Each year, the Cheshire County Conservation District (CCCD) honors an individual or organization with the “Educator of the Year” award. This is done to celebrate the efforts the recipient has undertaken to steward a conservation ethic and awareness through their personal and professional work, in any form of education that takes. This year we are happy to announce Laura White as our 2024 Educator of the Year.
On the snowiest days of the year, to warm sunshine filled-days, one can often find Laura White outside, engaging her students in an outdoor classroom!
From an early age, Laura had a curiosity about the natural world. Growing up in Delaware, she spent much of her time outside and climbing trees.
College deepened her awareness of environmental activism, and she began to see and understand the connection between environmental challenges and social justice issues.
Laura and her students plant a tree
Following her graduation from college, she served in AmeriCorps in San Francisco, working with the National Park Service as a field trip leader, facilitating beach clean ups and invasive species mitigation. Following her service term with AmeriCorps, she worked for several months conducting a farmworker health survey. While conducting surveys, she had the opportunity to interact with the children of the farmworkers. It was the children of the farm workers who inspired Laura to pursue a career in teaching.
Laura teaches her students in the outdoor classroom
After this role, Laura spent a season working as an apprentice on an organic farm in California. She notes that this was one of her most formative experiences, and one that she feels would be valuable for all to experience. She notes the importance of understanding where one’s food comes from, as well as the labor involved behind that food. This experience provided Laura with the skills to launch a life-long hobby of home gardening, and to bring her love and passion of gardening into her work in schools.
Laura moved to the Monadnock Region to pursue a degree in teaching at Antioch University New England. After reading Earth in Mind by David Orr, she was inspired to direct her energy to developing public schools which integrated environmental aspects of the school experience from facilities to curriculum. She chose to pursue her degree at Antioch due to the university’s approach to teacher education which mirrors the values highlighted by Orr.
Laura has worked as an educator throughout this region: in Greenfield, MA, Brattleboro, VT, Spofford, NH, and currently teaches the 5th grade at the Chesterfield School in Chesterfield, NH.
Laura has integrated outdoor education throughout her career. While teaching at Green Street School in Brattleboro, she started a school garden and developed a 4th grade curriculum around soil. Students had the opportunity to visit farms throughout the school year and produce their own local food dinner. Laura also engaged students through wood recess, a weekly opportunity for students to explore and play in the nearby woods.
Laura's students plant seedlings in the garden
In between teaching she also served as the farm-to-school coordinator for the Brattleboro School District and was involved in creating a VISTA position to take over a portion of that role, which then evolved into the organization known as Food Connects. Through this work, she developed a healthy snack program with the Brattleboro Food Co-Op and lead an Environmental Club that promoted composting in the schools.
While teaching in Stoddard, Laura revitalized the large school garden and partnered with the Cheshire County Historical Society to create social studies curriculum in which students visited and researched the history of local water-powered mill sites.
Laura has truly gone above and beyond at every school she has taught at. She draws inspiration from the environment around her to develop her curriculum. Her place-based curriculum focuses on a variety of topics, from farm tools to climate change phenology to fungi. Laura has also worked with the Harris Center to further engage her students on topics such as native bees and pollinators.
On this collaborative curriculum, Laura shares,
“I feel really inspired when we are doing partnerships with the local community, and it’s not just the school, and you’re not just in your little bubble of the classroom; you’re making connections [with the community], and they’re excited for whatever their role is”.
These connections and partnerships can take time to build and navigate, Laura notes,
“A lot of it is identifying a change that can happen, where there’s other people there that are also excited, so there’s this synergistic effect, where you can make that one change. Picking where the door opens, and going through it, and making it happen”.
In addition to developing impactful curriculum and partnerships, she also has secured grants to develop school gardens, and has been at the forefront of starting environmental education programs at the schools at which she teaches. The most recent success has been the development of the Outdoor Classroom curriculum at Chesterfield School, where Laura began teaching in 2015.
Laura is the coordinator of the Outdoor Education Committee of the Chesterfield School. In 2016, when discussion of purchasing 23 acres of land behind the school began, Laura was determined to shape this land into an opportunity to create an exciting, engaging, and accessible outdoor classroom. Voters eventually approved the purchase of the land at the Chesterfield School Budget Meeting in March 2017.
