Welcome to the park leader show where we are changing the landscape of leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host Jody Mayberry. Our guest this episode is Chris Anderson. Chris is the host and executive producer of Outsider Classroom, and this is wonderful. It teaches kids science through videos in the National Parks. I think
it's it's wonderful. They do great work. And one of the reasons I asked Chris to be on the show is I love it to when someone who is not in parks, uses parks, promotes parks to help people learn, to bring people into parks. I mean, this the work Chris is doing is work that we probably couldn't do on our own inside of parks. Yet, we've got someone outside of parks doing it for us and with us. So welcome to the park leader show, Chris. Jody, thanks for having me. What a lovely, lovely introduction.
I should I should have you just followed me to parties, and you can say, oh, here comes Chris Anderson. Let me tell you how great he is. We'll do it. I will walk in the door first, and Yes. I will just shout it out. Chris Anderson's about to enter. Here's what you need to know. We'll get you a bell, like a big bell, like a town crier. Yeah. Yeah. It it'll be a hit. It reminds me of my days barking for the yak lady at the carnival.
Yeah. So the top hat and and everything, we'll we'll really we'll really put that we're really leaning into the pit. Yeah. There we go. Okay. So before we get into outsider and the work you're doing, tell us your history with outdoors and what eventually led you to start doing what you're doing. So I the biggest thing I ever got in trouble with and as a kid, like, the my my most frequent offense was just leaving the house without telling
anyone. I would just go outside to places that I thought were cool, and I just wouldn't and my mom would, where have you been? It's been you're 6 and it's been an hour. Oh, down the park. And, you know, I so I think I just always wanted to explore things. I did Boy Scouts when I was a kid. So I'd like Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. And really, I had I ended up getting my Eagle Scout, but I had no aspirations to get that. I was just like, oh, camping once a month with
my friends? Like, great. Like, we'll see where it goes. Like, I don't know. It seems fun to me. And it was fun. And I I just like being outside and getting outdoor skills was great. I didn't really go to any national parks when I was a kid. My dad drove he was a Teamster. He drove milk trucks around. So the last thing he wanted to do was pack everybody in the car and drive across the country on on his precious few days off. Right? So we didn't do any didn't do a lot of that. Didn't really travel
a whole lot to our national parks when I was a kid. So I didn't get out to my 1st national park until I was, like, probably in my mid twenties and went to Great Smokies with a backpacking trip with a friend. I was like, I was just man, this this all one park is nuts. Like, I like, there's more and, you know, there's, like, 60 more of these. This is crazy. So that I've always loved the outdoors and being camping
and backpacking and and all that sort of thing. I think when you do it as a as a young person, as a kid, like, it just kinda stays with you. You and you're naturally curious as a child anyways. So if you could do that then during those formative years, it's always something that will bring you joy. So that's really how I got got bit by the outdoor outdoor bug, so to speak. Yeah. It's always fun to hear the connection because sometimes it can
be something so simple. Like, for me, it was growing up near the Kickapoo Creek, and it just fascinated me. Right. And for others, it can be a trip to Zion National Park when they were a kid, and they were just blown away. Yeah. Yeah. There was, like we I mean, I grew grew up, like, 30 minutes west of Cleveland. So we had the lake there. We went fishing all the time. So that was definitely part
of, like, my seminal outdoor experiences. But, really, there was, like, a park, like, 2 blocks away that had maybe, like, 2 or 300 acres and, like, a creek that went through it. And I knew I had a buddy who lived on the other side of the park. So by the time I was, like, 10 or 11, I could walk through the park and there was, like, a big tree that had fallen over the creek that was, like, bridge, so I could, like, walk across there and, like, go to his house in, like, 10 or 15 minutes.
