On a Friday morning in October, a group of our elementary students makes their way down the forest trail toward Witty’s Lagoon. They’re not on a special field trip. This is just another day at school. Some students pause to examine mushrooms growing on a fallen log, debating whether they’re the same species they photographed last week. Others navigate the path with the confidence of people who know this forest intimately, calling back to remind classmates about the steep section ahead. By the time they reach the beach, they’ve already practiced observation skills, collaborative problem-solving, risk assessment, and scientific inquiry. And their “real” lessons haven’t even started yet.

This is what education looks like when your campus backs directly onto provincial land, opening into a living laboratory where students don’t just learn about nature, they learn through nature. Every single day.

The Campus That Changes Everything

When parent Stephanie Macklam describes our location, she gets straight to the heart of it: “The school location is second to none. It backs onto the beach, forest, waterfall, and trails. There is so much to learn about life outside the school, never mind what it teaches you inside.”

Ms. Macklam isn’t exaggerating. Our campus connects to Witty’s Lagoon Regional Park, giving our students uninterrupted access to coastal forests, cascading waterfalls, and a secluded beach along the Juan de Fuca Strait. This isn’t a field trip destination we visit once a year. It’s part of our daily educational ecosystem, woven into the fabric of how learning happens here from our Early Learning program through High School.

Think about the difference this makes. While other independent schools in Victoria might schedule occasional nature walks or seasonal outdoor days, our students hike to the beach weekly starting in preschool. They navigate forest trails every Friday for team-building activities. They study watershed ecosystems by walking fifteen minutes from their classroom to a working waterfall. They observe tidal patterns, seasonal changes, and ecosystem relationships not through textbooks or videos, but through direct, repeated, multi-sensory experience.

This scale of natural space creates educational possibilities that simply cannot be replicated in urban or suburban school settings, even those with thoughtfully designed outdoor areas.

What the Research Tells Us

Our approach isn’t just philosophically satisfying. It’s backed by substantial scientific evidence. A comprehensive systematic review analyzing 147 research studies found that nature-specific outdoor learning produces measurable benefits including increased student engagement and ownership of learning, evidence of academic improvement, development of social and collaborative skills, and improved self-concept factors.

The researchers concluded something we’ve observed for 67 years: nature-specific outdoor learning has measurable socio-emotional, academic and wellbeing benefits, and should be incorporated into every child’s school experience.

But here’s what makes our campus particularly powerful. The research distinguishes between occasional outdoor experiences and sustained, integrated nature-based education. Single field trips offer value, but they don’t fundamentally transform how children relate to their environment or how they engage with learning itself. Our students aren’t visitors to nature. They’re inhabitants of it, spending substantial portions of every day in natural settings across all seasons and weather conditions.

Parent testimonials consistently reflect this integration. One mother describes how her children “have a deep appreciation for nature and really stop to admire things on our walks and teach me things about the environment that we live in. The outside is an extension of their classrooms.”

Another parent observes: “Because of where the school is situated, with the beach and forest behind it, there is weekly interaction with nature. The students spend a lot of time outdoors, and because of this, they are better able to focus on their studies indoors.”

That connection between outdoor time and indoor focus isn’t coincidental. It’s one of the documented benefits of sustained nature exposure.

How Space Shapes Development Across Age Ranges

The educational impact of our extensive campus shifts and deepens as students progress through our programs, always aligned with their developmental needs.

Early Learning: Foundation Through Exploration

Our youngest learners experience the campus as an extension of their classroom, where natural materials become learning tools. Sticks, stones, leaves, and water aren’t distractions from education. They’re core curriculum. A three-year-old building a “house” from fallen branches engages the same spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills that later support mathematics. A preschooler carefully carrying water from one location to another develops motor control, concentration, and cause-and-effect understanding.

The research supports what Montessori educators have known for over a century: natural raw materials, such as pieces of wood, sticks, dirt, stones, leaves, ice, snow and sand, can inspire children’s imaginations, and playing with natural materials and learning outdoors is thought to increase children’s care, love and respect towards nature and sustainable behaviour.

