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Sep

11

A Forest by the Children, for the Children

Filed Under Perspectives, Place-based Education, Programs | Leave a Comment

By Kristen Cook

This year I learned that EarthCorps
don’t only make the forest a better
place, they teach other people how
to take care of the forest and some
of those people are us.
— Joseph, 5th grader

As the youth outreach coordinator for Earth Corps, a Seattle-based conservation corps, I provide in-depth service learning projects for youth using habitat restoration as the context. For the past six years, I have been working with teachers and students from Dearborn Park elementary in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood.

This area of southeast Seattle is away from the wealthier waterfront neighborhoods and properties which look out over the city skyline and Puget Sound. This is an area of the city whose parks and small bits of forest have historically been overlooked, not unlike its residents, many of whom are, to use the current terminology, “underserved.” Within this urban ecosystem, you’ll find ethnicities and languages spanning the globe, and if you drive down from Beacon Hill, or up from Rainier Valley, you’ll come across a tiny gem of a forest, not quite three acres in all. This is the Dearborn Park Children’s Forest.

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