And that just, like, trumps it around. Like, we get, like, wiffle bats and, like, pretend we were Jedi knights because, you know, we just got done watching Star Wars and, like, be be down there. Like, just like kids stuff. Unsupervised, unscripted kids stuff outside. And I think that's you had to Kickapoo Creek. I had Hilltop Park in Elyria, Ohio. What difference do you think it makes in an urban setting, whether it's Elyria, Ohio where you are,
Peoria, Illinois where I grew up? What difference does it make to have access to a natural setting or even a local park in an urban community? I think it gives kids what they want or what what they need. Right? Really, it gives kids what they need, and that's, like, a place to explore and, like, create
and, like, feed their curiosity. And this is, like, very top of mind for me right now because I'm seeing in a lot of places, it's it's especially when you have woods like that, so much of that play is without adults. Right? Like, adults generally aren't going into those, like, wooded areas with their kids. Like, you might like, maybe when they're small, but by that time they get to, like, 7, 8, or 9, like, the kids are just kinda
playing on their own. And there's no real boundaries, like, there's trails and stuff, but there's less there to confine you into, like, rules or restrictions. You know? So you have a lot of choice, and you learn a lot. Right? But you also learn, like, how to play with the like, kids learn how to play with each other. Right? They learn like, you have you have to create your own rules if there are no rules. Like and you get to you you learn limits. Like, oh,
man. I trumps through the water, and that was fun, but I'm cold and wet now. So there's trade offs there. I think it just and that's what kids that's what childhood should be. Right? It should be exploration. It should be creativity. It should be, you know, messing around just for the sake of of having
fun and being joyful. We take that away from kids a lot, and I think outdoor spaces in in urban areas specifically kind of they're almost like a a sanctuary for those sorts of things that kids would normally do. Not that you can't get that in an urban setting, like, outside of, you know, natural, you know, like, a natural area. But, you know, some of that stuff, it's like, well, there's basketball league, but they like, the adults have made the rules there, and the adults are the referees,
and the adults are watching, and the adults are supervising. And And sometimes the adults, like, get especially in some of those sports leagues, they get in that it becomes about them and not about the kids. So I think it really protects kids from the meddlingness of adults, both good both good meddling of, like, supervision and making sure everybody's safe and bad meddling of just adults being jerks or whatever. What a fun
answer. That I've asked a variation of that question a few times over the last 10 years, and nobody has said because there's not adults making rules. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Well, there's this is a long time ago. I read this article. I'm a baseball guy. It's that was, like, my first love. It's not my only love now. I have a incredible wife who who does all the filming for outsider,
by the way. But I remember reading this article about the the decline of, like, pickup games, like, sandlot games, and how if when kids start to play baseball, it's almost so through Little League. And there's issues with that. Right? Because, like, you play a Little League game, you might get 3 or 4 at bats. K? But if you're playing with your buddies, you know, you start at 10 or or, you know, that's what's like that was like my parents' like earliest time we could
call our friends to go play and without being rude. And you play for 2 hours till lunch and then eat lunch as fast as you can. You go out and play until, like, dinner. Right? So you're playing for 4, 5, 6 hours at a time and so you might get, like, 30 at bats. And you never have 9 on 9. You might have, like, 7 people. So somebody's an all time pitcher and, well, you figure, like, okay. Well, not everybody's gonna hit it to right field, so maybe you're center fielder and right
fielder. And you learn things about, like, trade offs in the games. You negotiate with each other and, like, there is no umpire. So, like, the strike zone is kinda what you call it. Right? You have to figure things out. There's gray area. There's uncharted seas for you as a child, and you have to negotiate with each other. And the negotiations don't always work well, but, like, there's lessons to
be learned there too. And taking adults out of that equation gives kids more time to to develop things and not just on, like, the physical side, like, how to swing a bay a baseball bat or, like, how to throw a slider, but it also gives them social skills of, like, how to negotiate difficult people or difficult situations or just uncomfortability. Right? That I think that is wonderful. And now it's got me thinking about my own childhood and what that must have helped put all those years Yeah.