Our campus offers these materials in abundance, refreshed by the seasons, unlimited in variety. There are no concerns about “running out” of manipulatives or needing to order new supplies. Nature provides everything needed for rich, complex play and learning.

Elementary: Systematic Observation and Discovery

As students move into our elementary programs, the forest and beach become sites for increasingly sophisticated scientific observation. A tide pool visit isn’t just “nature time.” It’s a lesson in marine biology, environmental stewardship, classification systems, and ecological relationships. Students learn to identify species, observe behaviors, notice patterns across repeated visits, and develop the patience required for careful study.

The multi-age structure of Montessori education adds another layer here. Older elementary students naturally mentor younger ones during outdoor explorations, reinforcing their own understanding while building leadership skills. When a younger student struggles to identify a species of bird or needs help navigating a steep section of trail, older students step in naturally. These moments teach more than kindness. They demonstrate that community members watch out for one another, that help comes without judgment, and that the school is a place where everyone belongs and is valued.

Middle and High School: Real-World Learning Laboratories

By the time students reach our middle and high school programs, the campus serves as a genuine research environment. Projects incorporate ecological surveys, water quality testing, habitat documentation, and environmental impact analysis. Students don’t just learn about scientific method. They practice it, repeatedly, in a complex natural system where variables change, data tells stories, and conclusions must be supported by evidence.

Our High School program takes this even further through our eight-week immersion cycles. Students might spend an entire cycle focused on outdoor education, diving deep into environmental science, sustainable practices, or ecological design. They’re not learning about the environment from a distance. They’re engaging with it directly, developing the kind of embodied knowledge that stays with them throughout their lives.

The School That Teaches What It Preaches

One of our core principles is Inclusion, which we define as believing “that everyone and everything has a role to play in society and our world as we know it. We actively cultivate a community that respects our history and our future, our infrastructure and our ecosystems, our individuality and our connectedness.”

Our campus makes this principle tangible. Students can’t spend substantial time in a functioning ecosystem without developing respect for the relationships that sustain it. They observe firsthand how each organism contributes, how disruption ripples through the system, how balance requires many elements working together. These observations naturally transfer to social understanding. Community, collaboration, and interconnection aren’t abstract concepts here. They’re visible realities.

Parent Harlow Morrison notes: “Westmont provides a supportive learning environment for my children with plenty of opportunities to spend time in nature.” She adds that while the school lacks a traditional gymnasium, “the less formal outdoor space serves the kids well.”

This isn’t about making excuses for missing facilities. It’s about recognizing that our mild Vancouver Island climate and extensive natural space offer something many schools with state-of-the-art gymnasiums cannot provide: year-round outdoor education that builds resilience, adaptability, and a genuine relationship with the natural world.

As another parent points out: “Especially since we live in a mild climate here on Vancouver Island, I think it’s fantastic that kids get to spend so much time outdoors, playing, building, being in the elements, and learning how to explore and enjoy nature through all seasons. In this day and age, children spend so much time inside that I think it’s incredibly valuable for them to have no inhibitions about going outside.”

Beyond Nature Appreciation: Preparing for Tomorrow’s World

Our commitment to outdoor education isn’t nostalgia for simpler times or a rejection of technology. Quite the opposite. We embrace Innovation as one of our core principles, defining it as being “open to change” and believing “that understanding technological progress is imperative to imparting an education that is relevant for our student’s lifetime.”

The natural environment teaches irreplaceable skills for navigating an uncertain future. Students who regularly problem-solve in unpredictable outdoor settings develop flexibility, creativity, and comfort with ambiguity. These aren’t “nice to have” soft skills. They’re essential capabilities for adults who will face challenges we cannot yet imagine.

Consider what happens when students plan and execute a journey from the school building to the beach. They must assess weather conditions, choose appropriate clothing, navigate terrain, adjust timing, collaborate on route selection, and respond to unexpected variables. These are project management skills, risk assessment, collaborative decision-making, and adaptive thinking, all practiced in an authentic context where consequences are immediate and feedback is clear.

