Cheryl Charles began her career as a high school teacher in inner city Phoenix, AZ, focusing on factors affecting the achievement of minority youth and trying to figure out how to foster healthy communities. In the early 1980s, she became the first national director of Project Learning Tree and soon founded Project Wild, still two of the most successful national efforts to integrate concepts associated with healthy ecological systems into the mainstream of schooling. Currently, she is the President of the Children and Nature Network (www.cnaturenet.org), an organization chaired and founded by Richard Louv, the author of the classic book Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. The Children and Nature Network is a non-profit, non-partisan organization created to encourage and support the people and organizations working to reconnect children with nature.

Cheryl is interviewed here by Jack Greene, a high school science teacher, naturalist and one of the founding organizers of the Utah Bioneers Conference.

This is the first of what we hope will be a recurring column - teachers interviewing their heros or mentors. If you are an educator and member of Bioneers and would like to interview a hero or mentor or yours for this column, send an e-mail to education(at)bioneers.org with your proposal and we’ll see what we can do to make it happen.

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Jack: What does Nature-Deficit Disorder imply and what are some of the consequences?

Cheryl: The phrase “Nature Deficit Disorder” was coined by the author of Last Child In The Woods, Richard Louv, and he would be the first to say that it’s not a medical diagnosis. It conveys the notion that children today are disconnected from nature. When we address this deficit by bringing children into direct contact with nature, we see a host of benefits. The literature shows that their creativity and problem solving skills improve, and their academic performance, self-esteem and self-discipline are enhanced. We are compiling research that speaks to these benefits on our website.

Jack: The Children and Nature Network was founded in April 2006. What are you particularly pleased with in your first year and what do you see on the horizon?

Cheryl: I’m excited about the website because it’s already a great resource. We do everything from providing news from around the country to collecting and disseminating research and feature articles that are being written by people in the field. We posted a lot of material from a major conference convened last September by Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorn, The Conservation Fund, The Children in Nature Network, Richard Louv, and the National Conservation Training Center. We’ve been able to put up video clips from speakers and presentations. It’s a great repository. People can also sign up to become part of the network at no cost. If you register at the website, you have access to a number of resources as well as regular newsletters and links to other information.

I’m also excited that we are beginning to host planning meetings for emerging leaders of the growing campaign to “Leave No Child Inside.” One can think of the Children in Nature Network as sort of an umbrella for the Campaign to Leave No Child Inside. Sometimes local campaigns have different names - folks in Texas are calling it Grow Outside, Connecticut talks about No Child Left Inside. But there are activities coalescing with diverse groups of people and individuals coming together. In the last year, it’s grown from maybe a few groups that we knew about to pretty close to 30 right now – and we’re working on trying to put together resources that will help people at the local level nourish this grassroots movement. I think by the summer of 2007, we’re looking at having the first national gathering of regional leaders. It will still be around 60 to 75 people, not huge yet, but putting building blocks and resources in place to help share resources and foster this movement to reconnect children to nature through the Children in Nature Network.

Jack: Who and what else would you like to bring to the table?

Cheryl: That’s an interesting question. Since one of the benefits of being in nature for children is increased physical and emotional health and wellbeing, we’re having some conversations with pediatricians and physicians but the medical community is one that I’d very much like to see as a strong partner here, and that’s not yet a reality.
I’d also like to see city planners and city leaders more involved. Mayor Richard Daly is doing some good things in Chicago, but we need many more. We need to be thinking in terms of where children live, play and learn. Since most kids live in urban and suburban environments, we need to make sure that there are places that are safe and not overly structured all the time in those settings. Let there be places where children can have stones, twigs, access to mud and the ability to build treehouses without having to worry about liability issues.

We need more allies in city leadership, physicians, architects, landscape and urban designers. These are just some examples. We need to be thinking about diversity and recognize that is not about one sector of any of our communities. It requires all elements of any healthy community to be involved.

Jack: Do you have any detractors who have tried to discredit your basic premise or research findings?

Cheryl: Some folks, a very small percentage, have been concerned about the potential misunderstanding of the relationship between the positive effects of nature on children with the medically diagnosed condition of attention deficit disorder. That leads me to say that I’m aware of research that indicates that for children with that medical condition, there are a variety of documented beneficial results from exposure to experiences in nature.

I’ve had a couple of psychologists say to me, “That’s such a complex issue. Be careful with that.” And my response has been to say that when we talk about nature deficit disorder, we’re not calling it a medical diagnosis. We’re simply saying that experience with nature is beneficial for children across the board.

There are other folks who are wishing for more research, and I certainly support that . At the same time, I think there’s quite a lot of evidence and a lot of common sense to say that there really are benefits that are obvious.

Jack: There’s not very much spare time for the average parent these days given our overbooked and fast-paced culture. Often both parents are working outside of the home, and when they get home they’re exhausted. Where can parents find the time and/or the resources to address what you’ve identified as a very serious problem?