Just playing at the Kickapoo Creek. Their rules or whatever. Do you have a memory of, like, playing down there that, like, really sticks out in your head, Jody? There are a few. I caught my very first fish on the Kickapoo Creek, and I can still take you to the very spot where it happened. Yeah. I remember seeing snakes down there. That stands out. Like no. And you now that you say it, it even becomes more vivid seeing snakes with no adults around. It's
just me. Yeah. And there's a snake. What are you gonna do? I'm like, what'd you do? What did you so what did you do when you saw the snake? I was very alert, very aware. I just kept my eye on it. I remember that sort of stuff. Yeah. Which I don't think I would have thought of in the same way had you not said what you said that how important this is me thinking, you don't have to answer. How important was that now to catch a fish on my own? To see a a snake on my own with knowing, well, if I
do something dumb, then I have to deal with it. And Yeah. Walking the trails and going down one time and the creek is flooded. I mean, so much of that is good. And then because I enjoyed the Kickapoo Creek so much, once I got to high school, me and a friend said, you know what? We've never seen anyone else float the whole Kickapoo Creek. So we got a canoe, went as far up creek as we could, and we paddled the whole thing. And that led to that was really fun. Let's go to the
Current River in Missouri. And I feel it's the Kickapoo Creek and playing there that led to me wanting to travel and see more, joining the outdoor program when I went to Illinois State, eventually becoming a park ranger, all because I grew up playing outside. And that leads me to what I was going to ask you and then the conversation just went there anyway. The this idea that you get to play in your natural space locally. It could be a creek. It could just be a local park.
Do you think, and if you do, and I think you do talk about the correlation between playing in your neighborhood green space with eventually falling in love with national parks, even the ones you may never go to? Yeah. I think it builds on that emotional connection. Right? Like, we only protect what we love. That's, like, the definition of protection. Like, you want to protect things you love. If you don't love it, you're not going to like, protection's hard. Right?
Like, it takes effort and energy and time, and it's not always easy, so you better love it. Right? It's why we protect the people that we love. You know? It's it's we care about them. So I think that, like, that seminal connect like, that connection, that emotional connection to the outdoor space, you know, that's beyond just like a soccer field or a softball field or a tennis court or a basketball court. Like, you need some place to, like, trumps around in the leaves
and and, like, yeah, get, like, literally get your feet wet. I think that, like, I you know, you your face, like, lit up talking about that fish you caught. Like, how proud were you when you caught that fish, man? Like, all by yourself. Right? Like, you were probably super excited to tell your you know, tell the people you're adults. Right? Like, hey. Did you see this? I caught this fish. Like, it was all me, man. How how awesome did that feel when
you did that? Oh, man. That was a tiny fish, and we I made my parents keep that thing in the freezer for years. Yeah. They're like, what yeah. Yeah, man. Totally. For all I know, my mother could still have it in the freezer in Peoria, Illinois. I've never I don't remember the last time I asked. Yeah. I I hope for her sake, it's not. Should she ever have to move or get a new refrigerator. But, yeah, that emotional connection. Yeah. You're
proud as hell like you should have been. You did it by yourself. It felt feel that stuff feels good. Now you want it yeah. It launched this whole it has all these other cascading effects. I think yeah. It just gives kids an emotional connection to the outdoors. And when you're a kid, it's it especially if you had if you're not one that's, like, particularly well traveled, the outdoors is the outdoors is the outdoors. Right? Like, you're very
much the world is a blank slate. So you could go to a like, what we would consider like a smaller park or a metro park or a thing, and you could, like, have this incredible experience and then, like, know down the line like, hey. You think that's cool? Check out the Grand Tetons or, like, you know, like, you think those waters are cool? Let me show you something. Like, let's go to Congaree. Like, those
waters are also cool. Like, I think it had just has these cascading effects, and the kids aren't really discriminatory on, like, what they want like, what areas they wanna explore. Like, I think they've they've seen studies where they observe children in a park, and they kinda issue the, like, the more organized places like a like a soccer field or basketball court, and they always end up kinda on the edges where, like, the trees or, like, the brush is just, like, messing around. And, like,
