WSI is excited to welcome Vanessa for a week of cinematography and photography with WSI campers July 7-13, 2013.Vanessa Lemaire-Workman is a French conservation scientist and filmmaker; conservation organizations have hired her to create their visual advocacy campaigns and short documentaries. One of Vanessa's passions is to work with teenagers. 3 HUNGRY TEENS is a two-year in the making feature-length independent documentary about teens and their connection with nature which will be completed this year. WSI founders Toni Lane and Brian King are featured in this documentary as key protagonists is due to be released early 2014. Vanessa excels in sharing her discoveries through the lens of a camera but she also enables others to experience camera work and nature through that lens. If your teenager is a technical geek or simply just loves recording natural history videos, the camera might be a way for him/her to get a step closer to experiencing the woods and the wildlife. The curriculum this summer, Vanessa will be teaching technical and aesthetic skills for digital photography and cinematography as well as script writing techniques to help the teens forge exciting visual stories around nature. This cinematography camp meets a prerequisite to attend one of our mentored backpacking trips. This is a 7 day 6 night resident camp is not a backpacking camp but the participants will also develop skills to be self-sufficient backpackers and woodsmen as well. Over 14 years Vanessa evolved from being the scientific guide in front of the camera to the Producer/Director behind. She holds a Master in Environmental Sciences from Montpellier, France and graduated with a certificate in digital film-making at San Francisco State University. Prior to film-making she lived in Africa for 5 years working on international development projects alleviating poverty while serving the environment. Based in California, she delivers on-message and on-target persuasive communications for conservation research institutes & environmental non-profits nation-wide and is affiliated with the United Nations. For more on her work: www.vanessaworkman.com
Wilderness Skills Institute School is Accepting Registrations for Fall Grade School, Middle School, and High School
Was your child’s first sentence, “What’s that?" But now dreads school? Is your child bright but grades are falling? Do you or your child see no relevance in school? Is your child stressed over too much homework or over too much focus on tests?
What we truly believe is that when a students is working at what they are passionate about the output will be positive. Students will learn science and math, reading and writing, history and philosophy with much more vigor if their passions are the vehicle to use these subjects.
What we hear from our parents is…
“She woke me up today because she did not want to be late she, does not want to miss a thing”
My seven year-old daughter attended the Wilderness Skills Camp and was absolutely thrilled with her experience. She was so excited to tell me about the adventures of each day, and always looked forward to returning. Under the expert guidance of Brian and Toni, I watched my daughter become more confident and connected to the world around her. It feels very important to me as a parent to expose my children to the slower pace of nature, to compensate for the very structured, fast-paced world we live in today.
Brian and Toni's depth of experience and commitment to building each child's relationship to the natural world is a rare and precious gift. I highly recommend this camp!
Laura McCormick, Ph.D.
Parent and Clinical Psychologist
For updates about our youth wilderness and nature programs join Coyote Tracks, our informative e-newsletter. It contains wild craft projects, wilderness safety, native plants, and animal tracking sections to better connect your family to the nature of the Pacific North Coast.
Falconry: Wilderness Skills Institute to Partner with the Falconry Program at Center For Reconnection With Nature CRWN
YES,Wilderness Skills Institute has added Falconry to some of our Spring, Summer Resident Camps, and our K-12 private school!
WSI is now partering with the Center for Reconnecting with Nature (CRWN). Our campers will be working with the raptors and master falconers of CRWN daily learning what is involved with becoming a falconer, the training of man, falcon, and the falconer’s dog, the amount of work and dedication, love, and ethics involved.
Like all of our programs this is learn by doing; each day first weighing each of the raptors, calculating the amount of meat each bird needs, prepare the meals, cleaning the mew (the house that the falcons, hawks, and eagles live), and then exercise and feed them. The campers will develop a deep connection with birds that you can only make holding, touching, smelling, and talking to these birds. The exhilaration on the face of these teens and pre-teens when they call a Harris’s Hawk, it flies up, then cruses down low fast, then just before getting to the camper the hawk will go up to arm height and very gently land on the campers gloved hand. The bond that follows between the student and raptor over the next few seconds when bird is taking food from their hand, looking at the young person deep into the eyes, felling the bird weight as it gently balances on the gloved hand will last that young person a lifetime.
This is a program that I highly recommend for your pre-teens and teens.
Wilderness Skills Institute is unlike anything else
Matthew Downey, 9th grade Sir Francis Drake High School,
San Anselmo, CA
"The time I spend doing camps with Brian at Wilderness Skills Institute is unlike anything else I have ever done. The first camp I took with Brian was a week long summer camp, and I remember after the first day feeling like I wanted to learn everything possible about what he had to share. One of my favorite things that Brian teaches is friction fire; it is such a gratifying process to create fire out of nothing more than two pieces of wood and it is useful as well. Archery is another of my favorite things he teaches. It is really cool to learn to use a bow and arrow; it is a fulfilling sensation to feel as if one has control over the arrow. One of my favorite things about the way that Brian and the rest of the staff mentors us is that it is a total immersion, they always have useful tips or pieces of knowledge, so I always end up learning way more than is just within the domain of the specific activities we may be doing. For instance, when learning to track an animal, Brian gathered leaves off a plant that we saw along the way, later that day we used those leaves to build the tiny speck of glowing coal we made with our hands into a fire. When asked what it was he asked us questions about the plant, with those answers and the field guide I discovered what it was. That night he put a bundle of the mug wart into the coat he was going to use as a pillow, when he was asked why, he handed me some and said “Try it”"
Matthew Downey, 9th grade