FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Millions of students in American public schools are lucky if they get 30 minutes of recess a day. But the students at Wild Oak Explorers spend hours at a time roaming an 8-acre oasis of pines, ponds, and trails not far from the Georgia line.
On a recent, typical day, they surveyed the property to make maps, picked apart pinecones for make-believe tea, fed wax myrtle to a herd of goats – and did whatever else their imaginations spurred them to.
“This is their playground,” said Wild Oak founder Stacey Tappan.
Tappan is a certified forest teacher who started Wild Oak in 2019. It’s technically an enrichment provider, not a school. It serves students who are homeschooled, or those doing parent-directed education, outside of full-time schools, with flexible, state-supported choice scholarships.
Students attend two or four days a week, for four hours at a time. They range in age from toddlers to teens.
Tappan and her fellow teachers organize some educational activities for the students, like the land survey. There are also some daily rituals, like morning “sit spots,” where the students start the day quietly observing their surroundings.
But most of the learning is directed by the students themselves. If the students want to climb trees, they climb trees.
“And if it rains,” Tappan said, “they play in it.”
Tappan began gravitating to nature as a classroom 12 years ago.
She saw benefits for neurodivergent children, including her now-14-year-old daughter, Jacqueline. For many students, the freedom to move – to stand, to wiggle, to take a walk – can reduce anxiety and recast behavior that might be viewed as problematic in a typical classroom, Tappan said.
She also saw benefits for all children – a natural way, literally, to foster everything from character, curiosity, and creativity, to problem solving and social skills.
Just as important, Tappan saw learning outdoors as fundamental to cultivating a healthy environmental consciousness – and, by extension, a healthier, more sustainable planet. “We teach respect for all living beings,” says the school’s website, “and how to minimize our impact on the earth.”
For most people, Tappan said, “Nature has become a backdrop. You’re moving from x to y to z and not actually paying attention. That’s the purpose of the sit spots.”
“If kids don’t learn to love nature, who’s going to save it?”
Tappan and Wild Oak are not anomalies, even if narratives about “school choice” fueled by choice opponents seek to erase them.
The Natural Start Alliance reports the number of forest school pre-schools more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, to about 800. I don’t know if anybody is keeping official tabs on the broader group of “green schools.” But this nature school founder and writer has a pretty good handle on them, judging by the 1,000+ schools she lists in the U.S., including 40 in the Sunshine State.
Nature schools like this one, this one, and this one have long been part of the private school landscape in Florida. And as education choice has expanded, so have they. (See here, here, and here.)
Tappan started with five students from three families. Now she’s serving 29 students from 20 families. Virtually all of them use choice scholarships.
“Being outside is so important to me,” said Dru Clark, who has two children at Wild Oak using the Personalized Education Program scholarship. “I want them to get the health benefits. I want them to connect with nature and learn about it.”
Tappan wanted the same for her children.
She grew up across the street from one of the Jacksonville area’s biggest malls, yet still spent endless hours catching “crawdads” in nearby creeks.
She knew today’s kids rarely had such experiences, so when she couldn’t find a school that opened the door to those activities – stop me if you’ve heard this before – she created it. At the time, Tappan had spent more than a decade in health care management.
“I tell parents all the time, ‘If you don’t see the school you want, create your own,’ “ Tappan said.
Wild Oak Explorers is based at Jaybird Hammock Farm, 45 minutes north of Jacksonville. Most of the property is wooded and home to wild animals endemic to North Florida. But there’s also a menagerie of farm animals, including chickens, turkeys, ducks, two donkeys, one mule (a diva named Buttercup) and at least 15 friendly goats.
Tappan and the other teachers joyfully use all of it for their programming.
For the Great Backyard Bird Count, the students relied on binoculars and field guides to identify bird species, then drew or painted them in nature journals. Over the next few weeks, an official with a local 4-H group will lead lessons in embryology, using eggs from the farm. A wildlife rehabber is also set to visit soon – and to bring a partially paralyzed raccoon she rescued.
None of this, though, holds a candle to Wild Oak’s central feature: Long stretches of free play.
With play comes learning – and way out here, some of the lessons are especially valuable, as Wild Oak parents will be the first to tell you.
“There’s strength in risky play like climbing trees,” said Katie Ernst, whose 5-year-old daughter Rayah also uses a PEP scholarship at Wild Oak. “They learn their own strengths, their own bodies, what they can and can’t do. They learn how to trust themselves. They gain confidence.”
Wild Oak represents other important trend lines that are especially pronounced in Florida, which leads the country in education choice.
Again, it’s not a school. In fact, Wild Oak is now one of more than 14,000 providers outside of schools that are part of public education in Florida.
As tens of thousands of families flock to a la carte learning, they’re accessing providers like Wild Oak, but as only one piece of a program they custom build themselves. Both Clark and Ernst, for example, use their PEP scholarships for multiple programs and providers.
Wild Oak is also another distinctive example of how the expansion of choice in Florida offers something for everybody. The families, educators, schools, providers, and communities who are embracing choice are incredibly diverse along multiple dimensions – and becoming more so every day.
“I know this program isn’t for everybody,” Tappan said. “That’s okay.”
But for those who want it, it’s there.