what are they doing over there? Like, no. They're drawn to it because it's something to explore. Like, boom, I'd see a soccer field, that's a soccer field. Right? Like, if unless I'm specifically there to play soccer, I'm like, I don't really have a lot of interest in that. But, like, there's stuff to explore on the edges and the fringe that I think draws kids there. That's what they need. Like, they crave that. So that then jumps us to the work that you do with
outsider. We've already talked about how local green space can connect kids to the outdoors. Now talk about how outsider can do that and I don't want to put words or thoughts into what you're going to say, but I will tell you what I thought when I watched some of the videos. I don't think I realized we when I was younger, we did take some vacations out west, but I don't think I realized how big the west was, how grand it was, what
was really in national parks. And I feel like your videos can really help a classroom get a sense of the wonder that there is in our national parks. That's what I thought when I saw them. So talk about how those videos can connect kids to the natural world. So there's there were kinda two thoughts in, like, in my mind that I kept coming back to as we were putting the show together. The first is every kid in a
park is a great program. It's gotten a lot of kids and families into the parks and a lot of whom might not necessarily have gone. But there's still a lot of barriers for kids to interact with the parks and, you know, not just the parks, but national monuments, national forests, you know, all of our all of our public lands that are out there to explore. Like, you know, it's expensive to get to some of these places. It's time intensive. Not everybody has the know how.
The gear can be expensive. Like, you know, everybody knows that because they've walked into REI and then walked out and looked at their credit card statement. Right? Like, they that stuff's not cheap. So it can be pretty intimidating. It'd be a lot of barriers to entry. The other thing that we kept coming back to is, I was a classroom teacher. I taught high school science. So I knew the need for teachers. There's tons of
videos out there. There's 1,000,000,000 at this point. A lot of them have to do with science, but none of them are really tied to standards. So what happens is, like, you'll see a video or a teacher will use a video either on YouTube or, like, maybe that's embedded in their, like, their curriculum. And then it's not necessarily tied to, like, what the kids need to know, especially on YouTube.
Right? So it's like, oh, you can see this, like, really cool thing, whether it's, like, some demo or showing something outside or what you know, in the outdoors. And then you have to go back to learning. It's not really seamless. Right? It's like, this is really cool. Now we gotta
go to learning. Boring. Right? So we wanted to create a resource that made things seamless where you had what you watched in the video, what you did then in the classroom, and then what you had to learn based on what the state said or your state or national, you know, the next generation science standards. So those were, like, the 2 kind of main drivers in the connecting kids to the park. We're gonna use this park as a teaching
tool. So you're gonna learn something first and foremost. Like, you were you're going to learn something out of that. But out of that, you're like, no. This is this place is cool. Like, Grand Canyon? Like, that looks really cool. I wanna go hike there. Like, yeah. They said those rocks were almost 2,000,000,000 years old that the at the bottom of those. I wanna go see those. I wanna
I wanna check those out myself. And if I it might not be every kid, but it could be even if it was, like, 10% of the kids who who watch it in the classroom. It's, you know, 2 or 3 or 4 kids who are now excited. They're like, oh, man. We saw this video. And they go home and tell their parents, and and maybe they don't go that year or even before they graduate high school or college. But, eventually, they may they may make it. They're like, oh, this was as cool as
as that guy on the video said it was. Yeah. How neat, and what a great combination because anybody could have done National Park videos for students to learn. And I would have applauded it, said great job. I'm so glad you're doing this. But to have a classroom teacher who understands what the classroom needs and tie the videos into that, I'm gonna give you a 2 part question. What has the classroom response, kids and
