Eco Urban Ranger

I work in urban Primary schools in the Portsmouth area where the children have taken to calling me ‘Mrs-Dr Collins’ or ‘Eco Warrior’.  I am a biologist by training and gained my PhD by studying a form of biological control of insect pests in commercial woodlands.  I took a career break when my son was born and started to look for employment that would fit in with his academic year.  After discovering the child-centred, play based Scandinavian pedagogy of Forest School I trained as a Forest School Practitioner.  I have been self-employed working as The Eco Urban Ranger since 2010 and have worked for local schools, The Sustainability Centre, social enterprises and The Woodland Trust.  In 2014 I became an Accredited Practitioner of The Institute for Outdoor Learning (APIOL).  As part of this accreditation we are asked to contribute to ‘the outdoor industry’.  To this end I was elected as a volunteer director of The Forest School Association in 2014 and became Deputy Chair in 2017.