CAZENOVIA — Cazenovia native Amy Butler has spent over two decades partnering with teachers, community members, and families to help create opportunities for children to connect to the natural world.
Earlier this year, Cornell University Press published Butler’s book documenting her success in implementing nature-based education in Vermont public schools.
According to the publisher’s website, the book, “Educating Children Outdoors: Lessons in Nature-Based Learning,” is a resource for educators interested in spending extended periods of time in nature with their students. Its pages offer curricular guidance on nature-based lessons that align with K–12 education standards and build on children’s innate curiosity and wonder for the natural world.
The book features 25 lessons broken down into five units of study aligned with the seasons. It also includes appendixes that offer templates for learning.
“You’ll find a whole unit on stick play that includes mathematical thinking and visualizing-verbalizing,” said Butler. “One unit is how to learn with fire, and the winter unit includes lessons on tracking and exploring properties of matter through the melting of snowballs.”
According to Butler, who graduated from high school in 1992, her Cazenovia upbringing impacted her connection to the natural world and the value she places on learning outdoors.
“I grew up riding my bike with the neighborhood kids on Pompey Hollow Road, catching turtles in Limestone Creek, and playing hide and seek in the cornfields,” she said. “It was undoubtedly a different time when kids ran freely with little to no adult supervision. Later on, when my family moved to the village, I sought out the same wild places along Chittenango Creek and, of course, swimming at the pier. All these experiences and living in the bucolic setting of Central New York only further supported my relationship with the natural world.”
After high school, Butler studied forestry and environmental science at Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks. She went on to study social ecology and early childhood education.
“All these disciplines brought me to teaching environmental education, and later I integrated this into my teaching practice as an elementary school teacher,” she said. “Nature-based education became my sole focus when I became the director of education at North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier, Vermont.”
Butler was drawn to Vermont by the skiing opportunities, mountains, and an eagerness to “explore more wild places.”
For 15 years, she worked with the same 10 schools to help them create nature-based programs that get students outdoors every week to learn with and in nature.
In 2020, Butler was offered a contract with Cornell University Press to write a book about their success.
The book’s lesson plans were co-created by Butler and the teachers and nature center staff she worked with.
“We spent hours observing what children were drawn to do and learn about in wild spaces, and then [we] turned those curiosities into standardized lesson plans,” Butler explained. “This was a very different approach as the lessons are not [as] much teacher-directed as they are coming from the inquiries of the children themselves.”
“Educating Children Outdoors” was published this past March and is available through Cornell University Press or any large retail book outlet.