students, been to outsider? And what has the park ranger, park professional response been? So anytime I'm in a classroom and I stew use stuff with the videos, I just get a lot of questions. And I think that's, like, the key to anything that kids like is that they wanna know more about it. We had a watch party for our premiere on broadcast. We partner with our local PBS station to broadcast our videos on air. And there were, like, some I think 6 or there's a couple 6 to 7 year olds
there. And, like, some friends, you know, brought their kids. And this is below our target audience. Our target audience is mostly middle school. So, like, grades 9 to, like, 5 to 9. I'd say, like, from ages, like, 10 to 14 or 15 are probably our sweet spot. These kids were younger than that, and they didn't move. Like, they were glued. And that's when you know you got something that's good for kids, especially in today's day and
age where everything is so instant. And it's not just the kids. It's all of us. Right? Like, we're all stimulus addicts at this point. But to see the kids just sit there and just be wrapped was like, alright. We got a good one here. As far as the parks go, you know, you know this, Jody, just as well as I. Every park is different. Every park has its own unique challenges, its own unique strengths. So when we work with the parks, we try to just be as flexible as possible. Any ranger we work with
has been outstanding. But we also know that some rangers, based on the park, like, their capacity is super limited. So I know there's parks that we've worked with that are like, we think what you guys are doing are great. We just don't have the capacity to support it in any way other than, like, here's your permit if you need it. Like, have fun sort of thing. And that's
fine. But the parts we've worked with, specifically, like, Indiana Dunes and Cuyahoga Valley, those are 2 smaller parks, but the people who work there love being there and they're really been great. Like, we've had people on camera with them. We've we've collaborated on the production piece to for them to give more of a have more of a voice in some of the storytelling, like what's important to them.
So it just depend and everybody in between. Right? So it just depends, really, on the park and, like, what they have capacity for. One thing I wanna make sure I mention, if you're hearing what Chris is doing with outsider and say, I think our local school might be interested in this. Chris makes these available for free, which is tremendous that any classroom just the videos are available. Any classroom can use them. That that's so generous, Chris, and it it really helps spread this in all the
corners it should be. So anything we can do to help get these in classrooms, I'm all for it. Well, we don't wanna nickel a dime teachers. They're not paid nearly enough. They have enough going on. To ask a teacher for money is I don't think is really ethically sound. So we do and we wanna make sure that they're easy to access to for everybody. That said, like, we
also wanna work with parks too. You know? There's there's parks that we would love to work with and help train teachers on how to use use outsider things. We love working with the parks. I couldn't say enough good things about the people who who we've had a chance to collaborate with. It's a really great partnership that we've developed over the years.
So the other part of this, if a park ranger sees what you've done, loves the work, wants to help get their park featured or become part of this and work with you, what can we do? Because if I'm right, you're open. You wanna partner with parks and get more of this out there. Yeah. Absolutely. So if you let's say you are a park and you wanna, like, oh, man. It'd be really cool outside your classroom coming to my part. I think
that, like, definitely reach out. Like, we're all ears. We have videos kind of through the end of the school year, and then we're looking to forward towards next production. So definitely reach out. Another good person to bring to the table when we have those conversations is whatever
nonprofit or conservancy that you would work with. Because those as those nonprofits, they are able to have a little more flexibility with how they do development and fundraising as opposed to just simply a government entity. Because we have to think about our production cost, and I think that working with the specific park, we'd have to kind of branch out to work with some community partners to
help make that happen. But all that being said, even if you're like, video might not work, but it'd be really cool to, like we have a lot of local teachers who come to the parks, and we have a lot of outreach that we do with the parks. Like, that's also great. Like, our goal with outsider is to get our materials into as many classrooms as possible. Like, we want to be it to be used because we know that it's good stuff and it can impact student learning and student engagement.
