Coyote Village
wild guided learning for middle passage students
ages 12 to 15
explore / connect / grow
A note from Ashley Kamp and Stephen Otis, Founders and Guides:
“After 30 years of work with students in traditional and non traditional education models, we are convinced that what our young people need most in this pericope of education (middle school) is wild, explorative SPACE that encourages creativity, curiosity, care, collaboration and critical thinking to take root. We like to think of these as the nutrients in the soil of learning.
At Coyote Village we cultivate this soil with intentional curriculum, physical and mental challenges and intentional play designed to bring young learners into intimate connection with themselves, each other, culture, curricular concepts and the natural landscape.
Learning is a natural part of growth—a spark that stimulates our minds and bodies. Many traditional education models have over time settled into a hyper focus on cognition and forgotten how important the body is for learning. In this mindset, young people tend to miss a “sense” that learning is fun and a natural part of who we are as humans. In our estimation, this is a large reason why many young people today settle for cultural distractions that fill their time instead of engage their core identities and explore the world around them. Sadly, many learners are left “distracted” by school instead of engaged by it. This framework can develop a cognitive dissonance to a system that dampens exploration of their core identity and undermines natural curiosities and wonder.
Coyote Village is a place of wonder. Wonder is the key ingredient to learning and is innate in every person. When cultivated, young people blossom into the people they are designed to be. According to Socrates, wonder is the guide along the path to wisdom. Our most sacred goal for our learners is that they grow to become wise adults. During this stage of life, a foundation of curiosity and wonder is vital for this growth. How exactly do we build this foundation and cultivate growth? Keep exploring to find out!”
Our Basic Approach to Education and Curriculum
We learn in a community of mixed ages. This builds a vital role called mentoring. When older students help younger ones—besides instilling confidence, care and empathy—it seats what they have learned cognitively and allows them to practice it in the world in real time. This model also gives each student space to explore, discover and give voice to their innate curiosities. Since we have a small number of students in our class, we tailor our overall curriculum standards to the interests of each student. This gives them ownership and choice in their learning journey and cultivates the vital life skills of initiative, effort and responsibility.
In Coyote Village, we refer to our teachers as guides. As guides, we come alongside our students and encourage them in their learning journey. We allow our students to struggle productively (key for a developing adolescent brain) and are there to encourage them when they get stuck. We train our guides constantly in this model. Our guides are above all specialists in soft skills of learning. What we look for most in our guides are the same qualities we want our students to develop: curiosity, empathy, problem solving, kindness, collaboration and wisdom. We all have those teachers on our own paths who are barkers of behavior and seem to have grown tired and overcome by the stresses of the world. Our guides do not fall into this category. We start each day with a half hour of connection and quiet meditation. And we make sure that our environment is not in a rush or inundated by the pressure to perform for outside players who are distant from the school and its needs. The Dao says Nature is not in a hurry, yet everything is accomplished. True education is not about quantity, rather quality—not about how much we can learn, but about the art of how to be a lifelong learner.
Hey there! I’d love to tell you about how we are working on developing adventure learning and interactive field research on our future “GoBus.”
What is our Curriculum?
Our curriculum draws heavily on Waldorf Philosophy and Process. We chose this because it is well researched, tried and tested, and it follows basic brain research truths about how children develop through the various stages of development. Below you will find our basic layout of what we study in each age group:
Reestablishing Sacred Connection in Education
In Coyote Village, our highest priority is to instill a sense of sacred connection throughout the learning journey. We do this through ceremony, celebrations and community recognition. This does take time away from academic learning spaces, but we think this is okay. For learning to take root in a young person, there has to be an emotional connection to what they are learning. This is sacred. Studies have shown that when we take the time to allow this connection, learning exponentially grows. The upside is that we experience and learn more by doing less.
Sacred connection is what helps an adolescent learner become aware of their confident and courageous self and be able to walk upright with dignity.
We instill sacred connection in several ways:
Embodiment Practices—such as nature immersions, vision quests, Tai Chi, mindfulness breathing and meditation (yes Middle Schoolers can do it…and they love it!)
Glowing Up Fire Ceremonies with song and storytelling.
Drum Circles and ecstatic dance
Sitting in 30 minutes of sacred silence as a community together—daily
Rites of Passage Training and Ceremony—offering difficult challenges and commemorating epochal development with memorable ceremonies.
Wild, epic games together
Sit-Spots in nature and nature journaling
Family Ceremonies and Celebrations
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"If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys."
-Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation
"We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put into the universe will always come back."
-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
"To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together."
-Barry Lopez
"The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order."
-Henry Miller
I'm not going to recommend recklessness but somewhere just short of it - testing yourself and proactively pursuing a rite of passage has become necessary because in western developed countries we've become very comfort-addicted.
-Sean Penn
About Us…
Stephen Otis
Stephen Otis has been teaching for over 25 years. He enjoys working with contemplative practices from various traditions. As well as nature immersion therapies (forest bathing, sit spots, vision questing and naturalist training).
He is passionate about the art of storytelling and has been guiding experiences for over a decade.
He is certified in AAIT (Acceptance and Integration Training) and pursues healing journeys that re-construct a deep sense of self, the divine and natural connection.
Interests: I love to hike, write, build things, tell stories, play with my kids and imagine. I love sitting next to streams in the Smoky Mountains with my partner, Sara. And sitting around fires with friends—especially if there is a drum circle going on! I cherish being in the midst of laughter. Professionally, I am one of the guides at Knox Forest School and a middle school teacher at Clayton Bradley Academy.
Ashley Kamp
Bryan Terril
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