Outdoor Educator (and former Ohio State Park Naturalist), Terri McFarland teaches Outdoor Education classes including: Survival Skills, & Archery to students of all ages. Terri has a unique skill set, having started her career in Juvenile Corrections, which then led to Prevention programming and now to teaching classes that facilitate problem solving activities, outdoor survival and leadership ski
lls. Terri grew up in Michigan, and camped every summer for the first 20 years of her life. She then turned her love of outdoor adventure into a career. Armed with a social work degree, she spent more than 12 years working with delinquent and “at-risk” youth while winter camping, rock climbing, cross country skiing, backpacking and canoeing. Terri worked at a Wilderness School in the mountains of Virginia, at residential treatment facilities in Michigan & Pennsylvania, and was a lead instructor for adventure camp programming at the Battle Creek Public Schools, Outdoor Education Center. It was at the Outdoor Ed Center, where Terri facilitated high ropes courses, tower climbs, rappelling, canoeing and more. Later, Terri moved to Ohio, and worked in Drug and Alcohol Prevention, teaching Life Skills and Too Good for Violence in area schools. During the summer, she taught a “day-camp” for area students, teaching classes such as: fire-building, shelter-building and Wild Ohio Animals. Within two years she was offered a Naturalist position at Ohio State Parks, and it was then that “Terri’s Programs” was born. It became the vehicle for getting information out on her upcoming classes, and other community events and opportunities. Terri is certified to teach archery and fishing. Terri has been a volunteer with Scouts, and with MEEC (Morrow Environmental Education Committee.) Although originally from Michigan, she also has lived in Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and now resides in Mt. Gilead Ohio with her husband, son, dog, cat and an adopted 3-toed Box Turtle (from Missouri.) Mission: “My goal is for students to become confident learners, because confident learners become confident problem solvers, and confident problem solvers change the world.”
Words to live by: (two quotes):
"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him, his own." -Benjamin Disraeli
“Don’t die with your music still in you.” ~Dr. Wayne Dyer