So if you have teachers that you have regular contact with or do regular meetings with, We would love to help put help get our stuff out there through that. So you mentioned you have videos through the end of the year, then you're looking for others. So you may not have any lined up, but what parks are coming in the future? So what we wanna do is build a kind of a supplementary curriculum for schools. So every school will adopt a curriculum, but no
curriculum is perfect. And more and more the these curricula will focus more on, like, virtual things, like simulations and stuff instead of, like, the hands on science things. And that's where all our resources you have the videos, but you have all these hands on and inquiry based activities that can kind of be used as a supplement to what is already adopted by a district. So we're kind of using again, we're using those standards to drive where we wanna go next. So we
have a lot of earth science things. We probably have most earth science things pretty well covered at this point. We'll probably we'll still do some earth science. I love earth science. I think it's really cool. I love teaching. I love talking about it. I'll spend hours and hours in a natural history museum. Hours. But we are also missing some things on the life science side. We need to hit evolution. That's a big one we wanna hit. We
wanna hit some things on mass extinctions. We wanna hit some things on ecosystems and traits and adaptations. Those are things we we need to really supplement our where we're at. The other thing is social studies and bringing social studies into that. We found that when we do social studies with science, we get a lot of engagement. We did our video in New River Gorge. We did coal. Coal was like the theme of our first video. Coal as a sedimentary rock, why there's so much coal in
West Virginia, and why it's so easily accessible. But then how did the people who mined the coal impact America, like, specifically the coal miners union unions or the people who tried to organize a union, and how did that impact our day to day life? So you have this, like, really cool intersection of science and social studies together.
So we wanna support social studies too because that's what teachers have asked for. You have a lot of teachers in middle schools like I we just try to do social studies when we can or, like, you know, 5th, 6th grade, like, I do social studies whenever we have an extra 30 minutes at the, you know, at the end of the day and they need more resources with that. It's not a a subject that gets a lot of attention. So we wanna make sure we're filling the need for what teachers are asking for.
And there are so many that's what's fun about it. When you fill in the need, there's so many parks and stories to choose from. So I could see where you may not even know, okay, I have this topic I wanna fill in, but you may have no idea if it's gonna be Everglades, if it's gonna be glacier, if it's gonna be, who knows, Joshua Tree. It could come from anywhere. Every time we've left a park filming, like, we're usually in the park park for about a week or so filming. We get
about 5 videos out of that. We leave and we go in with the we got 5 crackerjack ideas. Like, we got some we got some bangers here. This is gonna be great. And then we leave, and we're like, man, I saw 5 other really good ideas because, like and you can do all the research you want in the world. Right? Like, you can prep for a park as as much as you can, and we we certainly do. But then you go there, and you talk to people, and you see things, and you learn stuff that
you just can't do unless you're there. And then you come back and you're like, oh, we could've hit that and that and that and that and that. And I'll die before I run out of ideas, which is a great thing. Alright, Chris. Where can we find out more about outsider? Let's see some of the videos and get in touch with you. Yeah. So all our videos are on YouTube. So just, search outside of classroom. Make sure you have s c I in the middle, o u t s c I d e r, little science in the middle. Where all
all our stuff's on YouTube. We do some updates on Instagram and TikTok. So that's just at outsider. And you can follow me. I've cut back a lot of social media, but if you wanna find me on either blue sky or Instagram, it's the science jedi. But you feel free to, reach out to me and email them, you know, at chris@outsider.org. That's my email. So, yeah, feel free to reach out. And if you haven't also, I should say all our instructional materials are on our website atoutsider.org.
And we've got about well, I think we will have 60 I think 13 units, less than units are up right now. So that's in 13 different parks. So that's about, like, 8, I think, 80 different documents. So, like, there's there's all sorts of activities and fun stuff that kids do in classrooms. Well, Chris, this has been a great conversation. I'm glad you joined us, and I'm really thankful for the work that you do to bring the outdoors inside
the classrooms. It's it's wonderful work. Thank you so much, Jody. I appreciate your time. Appreciate all the shameless plugs you let me, you let me give. That's what it what gets me up in the morning. I'm kidding, of course. It it's been great. Really great conversation. I really appreciate you having me on. Well, thank you, and thank you for listening to the park leader show.