New features, programs allow Marshall nature school to be 'learning hub' for kids, adults

MARSHALL - Marshall's Woodson Branch Nature School administration said one of its main goals is to be a "cultural hub" for both adults and youths.

With its latest expansion in programs, thanks in part to a state grant for alternative schools, as well as its new rollout of adult workshops for spring 2024, the county's lone K-8 nature school's administration is on its way to realizing that goal of serving the broad range of the county, regardless of socioeconomic status.

The nonprofit nature-based school's origins date to 2008, when it served as a pre-school day care option near Hot Springs Elementary School.

Then, in 2016, Executive Director Debbie DeLisle opened the school to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

"I don't like to waste anybody's time," DeLisle said of the school's foundation.

"It is a straight shot to getting kids excited about learning, is to not block them. They naturally want to be outside, and they connect with nature. So, it's just that optimal learning brain time that makes me go, 'No, why would I want to waste my time or theirs, educating or doing school in a different way than that.'"

The school day lasts from 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

According to DeLisle, the day starts with a walk to their classroom. At 8:30, the school day starts with a centering.

"Everybody circles up, and just gets real quiet and kind of gets their head ready for the day. Sometimes, it could be as short as one minute, to all the way up to five or 10. From there, it's announcements, it's morning meetings, and we've got to get our plan for the day and get our game faces on."

The first subject of the day is typically math, which runs roughly an hour block, followed by a snack outside, according to DeLisle.

From there, the students participate in a writing workshop, which also takes up an hour block. Lunch always takes place outside, followed by students' chores.

After wrapping up lunch and chores, the students head to their "Specials" classes, which feature nearly weeklong projects in eco-arts, outdoor regenerative agriculture, outdoor education or STEAM, which are all designed to be outside, barring inclement weather. STEAM refers to science, technology, engineering, art and math.

Forest time follows the "specials" block, as the K-8 school sits on a 30-acre campus along the bypass heading toward Hot Springs, near the Laurel community.

According to the executive director, the school's operations are regimented and structured, and not simply thrown together willy-nilly in the woods.

"It is all scheduled. This is not just random, this is an operation," DeLisle said.

The final block of the day sees the students participate in reading, and then the day closes with a reflection.

But Woodson Branch is in the midst of a recent expansion of programs and resources, as the nature school now offers an afterschool program.

Dana Brown is Woodson Branch's programs director.

"The program is new this year," Brown said. "For the first hour, we have so many games. We play games, they play out on the knoll and run around. Then, we bring them back together and we pick a forest spot to go to, or they go to enrichment clubs."

The afterschool program offers eight enrichment clubs, including Clay Club for grade 1-4, Sports Club for middle school students and the Maker Club, which takes place in the new STEAM lab, one of the newest features of the campus that DeLisle and the Woodson Branch team are most excited about.

"With the programs, we really want to bring the greater Madison County community in, so it's open to public school students, homeschool students, adults and Woodson Branch students," Brown said.

According to DeLisle, the school received a roughly $200,000 grant from the state as part of its rollout to address learning loss from COVID at independent schools.

"It's got a 3D printer, a laser printer, video equipment and computers," DeLisle said. "It's a big deal. We were always doing that sort of thing anyways, it's just we were doing it with whatever we could find — pipes and tubes and stuff. Now that we have the lab, we can get it to a point where we can get competitive, too, at STEAM conferences. It just lifts kids to another level of, 'This matters. This isn't just a project that's made out of cardboard that's going to fall apart tomorrow.' Now we can really build some stuff."

But the STEAM Lab is not the only new amenity on campus.

When The News-Record & Sentinel visited the school Feb. 13, many faculty members were talking about a new weather app, as Ray's Weather Center in Boone partnered with the school to provide a weather reading station on the campus.

Prior to the Woodson Branch station, the closest reading to Marshall was in the Wolf Laurel section of Mars Hill.

The Woodson Branch reading is also available on Ray's Weather's website and Facebook page, which has a following of nearly 50,000 people.

The upgraded amenities and programs are the realization of the executive director's goal of turning Woodson Branch into a cultural hub for both children and adults.

This spring, Woodson Branch will offer seven adult workshops, including four classes in its parenting workshops:

• Tools to Promote Peace In Our Homes.