Our High School program explicitly incorporates these outdoor experiences into project-based learning. Students might design environmental interventions, develop sustainability initiatives, or create educational resources about local ecosystems. They’re preparing for careers that don’t exist yet by developing the fundamental skills that will transfer across contexts: observation, analysis, collaboration, communication, and creative problem-solving.

What Sets Westmont Apart in the Victoria Market

Victoria offers several schools describing themselves as Montessori programs. Some occupy small urban sites. Others have modest outdoor areas. A few incorporate regular nature activities. But the scale and integration of our outdoor program is genuinely distinctive.

We’re not adding nature as an enrichment activity. We’re using nature as a primary educational environment. This isn’t about checking a box or offering a selling point. It’s fundamental to how education happens here, from the youngest preschooler to graduating seniors.

The result is something parents consistently notice and value. One describes it perfectly: “I LOVE that the kids go to school in a forest. They get to climb trees, learn about nature, walk to the beach and generally exist in a peaceful place. It is safe, it is away from traffic and city noise.”

That sense of safety and peace creates conditions for deep learning. Students who feel secure can take risks. Students who connect with their environment develop intrinsic motivation to understand it. Students who spend time in complex natural systems develop sophisticated thinking that serves them across all domains.

The Community That Grows Here

Our extensive campus doesn’t just shape individual development. It shapes community culture. When families choose Westmont, they’re choosing to prioritize outdoor experience, environmental awareness, and a different relationship with education itself.

This creates natural affinity among families. Parents find themselves connecting with others who share similar values, making friends through the school who become lifelong companions. As one parent reflects: “In the last two years that I have been a parent at Westmont, and also newly arrived in the city, I have made so many friendships with like-minded parents at the school.”

The campus itself facilitates these connections. Our large open field becomes a gathering space where families linger after school, children of all ages mixing together while adults build relationships. The annual moving-up ceremony, held on this field with the entire community gathered, demonstrates the intimacy possible in a school of this size on a campus of this scale.

One parent describes attending this event: “The entire school and community gather on the big field and come together to acknowledge and support all the kids moving from one class up to the next. It was such a moving and inspiring event and the community closeness was really felt.”

The Future We’re Preparing Students For

Climate change, environmental degradation, and disconnection from natural systems represent defining challenges for the next generation. Students graduating from Westmont don’t just understand these issues intellectually. They’ve lived in relationship with a functioning ecosystem throughout their education. They’ve observed seasonal changes, weather patterns, and ecological relationships directly. They’ve developed what researchers call “pro-environmental behaviors” through sustained contact with natural spaces.

This matters for their futures and for the future of our communities. We need adults who understand complexity, who think systemically, who recognize interconnection, and who care about sustainability because they’ve experienced firsthand what healthy ecosystems look and feel like.

Our unique campus isn’t a luxury or an amenity. It’s an essential educational resource that shapes how students understand their world and their place in it.

What This Means for Your Family

If you’re researching schools for your child in the Victoria area, you’re probably comparing academic programs, philosophies, and communities. These are all important considerations.

But we’d invite you to think about something else: where will your child spend their days? What will they see, touch, smell, and experience during the thousands of hours they spend at school? What relationship with the natural world will they develop during these formative years?

At Westmont, they’ll spend those hours in a place where forest trails wind through pristine natural environments, where weekly hikes to a secluded beach are routine, where changing seasons teach patience and observation, where waterfalls cascade through ecosystems they can study and protect, and where the outside truly becomes an extension of the classroom.

They’ll develop not just knowledge, but wisdom. Not just skills, but sensitivity. Not just achievement, but appreciation. They’ll become the kind of people our world desperately needs: curious, capable, connected, and committed to building a sustainable future.

Ms. Macklam ends her testimonial with a simple observation: “There is so much to learn about life outside the school, never mind what it teaches you inside.”

That’s the Westmont difference, grown from exceptional natural space and 67 years of understanding how to use it.

Ready to see our campus for yourself? We’d love to show you how education looks different when it happens in partnership with the natural world. Contact us to schedule a tour and experience what makes Westmont unlike any other school in Victoria.