We have too much great news to share in one email. Please CLICK HERE to view the full Fall Newsletter. Seasonal Newsletter Learn more at: www.inwarddiscovery.org When schools resumed in-person instruction in April of 2021, Baltimore’s young people had been learning online, indoors, for an entire year. Kids are designed to move, explore, and shine, not sit behind a screen. Young people have an innate and natural desire to learn, power to heal, and drive to discover. InDiGO's work is as much about getting youth in touch with Nature outdoors in parks, schoolyards, and backyards, as it is about accessing the power of Nature within themselves. InDiGO guides youth to nurture their nature, and be the stars they are! Gabriel Pickus founded InDiGO in response to the immediate need to increase access to outdoor education and revitalize young people’s intrinsic motivation to learn. We are growing our work and our team and need your support! In the eight months since InDiGO’s launch, the non-profit has worked with over fifty teachers and hundreds of young people. InDiGO co-led an Outdoor Adventure Camp with Pearlstone Center over the summer, uniting youth from West Baltimore with campers of diverse backgrounds from across the City, County, and region. During the school year, InDiGO offers free programs to students and teachers with a special focus on under-resourced schools. ​ Help Youth Discover Themselves Outdoors Donate Here The DJ Game: Developing Listening and Leadership with Youth across Baltimore City After learning each other's names and establishing a safe space for authentic self-expression, we play the DJ Game. This game provides a platform for youth to develop listening and leadership skills as they express themselves musically. We begin with the oldest instruments, our bodies, and our voices. We then add drums and all types of instruments as youth advance. This video features youth from multiple sites. A big thank you to Adam Candelaria, our Creative Operations Director, for capturing all the footage and photos you see. In addition to all the youth, this video features Gino Hannah and Emmanuel Jackson, who have become an integral part of InDiGO. Please help us fundraise to bring them on full-time. We are working hard to increase our operational capacity, help youth discover themselves outdoors, and get the genius within them to manifest outwardly! Arlington Elementary School We are grateful to work with three classes at Arlington in Northwest Baltimore, including a 2nd-5th grade self-contained classroom, and two 5th grade classes. We have been exploring the school garden, using the outdoor classroom, and designing exciting integrative projects. We make music, play, and discover connections between students' lives and their Academic, Artistic and Social-Emotional development. Arlington Adventure at Pearlstone Center Students literally discovered where their water comes from during our field trip to Pearlstone Center. The creek at Pearlstone is a tributary of the Liberty Reservoir and Patapsco River, which flow out to the Inner Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. In addition to splashing in the creek, students made s'mores, some of them for the first time in their lives. They also got to experience the high ropes adventure course. In the following weeks at school, we dove into more detail about Baltimore City's water, what H20 is, what we're made of, and how it all comes from the stars. Check out this video of us processing and integrating what we learned on our field trip. "I Am" Song at Arlington (Preview) Before our discussions like the one above about our true origins, we get a lot of sad answers to questions like "Who are you?" and "What are you made of?" Some kids say "dirt," others say "meat." It is no wonder there is so much bullying, violence, and depression within young people who view themselves and each other as meat and dirt. This song previews our upcoming music video that tells a new story. The story of our origins, according to Astrophysics, is that we are stars. This song helps kids of all ages and abilities conceptualize and affirm who and what they are. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's OrchKids InDiGO serves youth and educators during and OST (Out-of-School-Time). After school, we work with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's legendary program called OrchKids at two sites: Mary Ann Winterling Elementary in West Baltimore and Highlandtown Elementary in Southeast Baltimore. With OrchKids, we focus on integrating Music with SEL (Social and Emotional Learning). OrchKids at Highlandtown The intersection of Music and SEL provides a platform for discussing identity, developing leadership, and much more! Check out this snapshot of our OrchKids at Highlandtown Elementary. OrchKids at Mary Ann Winterling At Mary Ann Winterling Elementary, youth have begun to explore improvisation with their instruments. We work with them to develop courage and confidence to express themselves authentically. When we encourage kids to play from their hearts, not from the page, they open up pathways of possibility and creativity. Enjoy! 