{"id":30459,"date":"2021-12-16T18:19:29","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T23:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30459"},"modified":"2021-12-16T18:28:29","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T23:28:29","slug":"outdoor-educator-honoured-by-lake-simcoe-region-conservation-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/outdoor-educator-honoured-by-lake-simcoe-region-conservation-authority\/","title":{"rendered":"Outdoor educator honoured by Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Lewis has been inspired by nature since he first went away to camp as a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He slept under the stars, put in some elbow grease on lengthy canoe trips and, in the process, found a defining element in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a teacher, he did what he could to focus on outdoor education and found just the right fit at Newmarket\u2019s Pickering College (PC). Since his retirement as the independent school\u2019s Director of Leadership and Community Service in 2013, Lewis has carried on as PC\u2019s outdoor education specialist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, thanks to his extensive work in bringing students back to nature, Lewis has been recognized by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) with their 2021 Healthy Community Award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur Outdoor Education Program at Pickering College flourished under Tom’s guidance and expertise,\u201d said Janet Downer, Assistant Head of School, Academics and Student Programs, in a statement. \u201cHe has a gift for connecting students to the natural environment. Tom is certainly deserving of this award.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This gift was recognized by his peers as it was his former colleague Noeline Burk, PC\u2019s now retired Head of Arts, who put him forward for the award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTom Lewis is definitely one of the most deserving people for this award,\u201d said Burk. \u201cHis knowledge and expertise are second to none \u2013 but it is his willingness to share and his spirited and confident delivery of this over so many years to so many students and fellow teachers that prompted me to nominate him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being recognized by the LSRCA \u201creally took my breath away,\u201d says Lewis. His nomination coming from a former colleague was just the icing on the cake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought it was the greatest thing in the world,\u201d says Lewis on his first exposure to outdoor education. \u201cWhen I decided to go into teaching, I asked my advisor at Queen\u2019s University if there were any schools out there that did outdoor activities because I didn\u2019t just want to be in a classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He began his teaching career at Rosseau Lake College, noting that being a teacher at independent schools has allowed him \u201cthe freedom to do these kinds of things, above and beyond whatever my other teaching and coaching responsibilities were.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the case at Pickering College as well and when he retired, he jumped at the chance to help the school build their outdoor education program almost from the ground up \u2013 both on their Bayview Avenue campus as well as at Blue & Silver Farm, the outdoor education property in Whitchurch-Stouffville. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have done stuff in class that has really resonated with kids, just being out and learning about things like habitat and how to identify different animal tracks,\u201d says Lewis. \u201cI am a big believer in the idea that it is one thing to talk about people being good stewards of the environment, but the more time they spend in the environment, the more likely they are to want to protect it. Lots of people say, \u2018I spend lots of time in the woods,\u2019 but what do they do? They say, \u2018I jog this trail all the time\u2019 but with their earbuds in, walking their dogs, holding their coffee cups. How many times do you step off the trail and look for animal signs? When you get kids to do that, it\u2019s pretty special. You see it become part of their lifestyle and it\u2019s huge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kids generally aren\u2019t getting outside enough these days, he says, and the natural environment \u201cprovides us with so much positive\u201d well beyond simply getting fresh air. It\u2019s having the ability to explore and have unstructured play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where you are, there\u2019s something around your school where you can walk and have outdoor space,\u201d he says of opportunities to foster outdoor learning in all school settings. \u201cThere\u2019s likely trees there, stuff you can encourage kids to do out there, and parents can do a lot of stuff with their children on their own properties, whether it is planting in the garden, hanging a white sheet over a tree, waiting until nightfall, getting your flashlight and seeing what kinds of bugs you can attract. It doesn\u2019t have to be really complex. We built snow forts on our front lawn with our kids. We learned about trees that were in our backyard and in our neighbourhood. We learned about the animal tracks we would see out walking the dog. Smell things, touch stuff, get dirty \u2013 it\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Lewis has been inspired by nature since he first went away to camp as a child. He slept under the stars, put in some elbow grease on lengthy canoe trips and, in the process, found a defining element in his life. As a teacher, he did what he could to focus on outdoor education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/2021-12-16-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7Vh","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:54:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}