools,” says Catherine Alexander, Executive Director of Straub Outdoors.
With support from the Gray Family Foundation, Straub completely transformed its outdoor school model in just a few years to be more culturally responsive to the Latinx community. Through interviews with Latinx families and community members, instructor training and ongoing evaluation, they designed a bilingual program with culturally responsive metrics to evaluate their approach over time.
Most of all, they listened. Through the process, it became clear that the “gold standard” for outdoor school—a week of immersive nature education at an overnight camp—was a huge logistical hurdle for many schools.
“We discovered that in our service area, that was not going to work,” Alexander says.
Straub’s answer was to provide a menu of options for outdoor school. The first level is Nature Scouts, which provides classes with a series of three-day trips in one week to an Oregon State Park. While it’s not overnight, it provides a level of nature immersion that offers a close equivalent to outdoor school.
The next option is Nature Academy, an outdoor school that takes place over three days and two nights. The Gray Family Foundation was pleased to support Straub to move its Nature Academy into a new residential camp, located within beautiful Silver Falls State Park. Straub redesigned its curriculum to cater to this ecologically rich site.
Alexander says eventually they’d like to expand the residential camp to be four or five days, but right now they’re meeting schools where they are.
Straub Outdoors provides nature-based education for students and families. www.strauboutdoors.org