Q: What’s green and can improve academic outcomes, encourage care for the earth and provide mental health benefits? 

A: Blake’s school forest!

Located behind the Early Learning Center on Blake’s Hopkins campus, the school forest provides nearly five acres where students can learn, play and enjoy nature. 

In 2017, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources officially designated the area a DNR School Forest, a distinction that provides a variety of resources, including workshops on how teachers can link the forest to curriculum and partner with a DNR forester. Blake’s forester partner, Karl, provides information on plants, trees, wildlife and advice on maintaining the area.

Over summer 2025, third grade teacher Ali Clare and fourth grade teacher Nick Seme developed a plan to enhance use of Blake’s forest. They visited other school forests to observe best practices and share them with their Blake colleagues. 

“We learned so much throughout this process,” they shared. “We learned how to keep our forest a safe place for the Blake community, how to encourage play and learning in the spaces and how to encourage more community members to spend time in the forest.”

Clare and Seme began an interest-based after-school program, Forest Protectors, that offers students the opportunity to help with preservation and sustainability. A group of about 30 student protectors remove invasive species, identify plants, create maps, make preservation signage and enjoy the forest through playing games and building forts. This fall, third graders, in the midst of an invasive species unit, donned gloves and got to work identifying and removing buckthorn with the help of faculty, staff and DNR forester Karl. 

Blake’s pre-kindergartners, who visit the forest weekly throughout the school year, also take responsibility for looking after the woods. Pre-K teacher Lisa Small says, “The first plant they identify is burdock, which they joyfully dig up. When spring arrives, we await the squill. The children quickly learn the phrase ‘Dig the squill!’” The students also treasure the non-invasive species found in Blake’s forest. “We get so much joy from the arrival of spring ephemeral wildflowers in the forest,” says Pre-K teacher Taylor Rose. “The search for bloodroot and wood anemone is especially rewarding. We treasure these days because the spring ephemerals only bloom for a couple of days before they die back for the season.”  
Beyond plant identification, Pre-K students collaboratively build and play with the structures in the woods. “They enjoy challenging their bodies by climbing fallen trees and observing how they decay,” Small says. “They develop a sense of curiosity about the changing seasons, as well as animals, insects and plant life. Over the years, we created lessons that cover all areas of the curriculum.”

In the spring, Clare and Seme’s plans for the forest will take larger shape with the addition of learning spaces that will allow several classes to be in the forest at the same time. These efforts support Blake’s priority to develop students’ thinking around the environment, climate science, and their agency as leaders now and beyond Blake.