Cheryl: Let’s start with the notion that virtually every parent wants to do what’s good for his or her child. What’s happened in the last 20 or so years is that parents in this society have been taught that it’s good to have all these enrichment programs. We take our children to and from school, to after school activities, sports events, dance class, clubs, church and social events--over-structured and timed to the minute. There’s a place for some of that, but it’s gotten out of balance.

This is not about blaming parents. Parents are trying to do what is best for their children. That is why I think it’s so important to get the message out that it can be as simple as opening the door, letting your child play outside on his or her own or with friends, while you, the parent, can be doing some other things. It’s actually about creating some quieter and less structured time that ends up being good for everyone.

I think part of it is an educational opportunity. I’m not going to call it a problem. The more the word gets out that nature is good for children, that all of our time doesn’t have to be over-programmed and over-structured and that the benefits are immense, I think parents are going to make the changes.

Jack: In looking over your biography, I noticed that your grandfather was a major influence in your earlier life. What role do you see grandparents playing in this Children and Nature Network?

Cheryl: The role of older people in fostering intergenerational learning is extremely important. There is a crucial role for grandparents, for uncles and aunts, for whole extended families and whole communities.

I experienced that directly. I spent lots and lots of time outdoors, typically riding a horse behind my grandfather. Children feel valued when older people take them out. If we just share our sense of wonder as older people, our delight in things, it opens so much joy and delight in those little ones.

This is true with teenagers too, by the way. I used to teach high school and noticed in our society that there’s a certain point in time where people start acting like they’re afraid of teenagers. That’s just part of the bravado that the teens are putting out, but nothing is more important than bonding with children at all ages and creating opportunities to share adventures in lots of different ways, including in the outdoors.

One thing I worry about is the loss of people who really know the plants and animals in a neighborhood. We used to use the old term naturalist. There are still folks around who do, and it’s all the more important that we open the door to get other generations to grow that wisdom over time as well.

Jack: With so many other pressing problems for our youth - safety, health, academics, etc. how do you see your movement gaining a foothold on a very crowded stage?

Cheryl: I talk about the direct benefits to children in the areas of health, academics and self-esteem just from free and regular access to the outdoors. When children are outdoors together, there are numerous social skills that are developed, including learning how to be cooperative and work together to solve problems.

The safety issue is interesting. One of the reasons that parents give for not providing the opportunity for their children to play outdoors is this fear of what Richard Louv has called “stranger danger”. He would say that that the media has exaggerated the risk. There really are, statistically, very few instances of children being abducted, and when they do occur, unfortunately, it’s usually someone who knows the child or the family.

Now, there are other kinds of risks. It will take communities working together to make sure that parks and the places that children can play outside where they live are, in fact, safe.

Jack: When you say getting them out on a regular basis, somebody might ask, “What does that mean? Once a week, every other day?” What’s implied by a regular basis?

Cheryl: I’m not going to offer a recipe, but if we look at what the medical community has been saying in the last few years, (the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation effort, Active Living By Design, for example), they report that there would be substantial health benefits if adults just walked 30 minutes a day.

Now at the same time, we’re also looking at recess being cut out in school. Part of what we’re trying to do is to help people understand more compellingly that those are really not wise choices for our children. I personally would love to see children at least have a few hours a day outdoors, but let’s not prescribe an amount; let’s say with some frequency, some regularity, and I would certainly say several times a week at least.

Jack: That leads us to how can we help as individuals. All of us who are out here wanting to help, how should we proceed?

Cheryl: I say begin with what personally interests you because there are lots of ways to make a positive difference. Each of us can be more effective when we start by taking care of ourselves. One of my friends says, “Nourish yourself to nourish others.” So, I would suggest we begin with making sure that we’re taking care of ourselves, particularly if we’re talking about this whole need to reconnect with nature.

I happen to be focusing on the need to reconnect children with nature because we’ve lost site of the importance of that in the last 20 or so years and I think it’s so fundamental. One of the things I worry about most is that if we grow generations who really don’t know what it takes to have a healthy environment – the plants, the animals, the air, the water, how it all fits together in healthy ecosystems – then we’re raising generations who don’t have the direct experience to make informed decisions. We’re raising kids who are hearing about things in the abstract, but don’t have the direct experience to understand what goes into keeping ecosystems healthy over time.

If we have the direct experience, then we’re going to tend to grow up with a greater love for how the Earth works and also be more knowledgeable. I think we need to take care of ourselves, get outside, open the door and take children outdoors. It doesn’t have to cost money. It will cost some time. And besides that, it’s fun.

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To find out more about the Children and Nature Network, visit their website at www.cnaturenet.org

And remember - if you're an educator and would like to interview your hero or mentor, send your proposal to education(at)bioneers.org.