Mirjam Bloem
Mirjam Bloem lives in Cork. She says that for her, being a Forest School leader is ‘like coming around full circle again’. As a child, she spent days in the woods, while as a teenager, she was part of a National Anarchist nature youth club in Holland, going into the wild every Sunday to learn from each other about birds, plants and insects. As an adult, Mirjam attended An Tionad Glas, the organic horticultural college in Drumcollagher, to further develop her love of plants, herbs and bees. She attended the Art of Mentoring with Jon Young on a number of occasions which further inspired her to play her part in the re-connection with nature movement and led her to Forest School training. She feels it is wonderful to be part of a movement that helps children and teenagers feel how great it is to connect with themselves and each other through the woods. Mirjam is the membership secretary of The Irish Forest School Association.
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Caroline Carroll
Caroline is the manager of a School Age Childcare Service operating within a primary school and runs the Forest School programme in the school. She is a trained Forest School Leader and completed her training in Belfast in 2013. Caroline works closely with the class teachers to ensure close links to the Primary school curriculum in the Forest School Activities on offer. The Forest School is now an integrated part of the school curriculum and Caroline works each year with senior infants, second class and third class. Caroline feels privileged to see how children interact and play in the natural environment. She is particularly interested in seeing how children seem able to solve minor issues (big to them!) more easily outdoors. She feels Forest School somehow seems to enable children to express themselves more freely than in the indoor environment Caroline is the treasurer of the IFSA.
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Joan Whelan
Joan Whelan is Chair of the IFSA. In November 2016, she retired after 24 years as principal of an Educate Together primary school. She has recently started a PhD on Forest School pedagogy. She is a qualified educational psychologist and has always been interested in ensuring that schools are caring, holistic places, for both staff and students. She introduced Forest School to her primary school in 2011, the first Irish primary school to offer this provision and it is now an embedded part of the school’s offering. She believes strongly in schools being local hubs in their communities and has pioneered initiatives including the introduction of a school-age childcare service, community use of the school building and most recently chaired a committee to renovate a local park, where the voice of the local children was to the fore. She lives in Dublin with her husband and has two adult children.
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