Our Campus
Anytime, Anywhere
The Community- and Place-Based Learning Paradigm
Watershed Schoolhouse operates on the current and ancestral homelands of the Mechoopda (Chico, CA)
Watershed Schoolhouse’s primary campus is a 43-acre blue oak woodland with a year-round creek running through the middle of it. We are outdoors—rain or shine—and in or around the creek every day.
When we are outside, we are immersed in a multi-faceted, complex, dynamic learning environment—the original human learning environment. Rather than serving as a backdrop, or a subject to be studied, nature is our teacher, helping us to build intimate relationships with place and learn how to contribute reciprocally to the lands, waters, and beings who support our very existence.
The Great Outdoors
The Schoolhouse
Complementing the expanse of the outdoor campus, Watershed Schoolhouse offers a clean, multi-purpose indoor space that harkens back to a one-room community schoolhouse. Students can engage with academic materials, artwork, and more. The space also serves as an occasional community hub, allowing for spaces of intergenerational learning and real-world community connections.
Public Places
Proximity to beautiful, public spaces does not immediately equate to accessibility. People must feel welcome, become familiar with, and have opportunities to interact with public spaces, whether they be parks, museums, or libraries. At Watershed Schoolhouse, every Friday is spent either in Bidwell Park—one of the largest municipal parks in the country—or in some other local public space.
Photo: During a year long study of food, students try their hand catching fish—a potential local source of food—at Horseshoe lake in Upper Park. In this case, the food source remained “potential.”
Community Connections
Watershed Schoolhouse knows that children can thrive when they are surrounded by and connected to a diverse array of peers and adults who know and care for them. In support of these relationships Watershed Schoolhouse actively seeks an open-walled approach to education. Parents, families, and guests are invited to the school and the students travel to meet other members in the community.
Photo: Margo Robbins, Yurok cultural fire practitioner, director of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council, and Watershed Advisor tours the campus with the students.
Field Trips
While the campus and schoolhouse have much to offer, anywhere learning includes the chance to experience the diversity in the local community. These filed trips include service learning opportunities volunteering at Verbena Fields—a local, native-led ecological restoration project of a public park—and a local farm with Hmong Farmers.
Photo: Students plant bok choi with Mai, one of the amazing local farmers whose family is growing food year-round for the markets.
