By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Roots & Wings Forest School recently opened up a new schoolhouse called “the Rook” in rural New York Mills. The school, which is primarily focused on outdoor-learning, needed an indoor learning space to use during inclement weather.

“Every step of growth we have taken has been a direct response to community needs that our families expressed to us,” said director, Leona City. “Soon after opening in 2020, we knew our enrollment would eventually expand beyond our original space, and we began dreaming of a two room schoolhouse that would hold both our multi-age preschool and elementary classes.”

“Our school obtained a center license from the state,” said assistant director, Christina Kickhafer. “This building and license has been two years in the making, and are a huge step for our program that serves over 50 youth from several local school districts.”

Roots & Wings first began as a part-time daycare for preschool aged children. Throughout the past three years, the school has turned into a year-round licensed childcare center for those 3-10 years old. Preschool to elementary aged children are eligible to attend the learning experienced based around play-based learning, Montessori principles, and uniquely tailored education offerings.

“The idea of outdoor schooling, or forest schools, began in Europe in the 20th century and has become a popular education option for many countries,” said Cichy. “The US has more recently started seeing a growth in the forest school and nature-based learning movement, which is exciting to see. There are even public schools in Minnesota and other states now offering outdoor Kindergarten. The benefits of learning in the great outdoors are immense, and I expect we will continue to see more outdoor learning options in the years to come!

“Personally, I have always loved the outdoors and leading others in nurturing a love, curiosity, and lifelong wonder of the natural world,” Cichy continued. “Starting a forest school was something I had in mind from quite a while to start for my own children, but the pandemic brought my dream to life sooner than expected. Running a forest school is a perfect combination of my previous education and experience in youth development and outdoor education and recreation.”

The Forest School continues in the footsteps of similar Scandinavian and Nordic schools, which allow children to learn outdoors, in nature, for the majority of their schooldays. Students at Roots & Wings spent an average of six hours outside each day and now that the Rook schoolhouse is available, in the case of inclement weather, students are now able to learn inside as well.

“We were extremely fortunate to receive funding from several sources for our new space. These include First Children’s Finance and Otter Tail County, who had funding available specifically to enhance and expand the capacity of child care and early education centers across the county/state,” Cichy said. “We also received funding from West Central Initiative, and from VELA Education Fund—who seek to invest in education entrepreneurs looking to provide unique and student-centered learning environments to accelerate innovation in the field of education.”

An open house was held on Wednesday, Aug. 9 at the Rook schoolhouse to welcome the community to see the new facility and get acquainted with the Forest School. Rooms within the new building offer a large variety of learning tools, instruments, and supplies.

“Our open house was fantastic. We had a combination of current families, prospective families, board members and supporters, locals interested in learning more, as well as county and child care organization representatives who came out to celebrate with us,” Cichy said. “We hope the connections and conversations created around the opening of our new space will help to foster new partnerships and opportunities in our local communities.

“I am most excited to have a warm, comforting gathering space for all of our students to learn when it’s not optimal or possible to be outside all day,” continued Cichy. “I am excited to see where we grow from here, but for now we’ll take things one step at a time and enjoy our first year in our beautiful space.”

If you would like to learn more about what programming Roots & Wings has to offer, please visit their website at rwfsmn.org. They can also be reached by phone at (218) 325-0234 or by email at leona@rwfsmn.org.