I heard about this event last week and immediately had lots of questions. First, what the heck is Knox Forest School and how did I not know that such an interesting thing was happening right under my nose? Second, how did I not know that Ben Sollee would be here this Friday for an outdoor concert? And , of course, I wanted to grab tickets ($25 per person – kids free – pay via Venmo here, or pay at the door). To learn about the Forest School, I met with co-founder and director Sara Otis to learn more about the school and was lucky enough to catch up with Ben to chat about where he’s been, what he’s been up to, and what we might expect this Friday.
At its most basic, Knox Forest School operates exactly as the name implies: Every day of the year students learn from teachers in the forest—and often, from the forest itself. The centuries-old forest school concept may be found at work in schools from Germany to California and many points in between, including one in Chattanooga that predates our own.
The pre-school program focuses on an “early learning model” that instills in students the vitally important soft skills for their journey through life: Curiosity, Collaboration, Connection, Risk Assessment, Problem Solving, and Resilience (Grit). It does so in a space that fosters a connection to the earth, nature, and encourages an understanding of how we personally relate to the natural world.
Sara said there isn’t a large online presence and growth in the program has been mostly word of mouth and serendipitous. Homebase is a private piece of property whose use is volunteered by owners Brian Hann and Mary Beth Tugwell, but most days find the teachers and students wandering the trails of the Urban Wilderness. “We’ve had people mountain biking on the trails stumble upon us.” She said some of the local mountain biking community have children in the school.
Sara, originally from Knoxville, taught English and worked as a pre-school teacher, while her husband (and co-founder of the Knox Forest School) Stephen taught in the American School in Bogota, Columbia. They returned home to raise their family, eventually adding three children to the mix. With her background in long-distance hiking, she found she was “raising my kids in the Smokies. I would just pack the bags every morning and head out.”
As she began work on a MS, she began to look more into Forest Schools, which she said were also common, though under other names, in Bogota. “Teaching kids outside was just a normal thing.” She became convinced that outdoor education provided the best path for children and wanted her own to experience that, as well. She visited the school in Chattanooga and “it was amazing.” After trying to convince others to launch a school, she took two weeks of training in Washington state and realized, “This is for me.” Sara received training in the concept over the course of three summers in California at the Forest Kindergarten Academy, as well as some long-distance education.
She said it quickly fell into place. She held an organizational meeting in her home in 2017, advertised via a FB event, and fifty people showed up. That night she had the property secured and the first-year enrollment filled. The first year the school featured Sara, one other instructor, and thirty students. The school rapidly grew, particularly spurred by the pandemic urge to be outside. The student body has roughly tripled (with a large waitlist) and the staff has grown to nine people, most of whom are or have been credentialed teachers, though some come from other backgrounds like psychology or the naturalist field. While the growth in the student body has been encouraging, she would like to see other schools spring up around the area.
I firmly believe that this is good for humanity and is fantastic for childhood development. It’s meeting all of their developmental needs in such unique ways because the space can accommodate all different types of learners . . . There are so many different things that can happen in that space that are not as dependent on the teacher to bring it.
The school started as a three-day a week program but grew to include five days. Pre-schoolers may attend anywhere from two to four days each week and homeschoolers, ages six to fourteen, have a set day once each week. Most of the students move on to other schools starting in kindergarten. Students are divided into three different camps. While the teachers develop traditional lesson plans, like pre-literacy and math skills, they are always open to serendipitous learning when the situation presents itself. They were recently surprised by a bald eagle, for example. The school offers lots of play that provides opportunities for learning about oneself in relation to both the elements and others.
As for this weekend’s concert, Sara said it came up very quickly. A couple of parents wanted to do something to help, reached out to Ben, who replied he would be happy to help—but the best date available was in just two weeks. The group has scrambled to make it happen and hopes to raise funds for the school. Regarding where those funds might be put to use, Sara said, “For any fundraising, I try to direct it to scholarships for kids and to put it back into the forest.” She said as responsible users of the trails; they want to help the students make the connection between use and preservation of the forests. They work on invasive removal and putting in native plants.
I also spoke to Ben about what he has been up to and what we might expect from the concert. Urban Woman and I first heard him around 2008 when he blew us away at Tennessee Shines and have enjoyed his music and a number of his concerts since. Almost seven years ago he made the decision to stop touring and recording his own albums to spend time with his family as they grew. He spoke to me from his car just after dropping one of the children off at school.
His most recent album Long Haul reflects that time away, including about a year-and-a-half of that time dealing with the long-term aftermath of a bout with COVID. As he healed, “In that healing journey I started thinking on how important music was to me and songs started coming to me and that resulted in the record.” During that time he also continued to work on film scores and environmental documentaries. He’s continued his work with non-profits, particularly environmental groups like Canopy, which he helped found during this interim, and the anti-gun violence group Whitney/Strong.
As he returned to touring, he realized the terrain surrounding traveling musicians had changed. “People’s attention is very scattered. If you can pry them out of their dopamine dens of their houses, you find it’s hard for them to try something new and different: Case in point a singing cellist . . . The things are working, I find, are community organized shows like house concerts or small gatherings.”
He feels the direct connections provided by trusted networks of friends or groups allow the space where his kind of music has a chance to be heard. “So many of our communications are mitigated by algorithmic technology whether that be social media or music streaming platforms . . . I think people because of that really don’t trust much, but they trust the people in their communities.” Those kinds of gatherings have become his focus and he says it has been “a wonderful celebration of it means human and in community.”
Ben picked up his first cello in a public school and says, “music as a form of learning and expression is very important to me. When I reflect on my own childhood and that of my children, having the arts as a way for them to work through and process everything that is going on in the world—maybe even especially have music . . . is a really important touchstone in the times we live in . . .
I feel like playing an instrument is like Pilates for the digital revolution. With all this mechanical thinking, thinking machines, we’re going to be looking for a path to keep our brains sharp, just like we looked for ways to keep our bodies sharp after we didn’t have to do as much manual labor.
He said it is hard for him to separate music from what is happening in the world and so, to him, the flow of music and activism seems natural. “It’s hard for me not to think of how to use music to bring people together in a time when there is so much invested in trying to keep them apart.” He traces some of his bent toward supporting social and environmental causes to his time in high school playing on the Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour live show in Lexington. He played with artists like Ralph Stanley, Odetta, Bella Fleck, and Edgar Myer, as well as Chris Thile.
He is happy to be working with the Knox Forest School. “That sort of unscripted play that is nature-based is very important to me. I believe in letting kids mitigate their own risks, especially in this day and age where kids have sort of lost the cultural norm of just running around the neighborhood and going crazy. I think it’s more important than ever to get kids out in nature.”
Of the upcoming show, he said he’ll be solo, performing songs from the current album and “the classics from my catalog and some covers, and usually those are nested between stories.” He’s hoping to include some sort of nature play in the show, but he’s not sure what form it will take. Whatever happens on that stage, it promises to be magical in both the music and the stories.
I’ll be there and I’d love to see you on a beautiful spring afternoon. The music starts at 5:00 pm with an opening artist or two and Ben is expected to take the stage around 5:30 or 5:45. Bring a lawn chair or blanket to the Holly Room at the UT Garden. Follow that link to find the specific location—and no, it’s not an actual indoor room, it’s a lovely outdoor space, as it must be for this event. You can secure your ticket in advance via Venmo by making a donation of $25 for each ticket you’d like. You can also grab them at the show where they’ll have card readers.