• The Upside of Anger.

• Parenting Styles, Values and Boundaries.

• Neurology of Big Feelings.

The school will also hold workshops in Medicine Making, Wild Edible Plants and Woody Ethnobotany and Cob Oven Building.

"The greater vision is that this is like a hub of learning," Brown said. "We have so many resources here, with the land, the STEAM Lab, the classrooms and the teachers and the knowledge that's here. We're just trying to bring in the community as much as possible."

As the programming and the resources on campus continue to expand, so too does the school's roster.

According to DeLisle, across the nine grade levels, there are roughly 110 students each year, up from 37 in the first year. Class sizes are capped at 12 to 16 students, with two teachers in each class.

The school utilizes three shuttle vans to accommodate students from Madison, as well as North Asheville and just over the border in Tennessee.

Philosophy

DeLisle said the school's curriculum helps build cognitive, emotional and character development for the students.

"Kids are running to class, and they're sad when we have long breaks," DeLisle said. "That's the whole point, making it an environment where they really want to be at."

DeLisle said she was influenced by Richard Louv's "Last Child In the Woods," in which he outlines his idea of "nature deficit disorder," which holds that children's decreased exposure to nature in American society can harm the children and by extension society as a whole.

"He touched my heart, back in a very important time in my life when my kids were little," DeLisle said. "They were getting stuck inside too long in front of screens, and it was having a profound affect on the development of the human brain."

The executive director said she also pulls influence from the Waldorf model to create a uniquely "Madison County-centric" independent school.

"Our mission is on our preparedness, and empowering our communities to be prepared for the global impacts that they're going to make," DeLisle said.

"They're confident, and they have had this big, rigorous academic experience that went along with their social 'good time' as well," DeLisle said. "Their teachers and employers are like, 'These kids are on it, and they know how to talk to any age group.' Once they leave here in eighth grade, these kids are walking into the (Madison College) Early High School, or to the workforce. People want to hire them."

Despite its status as an independent school, DeLisle said very few students pay full tuition, as many families utilize the N.C. Opportunities Scholarship through the state.

"For some people, depending on how much they make, that covers a good portion of it, and then they may have a little bit left to pay," DeLisle said. "But whatever is left to pay, for whatever they qualify for, we have our whole in-house scholarship. That's why we fundraise like crazy."

Each year, Woodson Branch hosts Appalachian Heritage Festival, and students sell the plants they've cultivated and tended to for, in some cases, years.

While the students make their marks on the workforce and at academic institutions throughout the country — DeLisle said she received word that a former student had been accepted at Duke University for fall 2024 — the team makes sure that the students leave an indelible mark on their actual campus, too.

Throughout the campus — which includes a barn used as a multipurpose event space, an outdoor stage (the same one used by the town of Hot Springs for more than 40 years), an oven pit for students and staff to bake pizzas, a large library named after DeLisle's grandmother, Hazel Lee Hall, as well as five forest sites and a playground area — students' "legacy projects" are seen throughout the sprawling grounds, which afford beautiful views of the mountains heading toward Hot Springs.

"Every eighth grader, when they leave the school, they leave a legacy of themselves," Brown said. "That way, they have something to come back to later."

One student's legacy project is a climbing wall, which stands adjacent to the "adventure playground," where students are encouraged to expand on ideas of ingenuity in engineering. The adventure playground features a makeshift drum set made from buckets and pots and pans.

Similarly, Woodson Branch issues an individual plot to each student so the student can work their own unique crops.

While the legacy of the students' experience on the campus remains in material form, the life lessons and skills learned at the independent school offer the potential for the students to continue to cultivate impact and meaning in their communities.

"This is their start. If they don't get a nice hearty start here — not just here, but in general — they're going to go off and just do whatever is in their ear," DeLisle said. "So, it feels very important to really build that childhood experience so that it's just solid. Then, from here they can go do anything they want."

For more information on Woodson Branch Nature School, visit its website, madisoncclc.org.

Johnny Casey has covered Madison County for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel for nearly three years. He earned a first-place award in beat news reporting in the 2023 North Carolina Press Association awards. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Woodson Branch Nature School adds features, is 'learning hub' for all