Retired Twice - And Still Passionate About Outdoor Learning

A forty-year outdoor educator, a bill headed to the California Senate, and what it takes to get people who disagree about almost everything to agree on kids.

I had the unique opportunity in 2021 to conduct research along Cal Poly Humboldt University evaluating the efficacy of field trips to California State Parks. When I started this research, I went in expecting one result and found another.

Scott leading a field trip at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve

I thought kids would come back from a field trip loving nature more. Instead, they came back motivated to work harder in school, and an increase in self-efficacy or their belief in their ability to set and achieve goals. Not greener — more capable. That's a gap between what we assume outdoor learning does and what it actually does that I haven't stopped thinking about.

Celeste Royer has spent forty years closing that exact gap, first from inside a classroom-free schoolhouse, now from inside the California Legislature.

She started as a kid who liked “playing in the dirt and rolling in the grass,” and spent over thirty

Celeste (center) hiking with a group of participants from Latino Outdoors

years directing environmental and outdoor education for the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education, running the Rancho El Chorro Outdoor School — day programs, in-classroom units when buses weren’t in the budget, week-long immersive science school, summer programs. She retired in 2020, the week before a pandemic. She was asked to come back part-time almost immediately. She retired again last December.

She is, as she told me, still working, “because that’s how much I love it.”

That refusal to actually leave is what led her to Ten Strands, the organization that convened California’s Blueprint for Environmental Literacy back in 2014 and has spent the decade since trying to make sure that document didn’t just sit on a shelf. Celeste has been in the room for almost all of it — the task force, the steering committee that became the California Environmental Literacy Initiative, and now, the campaign behind AB 2158, the Outdoor Learning and Environmental Literacy Act of 2026.

Celeste (lower right) siting in kayaks with a group from Latino Outdoors

Here’s the part that stopped me. Before writing a single line of legislation, Celeste and her colleague Craig Strang spent a year interviewing people who had nothing to do with outdoor education — pediatricians, English-language-learner specialists, foster-youth advocates. They found the same answer everywhere: the real intersection wasn’t environmentalism. It was student health. That reframing is why AB 2158 passed the California State Assembly 77 to 0 — a unanimous vote, authored by a Republican, co-authored by five Democrats, in a year when almost nothing gets unanimous votes.

“When we put kids first,” Celeste told me, “we can come together.”

Since writing this post, AB2158 has been stalled in the state Senate Appropriations committee, not because of disagreement with the bill, but due to a clerical error. Ten Strands remains committed to ensuring that all California students benefit from time spent outdoors, particularly through outdoor learning, and they're not done yet. What's next is continuing the coalition in future legislative sessions and starting this process over again. You can continue to support this work by joining the coalition, supporting Ten Strands, and keeping the conversation going, we're not giving up.

Celeste and a group of birders hiking with Latino Outdoors

Celeste asked listeners to do one thing before they close this newsletter: find your spot. The place you go when you need to breathe. Then decide it’s worth defending — because someone else probably loves it too.

Listen to this week’s episode of Hopeful by Nature wherever you get your podcasts.

— Scott'

Wildward Institute supports organizations, educators, and parents building meaningful relationships between young people and the outdoors. Learn more at wildwardinstitute.net.

Resources mentioned in this episode: - Sign on in support of AB 2158 - AB 2158 legislative tracker / campaign hub: https://sites.google.com/tenstrands.org/ca-outdoor-learning-coalition/legislation - Ten Strands: https://tenstrands.org - California Environmental Literacy Initiative Partner Portal: https://partnerportal.ca-eli.org/

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