Jarrett Krentzel

Founder/Director

Pronouns: he/him/his

After spending 6-months hiking the 3,500km Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, I learned something that no book could teach me….nature is our ultimate teacher, and we are nature’s ultimate students! From that moment on, I realized that I had a passion for teaching youth outdoors, and my journey as an environmental educator began. That was 25+ years ago, and since then I have taught environmental education and Outdoor Learning from preschool to universties in British Columbia, Yukon, New York, Oregon and California, co-founded Cascadian Crusaders, a non-profit society aimed to educate youth about plastic in the ocean, co-authored and published an environmental superhero children’s book called The Great Plastic Round-up, sat as former Vice President for the Comox Valley Naturalists Society, co-led NatureKids BC and currently sit as Committee Member for the BC Nature’s Education Committee, Outdoor Early Learning Association of BC and Cumberland’s Ecology of the Forest Committee and act as Director of Hand-In-Hand Nature Education.

Now, after spending the past 14-years raising my 2 children, I have learned yet another lesson…the foundation of education begins as soon as a child starts learning…and when my children were preschool aged, I wondered, “Why not give children their ultimate teacher (nature) in their early years (2-5 years old) by creating a nature preschool in the Comox Valley and Campbell River?” I saw every reason to do so!