2nd Graders in West Baltimore What happens when the pandemic hits during Kindergarten? While a few of the kids thrived online, most fell behind. Instead of mastering letters, numbers, digraphs and basic spelling in first grade, many students returned to in-person learning for 2nd grade woefully unprepared. InDiGO is facilitating an intervention with Harlem Park’s 2nd graders to help them catch up. This video features our favorite name game called "Tempo Tempo." While learning each others' names, this game also teaches students to look, listen, think quickly, work together, and represent themselves. We are also working with 2nd graders during the school day at Mary Ann Winterling. We maximize use of outdoor learning space, guide youth to help each other learn, and re-design the classroom space, culture, and norms to make it more conducive to healing-centered, personalized learning. Summer Adventure Camp Thank you to all our donors who helped us send youth from West Baltimore to Adventure Camp at Pearlstone Center last summer. This video features youth reflecting on their experience. Please help more youth discover themselves outdoors! We are already fundraising for these youth to return to Adventure Camp and even go to overnight camp next summer. Help youth not only be the stars, but also see the stars they are! Help Youth Discover Themselves Outdoors Donate Here Baltimore City Connecting Children To Nature Network (BCCCN) We are honored to be a core member of the BCCCN. We are working with local and national leaders to make the Children's Outdoor Bill of Rights a reality. We are now part of the team representing Baltimore in the National League of Cities’ C&NN ( Children and Nature Network ) to share our work connecting children to nature. We partner with multiple outdoor education centers within and around Baltimore City to increase access to their campuses and programs for Baltimore City young people. Please check out our InDiGO Impact Spiral for a visual representation of our change-making approach. By directly providing clear and supportive frameworks for teachers to make their practices more holistic, integrative, and outdoors, InDiGO joins global and local movements to reform public education around child-centered principles that promote well-being and wholeness. InDiGO views education as the principal lever of long-term change that will, as our mission states, guide youth and adults to access and develop their own inner power to learn, teach, heal, and unite by discovering the wonders of nature within and all around us. Nature Nurtures Symposium One of the BCCCN's initiatives is called the Nature Nurtures Symposium. This hybrid online and in-person conference brings together practitioners, educators, and advocates for connecting children to Nature from across the region. Check out this recording of the Professional Development workshop InDiGO founder Gabriel Pickus led. This Nature Nurtures 2021 session is for educators interested in making their practice more holistic, integrative, and outdoors. InDiGO offers a unique approach for designing integrative projects that simultaneously achieve Academic, Artistic, and SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) goals by discovering Nature's wonders within and all around us. This workshop is an opportunity to break down walls within our own minds as educators that falsely compartmentalize different kinds of learning. Our goal is to return the motivation to learn to its rightful place: within, through a truly student-centered, holistic, and whole-child approach. The goal of this workshop is for each educator to walk away inspired to guide their students in an integrative project that they are intrinsically motivated to do! The Return of the Motivation to Learn Emmanuel Jackson has become an integral part of InDiGO since coming in as a guest artist to work with our 3rd and 4th-grade students in-person and online at Harlem Park Elementary Middle School. Our group project with the 3rd and 4th graders at Harlem Park features Emmanuel Jackson’s rendition of “Oh Baltimore” by Nina Simone. Students dance, sing, beatbox, play, and authentically express themselves in this amazing music video. "At InDiGO, we try to facilitate the kind of mindset shift that really allows kids to be kids," - Gabriel Pickus (Founder and Director). In this video, we hear from students, teachers, and Gabe about how InDiGO makes student-centered learning a reality. We learn how to get the genius within each student to manifest outwardly, outdoors! Village Learning Place InDiGO teamed up with Village Learning Place and the 29th Street Community Center to offer professional development for their staff and work directly with them and their students. We visited the Margaret Brent community garden, the historic VLP Library and courtyard garden, Terra Cafe's Jerk