INVISIBLE | Session 3 | USA | Dr. Jean Lomino, Wauhatchie School & Forest School Teacher Institute

Jean Lomino holds a Ph.D. in Leadership with an emphasis in Environmental Education. She was a classroom teacher for 20 years, and since 2000 she has been an adjunct professor for a Master’s Degree program in Outdoor Teacher Education. Jean served as Executive Director of Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center in Chattanooga TN from 2005-2013. In 2015 she co-founded Wauhatchie School, the first forest kindergarten in the state of Tennessee which in the past five years has grown to include four forest school sites in the Chattanooga area with an enrollment of 160 students. Jean is also founder and lead trainer of the Forest School Teacher Institute and has trained over 200 forest school teachers from the US, Canada, China, Korea and South Africa, including two months working with teachers at No Boundaries Forest Kindergarten in Guangzhou, China. In 2018 she collaborated with Dr. Jiyoun Shin, Vice-Chair of the Korean Forest Kindergarten Association, to conduct research concerning Character Development in Forest Kindergarten. Jean presented at the International Symposium of Forest Kindergartens in Seoul, South Korea in 2019 and continues to be a speaker/advocate for forest school throughout the US.

Over the past 40 years as a classroom teacher, outdoor educator, college professor, nature center director, teacher trainer, and a forest school founder and director, Jean has gained a unique perspective about how children develop a connection with nature. By observing thousands of children in their nature explorations, she has come to believe that a friendship with nature is developed through several distinct behaviors. She recently wrote an article explaining this process and how the pandemic has created an opportunity for nature-based education to become a worldwide movement. She believes that today’s children have been the most nature-deprived generation in human history, spending much of their lives confined within walls, eyes locked on screens in temperature-controlled, cushioned, artificial environments, insulated from the natural world. Their well-being has been compromised with staggering results, including serious physical, emotional, social and cognitive disorders. Time spent in nature helps children understand the world as large and complex, but also abundant with interconnections. Learning and playing in nature leads to a kinship with the natural world which then grows into love for the earth and an instinctive desire to care for it. Jean believes that these experiences in nature represent the greatest hope for the future health of planet Earth, because today’s children will become its stewards through the rest of the 21st century.

Jean’s current projects include working with public schools to implement nature-immersion experiences for all grade levels, developing a network of neighbourhood forest schools, and writing a guidebook to help teachers, parents and other caregivers provide experiences that will help children develop deep friendships with the earth.