Our Lead Teacher/Facilitator

Barbara Sheridan–Peters Founder and Lead Forest School Teacher

Barbara Sheridan-Peters founded and has been lead teacher for Barrie Forest And Natural Learning School for a decade. She has 25 years of experience teaching preschool and school age children and staff using child directed social and play skills, child specific and child centred programming and training other professionals in the same approach. She is able to use her background of child directed and play based programming to focus on providing an environment for children to learn social skills, communication skills and academic skills in the Forest and Natural Learning programs.

She has hosted podcasts including Campfire Chats and Dirty Playologist for Explorations Early Learning and written for Play Empowers. She is a resident writer for 30 Second Mom and Playvolution, a Project comprised of the leaders of the revolution for Child Directed Play Based Learning throughout North America.

She presents workshops, field trips and Consultation to Educators to include more child directed learning through play in classrooms and curriculum and forest school pedagogy internationally.

She started her forest school journey by training with Erin Kenny, completing her Forest School Kindergarten teacher training from Cedarsong. She also has her Child and Youth Worker Diploma and a BA in psychology. She pursued her Masters in Education (Sustainable Education) with a focus on self directed learning outdoor models and was able to develop a forest school model that is place based that allows space for the Anishinaabek language, culture and history of the land.

Read an interview with Barbara HERE

Watch as she explains her views on “bad behaviour” HERE

Dawson Sheridan – Youth Facilitator

Dawson Sheridan is Cree from Fort Albany. Dawson has grown up in the Forest School and has always had a keen interest in plants and land based skills learning both traditional on the land skills from Annishinabek community members, Knowledge Keepers and Elders as well as survival skills from Non Native mentors. He is excited to join the school as our Youth Facilitator working with our students as a mentor, friend and facilitator.