Man’s Tawodi Nature School is not your traditional classroom school
CANAL WINCHESTER – Students at Kevin Dean’s Tawodi Nature School don’t sit in a traditional classroom reading from books as they learn outdoor survival skills. Instead, they learn in the wild on his 10-acre property.
“My nature school is a combination of creating an environment for people to build skills in relation to nature connection and outdoor survival,” Dean said. “We teach a variety of things, like animal tracking, man tracking, bird, tree and plant identification, survival shelter building, fire making. We do a lot of fire making.”
He also teaches students how to forage for wild foods, how to use knives and axes, tie knots and use their compass to find their way around the outdoors and more.
Dean said it’s important to also make students aware of what’s around them in nature along with the survival skills.
“To me that’s what a lot of schools miss out on,” he said. “They teach survival skills, but people don’t know what tree they’re looking at or what plant or animal they’re looking at. You have to know stuff in order to be successful with outdoor survival. Not all trees are good for fire starting so that’s why it’s good to know your tree species.” Dean opened the school in 2018. “It’s something I wanted to do for a long time,” he said. “I’ve got 30-plus years experience in the outdoors. I got
to the point in my life approaching 50, so I wanted to get some positives in the world. I think having kids really drew that home for me. I wanted to improve the world or the environment that they’d be growing up in.”
Dean and his wife, Rachel, have three children. Their daughter, Kiala, was recently featured on the Discovery + show “An American Story.” Her episode is titled “Ohio: The Naturalist.” She was also the subject of a recent Eagle-gazette story.
“I feel that learning about and connecting with nature enhances your life and also the lives of those around you,” Dean said. “I wanted to incorporate that positivity into my business and make that a core value of the school.”
The school is open all year and last year had about 100 students.
Dean got into nature when he was around 14 when his family moved into a house with woods behind it.
“That was magical to me to have that,” he said. “All of a sudden I had a place, a whole other world in the backyard where I could enter to be among the trees and animals. I built camps out there and I practiced my outdoor skills.
“I became comfortable out there and I felt at home. That changed me as a young man. I was an impressionable young 14-year-old and the woods made an impression upon me. That little patch of wilderness really set the stage for the rest of my life.”
Dean said nature is everything to him.
“That’s where we come from,” he said. “As much as we try to push that fact away, the fact remains that we’re from nature and we return to nature when it’s all over for us. So we need to embrace that, that nature is a part of us. We need to do what can to build upon that relationship with the outdoor world and protect it as much as we can.”
Away from work, Dean said his life is focused on his children and keeping them as happy and healthy as possible.
“Most of my hobbies are nature related,” he said. “I do like mountain biking and I like to draw. I’m an artist. But my family has become my ultimate hobby.
Visit www.tawodinatureschool.com for more information about Tawodi Nature School. The business also has a Facebook page with contact information.