09/03/2024
To our beloved community,
There's no easy way to say this: we didn't get enough enrollment, so we won't be able to run The Walden Project for the 2024-2025 school year. This does not necessarily mean that the program is closing forever, but it does mean that we are ending a chapter.
I'd like to thank the Cu***ng Nature Center and the RMSC for their incredible support over the years. I believe everyone tried as hard as they could to be able to make this year possible and we all shared feelings of disappointment that it didn't work out.
As you can imagine, this program has meant a lot to many people and I'd like to offer some thoughts about this...
First, I'd like to list some of our accomplishments since 2017 when the original Walden Project in Vermont gave us permission to start our own program at Cu***ng Nature Center:
- 84 students were able to participate in the year-long program and another 30+ participated in our summer program
- We lit over 700 campfires and shared countless meaningful conversations and experiences learning in the woods together through all kinds of weather
- We completed over 15,000 hours of service learning projects for our community!
- In 2020, we were accepted as candidates for accreditation through the Middle States Association and we were anticipating full accreditation this coming year
- Since 2021, we have been a Finger Lakes Community College Gemini School and each of our students was able to earn ten college credits for participating in the program
- We were the subject of the documentary, Campfire Academy, and we were also featured in many news articles, podcast episodes, and stories on radio and TV
- Thanks to your generosity, we were able to provide tens of thousands of dollars in financial aid scholarships to students every year that we ran
What we've learned... After running this program for six years, we can say (with data) that this program has been a success as an educational model, but it has not been financially sustainable. The vast majority of our program has been funded by tuition and this has been prohibitive for a lot of people to participate. I have always hoped that Walden could become part of the public school system and be a tuition-free option for students with other forms of support, like transportation.
A personal note from Andy…I had never taken a leap of faith like this before Walden. It's scary to stick your neck out and take a risk. This was an experiment and I can't begin to express my gratitude to everyone who supported this in all the various ways -- to the students who were willing to do this crazy thing, to the families who drove their kids and found ways to pay tuition, to the schools who saw the benefit in our program and allowed students to participate for a year, to the volunteers who led workshops and shared their talents, to the 70+ service learning organizations that sponsored our student interns, to the hundreds of people who donated to our scholarship funds over the years, and to the staff at Cu***ng Nature Center, RMSC, FLCC, Muller Field Station, Rochester Ecology Partners, East High School's Teaching & Learning Institute, The Willowell Foundation ... (as I start to list the groups we work with, I realize I could go on for pages and pages...) I'd also like to personally thank Janean, Lisa, Jordan, Fox, and Jenna (who was to be our service learning coordinator for the new school year). Everyone who sat with us around our campfire helped shape the program into what it became.
Where to go from here:
- We need to celebrate! Sometime this fall, let's have a picnic to tell stories, read poems, and share our space together again! Please stay tuned for this!
- Let's dream about Walden 2.0. Maybe it won't be called Walden. Maybe some things will be different, but we have created a community based on shared values and an interest in a different approach to education. This is no small feat! Sometime this winter, let's have a meeting to talk about what we've learned and what might be possible in the future.
- If anyone is inspired to start a nature-based learning program, please let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. You can copy what worked and learn from our mistakes.
We'll give the final word to Thoreau from the last chapter of Walden:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
Sincerely,
Andy & the Cu***ng Nature Center
