Introducing Joy Holder, in her own words: Joy Holder is the director of Brooklyn Forest, the largest

Introducing Joy Holder, in her own words: Joy Holder is the director of Brooklyn Forest, the largest forest school program in the country. Born and raised on Long Island, Joy is the daughter of a play-based childcare provider and a corporate lawyer. After 14 years of Waldorf education, she studied Theology and Fine Arts at Georgetown University and Women’s Studies in George Washington University’s graduate program. She spent a year post graduation launching a storytelling campaign with hundreds of women and girls across South Africa and directing a film for the Nobel Prize-nominated Treatment Action Campaign.In 2011, Joy and her husband, Charles Foster, started teaching forest school for a class of eight Brooklyn families. Today the program brings over 300 families into the city parks to play and work each week in Prospect and Central Parks. Brooklyn Forest also trains and consults with early childhood teachers to help them incorporate forest school into public and private school curricula.Joy has won numerous awards over the years for her work as a communityorganizer and filmmaker, including George Washington’s Service to the Community of Women, Georgetown’s Outstanding Community Service, the U.S. President’s Student Service and Senator Kemp Hannon’s Citizen Advancement awards. She has lectured at universities and other educational centers around the country, including as a 2012 visitingartist at New York University and as the 2015 Irvine Nature Preschool Conference’s keynote speaker. From the New York Times to the Good Sense Farm Gazette, welcome Joy!What inspired you to plant a forest school?Forest school has grown out of two ideals that are very important to me: community and freedom. When I began parenting in New York City, I realized how easily a sense of freedom could disappear from my daughter’s daily life. Generally, the city is built for cars and trucks to drive around it, not for children to wander through it. But then we have these wonderful urban parks….Growing up on Long Island, I spent hours everyday in nature, where I would always find opportunities to be my expansive, curious and imaginative self. I wanted that for my daughter. I wanted it, too, for the children in our community. And since I’ve always loved helping to organize people, it soon became clear that the next community I needed to bring together would be for families who wanted to make nature a bigger part of their lives in the city. As a fairy, I’m curious as to whether you have spotted any of my cuzzos in Brooklyn. If so, do they teach any of the classes?Fairies are well known for their shyness. However, we find so many fairy dwellings in Prospect Park and Central Park, we know that they are hard at work, even in the city. Along with the houses they build, the fairies are also working on the imaginations of the children who take the time to think about them, deepening their feelings of wonder and expanding their ideas of what might be possible.  Got musings about where Blackness, the outdoors, and Guyanese ancestral foot trails meet?My work as a community builder has been influenced by the communities I grew up in. I attended a West Indian church every week, where everyone’s parents were aspiring or accomplished professionals. As Protestants and immigrants, the idea of working hard was doubly valued by that community. At the same time, I grew up going to a Waldorf school, where playing outdoors was as important as what we learned in our classrooms. Then in college, when I became more aware of the politics of race and gender, I founded Georgetown University Women of Color with the strong feeling that coming together around an idea can be the first step to giving value to it. What about lore or rumors to spread about your famous secret forest bread?Parents have been trying to decode my bread recipe for years. I always share the list of ingredients, and they have gone home to bake for their families, which is wonderful. But of course, like most magical things, it’s the how, not the what that makes the forest school bread so delicious. We really do bake it every morning with love. Plus, everything tastes better when you eat it outdoors.Sketch a map for those wanderers in search of wonder and wilderness.My husband Charlie made this beautiful one:  -- source link

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