Ricardo Sierra
164 episodes listed below
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Welcome to the Forest Educator Podcast hosted by Ricardo Sierra. Join Ricardo as he engages in enlightening conversations with educators from across the globe who are revolutionizing nature-based education. Drawing on his 35 years of experience in wilderness education, Ricardo shares practical insights, tools, and best practices to inspire and support forest educators and camp staff worldwide. Tune in twice a week for interviews with passionate educators and skill spotlights that delve into the challenges and triumphs of the field.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · June 2026
A practical Education show about outdoor teaching, from forest school training to youth programs and recovery after Hurricane Helene.
Forest Educator with Ricardo Sierra is an Education show for listeners who care about teaching outdoors, youth programs, and learning that does not stop at the classroom wall.
You like outdoor education with dirt under its nails and paperwork in its pocket.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A reflective lesson on gratitude, skill, and permission to feel okay in nature.
Ricardo Sierra frames nature education as a place where unworthiness and anxiety can surface, especially in long mentor relationships. He returns to a memory from 33 or 34 years ago: a young woman in her mid to late twenties studying wilderness survival and trying to connect…
A grounded argument for treating bonding as something lived, not scheduled.
Ricardo Sierra frames bonding as one of the three basic parts of natural advantage, and he keeps it firmly in the category of things that cannot be scheduled into existence.
A reflective look at nature literacy, rewilding, and how children learn skills outdoors.
Ricardo Sierra speaks with Max Gordon, a nature and wilderness educator behind the Lion Man School of Rewilding, with work rooted in New York, New Jersey, and Florida. The conversation settles on a clear question: what nature education is really for once the slogan fades.
Hard things are treated as a practical lesson in learning and care.
Ricardo Sierra frames Doing Hard Things as a thoughtful look at how people build the capacity for difficult work through effort, commitment, and follow-through.
A slow, intimate conversation about how land, learning, and family shape one another.
Ricardo Sierra and Trista Haggerty present nature as something lived, not merely discussed: country childhood, firewood, hunting, berry picking, gardens, and the shock of college in Boston all keep that idea anchored in detail.
A direct case for speaking plainly when nature education does not fit neat metrics.
Ricardo Sierra makes a clear case for how hard it is to sell nature education when the value resists easy measurement. He sets the concrete wins, like acorn flour, basket weaving, or bows and arrows, against the quieter work of programs whose effect is felt more than counted.
A storm-focused reflection that ties grief, meaning, and community together.
Forest Educator treats Hurricane Helene as more than a news event, using Ricardo Sierra's conversation to sit with grief, crisis, and the strain of making sense of damage across the Southeast.
A steady conversation about science, schooling, and learning on demand.
Ricardo Sierra sits down with high school science teacher Danny Rosenstein, based in New York and working across the Regents and BOCES world while still trying to get kids outside.
Thoughtful teaching talk with classroom roots.
Careful conversations for better teaching.
Creative ELA ideas with classroom roots.
Classroom creativity, treated as real work.
Ricardo Sierra explores the surprising benefits of incorporating meaningful manual work into nature-based education, drawing from his experiences with students and conservation corps.
Ricardo Sierra opens with Hurricane Helene and the damage it brought across the Southeast.
Ricardo Sierra sits down with Max Gordon, who runs the Lion Man School of Rewilding and works mainly in New York, New Jersey, and Florida.
Ricardo Sierra of the Forest Educator Podcast asks whether fear should be used in messaging for forest educators and forest entrepreneurs.
Ricardo Sierra uses a string of bad camp-day memories to show how a missed call, a ruined breakfast, mouse-chewed rawhide, and a power outage can pile into one overwhelming afternoon.
John Stokes links tracking to perception, saying 'tracking is a way of seeing' and describing how cones, rods, and 'slit eyes' help him read animals in a forest.
Ricardo Sierra uses Forest Educator Podcast: “Forest Educator Spotlight: So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Forest Educator...” to talk about the first steps from workshop participant to lead teacher.
Ricardo Sierra and John Stokes focus on attention, listening, and indigenous teaching methods, starting with the claim that many people sort in seconds whether a speaker is worth their time.
Ricardo Sierra welcomes his wife, Trista Haggerty, and the conversation begins with the simple fact of a long shared life.
Ricardo Sierra frames Forest Educator Spotlight REPLAY: Finding Your Lane as a guide for two groups: people who stumbled into forest education through camp, naturalist, or outdoor-program jobs, and experienced educators who feel burned out or stuck in a rut.
Ricardo Sierra uses Forest Educator with Ricardo Sierra to announce a temporary move from two episodes a week to one while he looks for funding and more time to manage interviews, backend work, and winter projects.
Ricardo Sierra marks the podcast’s 150th recording.
Ricardo Sierra tells a quiet, patient story about what can come up in nature education when students start to feel unworthy of the gifts around them.
Ricardo Sierra talks with Molly and Tony Dice about Trackers Earth and how the work has grown from a single summer camp into a broad set of youth programs.
Ricardo Sierra uses this Forest Educator replay to map how children change from fifth grade through high school, starting with his claim that middle schoolers can build an “inner foundation” for doing hard things.
Ricardo Sierra frames “winging it” as a practical skill for nature-based education, using a summer camp called Spirit of the Deer to show how a rough idea became a real program.
Ricardo Sierra opens Forest Educator Spotlight by arguing that the nature education movement may never reach its full potential without a business model that can scale.
Ricardo Sierra welcomes John Stokes from the Tracking Project in New Mexico and opens with a question about why a program name matters at all.
Ricardo Sierra starts from cold training as a mix of stories, lectures, and curriculum he has built over years of teaching winter survival.
Ricardo Sierra says many forest-education teachers can manage children and paperwork, but they still lack lived skills like basketry, gardening, tracking, and shelter building.
Ricardo Sierra frames this Forest Educator replay around the "natural advantage," a three-part idea built from nature, skills, and bonding.
Ricardo Sierra explores ancestral learning methods and their application to modern nature-based education, sharing insights from his experience running Hawk Circle Camp.
Ricardo Sierra explores how nature educators can balance learner-led discovery with guided mastery, using personal stories from fire making, tracking, and music to argue for structured skill-building that inspires growth and resilience in students.
Ricardo Sierra centers the episode on bonding and the odd truth that it cannot be managed as neatly as the other parts of the natural advantage.
Ricardo Sierra welcomes David Fisher from Rooted Learning.
Ricardo Sierra sits down with high school science teacher Danny Rosenstein for a wide-ranging talk.
Ricardo opens by thanking Grant for making time after Helene.
Ricardo Sierra opens with adult learning and the particular challenge of running nature programs for adults.
Ricardo Sierra talks about the challenge of doing hard things.
Ricardo Sierra spends the episode on messaging.