School Programs- our 14th year!

We feel that children can best learn about nature by actually being in nature. Our programs provide experiential education in an incredible natural classroom. Our 30-acre “classroom” includes meadows, wetlands, and woodlands.

Early education (preschool - grade 2), elementary (grades 3-5), and middle school programs serve students from all three school divisions in the Rockbridge area.  Programs are alligned with the State and early Foundations of Learning Standards. Boxerwood staff teachers are trained as "Master Naturalists." Volunteers (you could be one too!) from the local community and universities join in on a regular basis. Watch videos and read news articles about our Education Program.

Boxerwood has both on- and off-site programs and is increasing its reach into the community: A NOAA grant is significantly underwriting costs associated with a yearlong professional development program for 15 local science teachers. “This project builds on several previous collaborations between Boxerwood and the Washington and Lee Teacher Education program... The focus is ‘Stepping Up & Out,’ in which teachers are ‘stepping up’ their use of teaching via investigation, while ‘stepping out’ with students into their schoolyard ... As part of the program, each teacher is designing an outdoor lesson unit that suits his or her situation. " ... Projects include student investigations related to owl habitat, native plant gardens, soil conservation, acid rain, watershed protection and geo-spatial mapping. Schools represented in the pilot program are Waddell Elementary, Lylburn Downing Middle, Maury River Middle, Central Elementary, Fairfield Elementary and Mountain View Elementary ... Boxerwood hopes to expand the program to other schools in the future ... [also] The Rockbridge County Public Schools Foundation is helping with funding for a project in collaboration with Boxerwood - an opportunity for 32 eighth grade students at Maury River Middle School for in-depth study of local geography, geology, chemistry, physics and biology. In addition to exposure to Boxerwood staff, students will have the chance to work with Dawn Kirk, Natural Bridge forest ranger; Beth Hawes, Rockbridge 4- H agent; and David Harbor, Washington and Lee geologist... [Quotes by Elise Sheffield] Lexington News Gazette fall-winter 2012

High praise for Boxerwood's education program ...

• Six Area Schools Recognnized as Virginia Naturally Schools, Spring 2011 for leadership in environmental education initiatives for efforts taken to encourage environmental literacy and stewardship [and their] multi-grade partnerships with Boxerwood.  [Boxerwood] facilitates hands-on learning in the field, and additional environmental activities back at school. 
• Noting the high Science scores [State SOLs] throughout the division, Crance [Cindy Crance, the division's director of instruction] credited our relationship with Boxerwood which helps us support science. For the past several years, county middle-school and elementary students have traveled to the educational garden for hands on encounters with nature, all carefully calibrated to the requirements of the state SOLs.
• The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Valley Regional Office (DEQ-VRO) recognized Boxerwood for… “an amazing job planning educational field days consistent with the Virginia Standards of Learning, that are incredibly well organized and coordinated... DEQ-VRO is excited to continue our support of Boxerwood’s commitment to educating the next generation about Virginia’s streams and rivers”
• Boxerwood Gardens has been a good neighbor for our community. This horticultural treasure just outside Lexington is the setting for unique, high quality, hands-on instruction about nature for students and their teachers from all three Rockbridge area school systems. For more than 10 years, Boxerwood has provided nature education lessons for our youth. During the current school year, more than 2,000 children in more than 100 classrooms from all 12 schools in Rockbridge County, Buena Vista and Lexington will participate in this nature-based programming. The lessons support the Virginia Standards of Learning, ensuring that each local student has a watershed experience before graduating from high school. Educators laud the lessons, saying they’ve helped raise students’ test scores in science and enhance their appreciation of nature.The Lexington News-Gazette, March 31, 2010
• “NOAA B-WET is excited to be supporting Boxerwood’s efforts to ‘leave no child inside’ when it comes to providing hands-on environmental education for students and teachers in the Rockbridge County area,” Andrew Larkin, NOAA program officer.