The new explorers
Howard School club gives students a taste of nature
When an announcement about the Howard School’s new Outdoor Leadership Club came on over the school intercom one day earlier this semester, JaKaela Moore wasted little time.
“The moment I heard it, I went and signed up,” the 10th-grade student said after school on a recent day, as she and a group of peers prepared to canoe the North Chickamauga Creek.
From canoeing and camping to archery and hiking, the weekly after-school club is removing the barriers between students and the outdoor offerings that have earned Chattanooga accolades in recent years.
“There’s a big gulf between the ‘Best Town Ever’ and the city that my students live in,” 11th-grade
English teacher Brandon Hubbard-Heitz said. “They don’t have the opportunity to go mountain biking or climbing. People aren’t teaching them, and they deserve it. They deserve that opportunity.”
Hubbard-Heitz started the club to make those outdoor opportunities more accessible for his students after reading about Outdoor Chattanooga’s ambassador program that is aimed at diversifying the local outdoors scene.
Research from the Outdoor Foundation shows that minorities participate in outdoor recreation at a lower percentage than whites in the United States. The disparity is greatest in the 13-17-year age range.
Sixty-five percent of whites in that age range participate in outdoor recreation compared to just 42 percent of their black counterparts, according to the foundation.
Howard’s student body is 94.5 percent minority, according to the most recent state data.
The club has partnered with Outdoor Chattanooga, a city agency, to make excursions like the canoe trip possible.
Hubbard-Heitz and club co-sponsor Jessica Hubbuch, Howard’s science department chairwoman, drove the club’s members to Greenway Farms in Hixson, while Outdoor Chattanooga provided the canoes.
Outdoor Chattanooga program director Terri Chapin reiterated the basics of canoeing to the group members before they set off on their paddling excursion, and she explained how water releases at the nearby Chickamauga Dam might cause the current to fluctuate on their trip.
While a lack of interest is the biggest reason why people across all ages and races do not recreate, the Outdoor Foundation’s research has shown that black people are more likely than their white peers to stay inside due to the costs of outdoor recreation, or because they feel like they lack the proper knowledge or equipment for certain activities.
“That’s the reality of an urban environment,” said Stasia Raines, Outdoor Foundation marketing and communications director. “There’s often gaps that prevent people who don’t have the transportation or the gear and equipment from experiencing those outdoor places.”
Raines, who is based in Denver, said there is a growing epidemic of inactive young people in the U.S. across gender and racial lines, adding that the average young person spends eight hours in front of a screen each day and just eight minutes outside.
“It’s a reality, even in active cities like Chattanooga or Denver,” she said. “I love the idea of what [Hubbard-Heitz] is doing, because it can remove some of those barriers.”
Hubbard-Heitz said he also has been influenced by a writer named Richard Louv, who penned a book, “Last Child in the Woods,” that delves into what Louv terms “nature deficit disorder.”
Louv links a lack of nature in children’s lives to things such as obesity, attention disorders and depression.
“I think, in many ways, offering students the opportunity to spend time outside could serve as a way to solve some of the problems associated with poverty,” Hubbard-Heitz said. “It gives them a chance to breathe and shed some of the stress associated with poverty.”
There are 10-15 weekly participants in the club, which met for the first time in late September. Hubbard-Heitz said he is trying to convince a few more to join who he thinks could benefit from the experience.
But, he said, everyone who has joined so far has done so without much coercion.
That includes Moore and her classmate Shateyahni Robinson.
“I wanted to be part of it because I like the outdoors, but I’ve never experienced the outdoors beyond just basic things,” said Robinson, also a 10th-grader. “Plus it has the word leadership, and I am a leader.”
“It’s fun,” Moore added, “getting out in nature instead of being indoors all day with no sunlight and all that technology just draining your brain.”