Teaching in nature’s classroom

Teacher Ashley Gauger of Grafton has two classrooms. One is a yurt. The other is the great outdoors.

Gauger teaches second grade at the new Riveredge Outdoor Elementary School at Riveredge Nature Center in the Town of Saukville.

Her 16 students learn their lessons in a structure designed like the round Mongolian tent called a yurt and in the rolling, wooded acres of Riveredge.

 “The purpose of a teacher,” Gauger said,  “is to meet every child’s needs the best I know how.”

At Riveredge, she does that by imparting strategies so children can learn for themselves.

Self-care is high on the list, since as much time as possible is spent outside. In the yurt, students read on hammocks and use items they find outside as instruments for music class.

Gauger teaches responsible risk, such as discussing if ice on the pond is safe to walk on.

If students’ fingers are cold or they get wet after playing in the snow when the class is outside for a period of time, Gauger asks them what they’ll do differently next time.

Gauger is equipped with extra clothing and items to ensure safety, she said.

Inside the yurt in winter, temperatures reach the mid-60s. Students are asked to wear warm clothes. Gauger has slippers to keep their feet warm.

Although time outside is a priority, the classroom has 10 iPads that are incorporated into learning.

Gauger’s journey to a teaching career prepared her well for the unconventional demands of the Riveredge school.

She came out of Carroll College with the plan to make the educational system change to better adapt to children’s needs.

Her drive comes from an epiphany in fourth grade. School came naturally to Gauger, but not to one of her friends with disabilities.

She told her mother, “He works harder than I do and he doesn’t get the same grades. His best is different than my best, and that’s wrong.”

Gauger set out to do something about the injustice, but quickly realized one passionate young educator doesn’t quickly alter longtime institutions.

So Gauger paused her master’s program and went to teach English in Europe. She had been to Asia and Australia, but not Europe. She took a four-week class in Italy and was sent to a city one hour north of Prague in the Czech Republic.

She arrived at 9 p.m. with a friend and specific instructions on how to get to where she needed to be but no handle on the language.

“I couldn’t even discern what’s a word, what’s a sound,” she said.

She took the first bus that came along, which turned out to be the correct one.

She taught conversational English to mostly private school students ages 3 to 68 with the help of native Czech teachers.

She also taught Chinese students via the internet.

“I learned the best way to illicit language was conversation,” she said, asking students the right questions to have them express themselves.

Armed with a new perspective on teaching, Gauger returned to Wisconsin and worked in a Waukesha County Technical College Child Development Center and as a nanny.

One of the appealing aspects of the Riveredge position for Gauger, she said, is that the school is staff powered. Instead of a principal, it has a lead teacher who handles some of the administrative duties, while others are delegated to the rest of the staff.

The bottom-up management concept fits the independent personality Gauger developed growing up in Colgate, Wis.

“I had a hard time listening to people telling me what to do when I knew that wasn’t in my best interest,” she said.

The Riveredge school’s pillars are inquiry, nature and community. The school’s discipline model starts with the teacher working with students and families. The lead teacher is the next level.

Gauger cannot send a misbehaving student to the principal’s office—there isn’t one. Besides, the classroom could be a 25-minute walk away, depending on where students are at the time.

“Part of our mission here is to be responsive and look at the whole child,” Gauger said. “We’re not interested in Band-Aids; we’re interested in the strategies.”

So far, Gauger said, students seem to be enjoying themselves. Besides being flexible and responsive to nature, students help drive their own education. Now, they are into the different colors and types of ice.

“If our kids are requiring something different next year at this time, we will be doing something different,” she said.

Gauger said she knew her job would be unpredictable, despite extensive planning. Until the kids are in front of you, you don’t really know how it’s going to work out,” she said.

“It’s a growth process. We definitely have to be patient.”

That doesn’t change the fact Gauger loves going to work every day. “I believe in our pillars,” she said. “I believe in the mission,” she said. “Things that matter to me before still matter to me. The kids are still the reason to do this, to keep going.”

Outside of school, Gauger enjoys practicing yoga and seeing the world through her camera that forces her to focus on one thing at a time, and sews and crochets.

A community informational meeting about the 2020-21 school year will be held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 28 in the barn at Riveredge.

For more information, visit theriveredgeschool.org.