From a field and forest, the outdoor classroom has blossomed. Today, there are easily accessed trails to several classroom spaces, benches built by parents and community members, as well as an outdoor pavilion.
Laura utilizes the classroom year-round with her students, rain or shine.
Laura is committed to creating accessible outdoor experiences, for example, over the years she has collected outdoor gear for students use to ensure that all students have a meaningful experience in the outdoor classroom.
Laura teaches outside in the snow
She has also worked with faculty to encourage utilization of the outdoor classroom spaces. Laura has been mindful to work with her colleagues in promoting the space and is inspired by colleagues who have learned how to weave their curriculum in an outdoor setting.
Laura has been fortunate to work in many outdoor spaces already, while for some colleagues this was initially a step out of their comfort zone. Through Laura’s encouragement and enthusiasm, she has inspired many of her colleagues to embrace this resource. Teachers from kindergarten to the fifth grade of all subjects use the space weekly, and now a schedule is implemented for outdoor classroom use due to popularity of the spaces.
Throughout her teaching career, Laura has become a master navigator of the educational system and has utilized her creativity to weave teaching standards into outdoor settings. She also notes the creativity of fellow faculty members in integrating standards in the outdoor classroom and provides teaching counting with pinecones as a creative example of students learning math.
Integrating teaching standards in an outdoor setting can have many benefits; she notes,
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other; you can do both academic learning... And there is a lot of research that says outdoor time is really beneficial to physical health, and social emotional health, and there’s such a huge mental health crisis these days... These different interests don’t have to be competing; they can serve each other”.
Her love of nature as well as the importance of spending time in the outdoors for youth development has served as a compass to her work.
Laura's students birding in the field
In addition to the importance of spending time outdoors for both teachers and students, she notes the critical importance of creating a relationship between youth and nature,
“It is a necessary survival strategy, survival both for humans and for many other beings we share the planet with, because we are all connected. We talk a lot about healthy relationships between people. People also have a relationship with the natural world, and we are less and less aware of that. It’s about reciprocity; in a healthy relationship, both parties care for each other and give and receive”.
In conversation, Laura noted the power of mycelium in the health of the forest ecosystem, bridging the forest network together. Much like mycelium, Laura has linked students, fellow teachers, and community members to nature for the broader benefit of her community.
When the community is invested in the outdoors, and there is a strong relationship between youth and nature, we all benefit: socially, emotionally, and health-wise. Not only do we benefit from this, but so does the planet.
Laura's students explore a stream
Laura feels passionate that the work she does in the classroom goes beyond learning curriculum materials; it’s about inspiring awe and changing a world view from a young age. She adds,
“In terms of connecting youth with nature, to me it’s about helping inform that relationship with nature, that sense of reciprocity, and that hopefully will help them grow up to be ethical decision makers, and make decisions that are going to help the earth and help humankind, in whatever position they are... Everyone, as an adult, has to make decisions that affect the world in some way, and building that worldview with a child is powerful… Education is really powerful, and it steers people to what they do with their lives and how they live their lives”.
What students learn in Laura’s classroom are lessons that they will carry their entire lives. This impact in the classroom (both indoors and outdoors) is critical in creating broader systemic change and building environmental awareness among the next generation.
The Cheshire County Conservation District is immensely grateful for Laura’s enthusiasm and commitment to inspiring and educating the next generation of environmental stewards. It is with great pleasure that CCCD presents Laura White with the 2024 Educator of the Year Award. Congratulations, Laura!
Laura shares that there are many ways to get involved and support this work! The Chesterfield School is always looking for community volunteers to assist with carpentry and mowing projects for the outdoor classroom, as well as retired teachers or community members who can assist in supervising classes outdoors to serve as extra support to teachers who don’t have a classroom aide to be another set of eyes in such a setting.
Laura's students walk over a fallen tree in the woods
Laura encourages interested community members with or without teaching backgrounds to get involved! Additionally, Laura invites any community members who are aware of relevant funding or grant opportunities to further support the outdoor classroom initiative, to communicate opportunities with school administrators.
Join our community in celebrating Laura White, 2024 Educator of the Year at CCCD’s 79th Annual Celebration. Join us for an evening of food, music, and connecting with community: Thursday, October 10th, 6:00-8:00 PM at Stonewall Farm. Registration is required: https://cccdcelebrates79.eventbrite.com/