There are plenty in Wisconsin who enjoy the outdoors, regardless of temperature or condition, but there is one with the Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District who makes sure that the next generation has all the knowledge they need to make the most out of being outside.
Ashley Hegewald, a part-time instructor with the district and a board member of Field Edventures, was recently awarded the Formal Environmental Educator Award from the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education. The award recognizes those who work to strengthen environmental learning throughout Wisconsin.
“I was honored to get it,” Hegewald said. “I didn’t even know my good friend, Sandy Benton, had nominated me. So to find out, I was very surprised. There are so many people around the state doing environmental education, so to be selected as the formal educator of the year was really meaningful to me.”
Hegewald has been with the district for six years, and before that, she was a stay-at-home mother who was looking to utilize the degree she’d earned in environmental education. She helped the district to procure some grants that pay for pollinator gardens and vegetable gardens at the schools, as well as monthly explorer classes for kindergarten through fifth grade in the Hi-Wood School Forest north of Birnamwood.
“The program has grown every year,” Hegewald said. “We started with the little kids — K, 1, 2 — coming out to the school forest, and then we expanded it to third, fourth and fifth grade. Now we have middle school coming out and occasionally some high school students and volunteers.”
Hegewald works three or four days a week with the forest or the gardens, and oftentimes the rest of the week is spent planning and executing new learning opportunities.
“I love coming to my job every day,” Hegewald said. “The explorer day program, the students just love. I wanted my children to have a good environmental education experience at school, and working and volunteering in other school districts, I was just aware of some really neat opportunities going on that our district didn’t have. So I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder if I could do that for our district?’”
Hegewald said that administrators were receptive to her ideas when she pitched them six years ago, and they remain so today.
The explorer days allow elementary school students to go out one day a month and participate in various activities covering assorted topics. March was spent learning about birds and the coming of spring, according to Hegewald, while April will focus on the tenets of Earth Day, which is to reduce, reuse and recycle.
“We get here, and we go for a nice, long hike, seeing the forest as it changes throughout the seasons,” Hegewald said. “There’s plenty of outdoor play time. I think that’s something the students don’t get enough of in school. Getting them out in the forest is sort of free-play exploring.”
The explorer days try to incorporate all subject areas, not just the sciences, according to Hegewald. The students practice reading and writing through nature journals, and there’s also the learning of Wisconsin history as it applies to nature. Measuring and counting skills incorporate math.
“We always try to incorporate all subject matters out here, so it’s a well-rounded day,” Hegewald said.
For the older students, the explorer days include learning about archery and snowshoeing, she said. Hegewald hopes to eventually develop a curriculum for maple syrup harvesting, although there are not enough maple trees in Hi-Wood to do so. However, there are two additional forest areas that Witt-Birn operates with sufficient maple trees to make such learning happen.
When it comes to the school gardens, the process starts in the classroom where teachers and students plant seeds. Then they’re moved outside when the weather is warm enough, according to Hegewald.
The gardens are supplemented by students through a summer school program Hegewald teaches. The overall goal is to provide spaces for outdoor learning on days when students don’t travel to Hi-Wood, she said, and get students outside as much as possible.
“Anytime the teachers are like, ‘Oh, we could do this activity outside,’ or if there’s a lab or something that’s better done outside, there’s a space,” Hegewald said. “There are benches; there’s some shade cloth in the pollinator garden. There’s access to nature right there.”
Hegewald was fortunate enough to have parents who encouraged her to be outdoors, she said. Her mother was constantly outdoors, while her father worked with the Department of Natural Resources. She recalled spending many days of her youth helping her father to restore habitats, as well as frequent family outings going fishing, swimming and camping.
“I truly think the outdoors is better than any technology that you can set in front of the kids for learning,” Hegewald said.
Hegewald tries to be in the outdoors whenever possible, even on her days off. She believes it’s important to get children into that mindset to find ways to keep the planet thriving.
“If we love nature, maybe we’ll make choices that improve nature instead of continually degrade it,” Hegewald said.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
Students in the Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District get to learn about wild animals in the Hi-Wood School Forest, not only in the outdoors, but also through the mounted species on display in the forest’s nature center. (File | NEW Media)
At an open house in 2025, families got to experience various activities in the Hi-Wood School Forest — including these kicksleds. Ashley Hegewald has students at the forest every month to learn about animals, plants, trees and other aspects of the environment. (File | NEW Media)
