Scott Shepherd

Hopeful By Nature

Education EN ↓ 6 episodes

There are people all over the world connecting kids and communities to the natural world in ways that build hope and a genuine desire to protect the places where we play. Most of them will never make the news. Hopeful by Nature goes to find them. Hosted by Scott Shepherd, dad, educator, and founder of Wildward Institute, each episode is a conversation with someone who saw a gap and built a bridge. From ocean educators and activists across the globe to conservationists in your backyard — these are the stories that remind us what's still possible. New episodes every week.

Author

Scott Shepherd

Episodes

Begin With Yourself - Why Every Kid Needs to Climb and What Sensory Processing Taught Me About Teaching My Own Classroom 06.07.2026 41:09

Scott Shepherd has ADHD, and he didn't have real language for what that meant until he became a teacher and started building accommodations into his own classroom — timers, visual cues, time outside. What he didn't expect: those accommodations helped every student, not just the ones who needed them most. This week's guest discovered the same principle from the opposite side of the desk. Emily Wish...

It Doesn't Discriminate -- Building Careers in Conservation for Young Adults with Disabilities | Susie Schroer, AmeriCorps YES Initiative 29.06.2026 47:14

A sigmoid colectomy took nine inches of Scott Shepherd's intestine and nearly a year of his mobility. For twelve months, he was a member of the disability community he'd never thought much about before. This week's guest has spent her career building access into that community for others. Susie Schroer manages the Youth Empowerment Stewards initiative — YES — placing young adults with...

Run Away From Home What a Himalayan concept, a phone ban in Thailand, and a rain-soaked rafting trip taught me about designing outdoor programs that actually meet people where they are 22.06.2026 42:30

Ghar Se Bhago. It's a Hindi phrase that means run away from home. But not away from something — toward something. The discomfort of the unfamiliar. The growth that waits just outside your front door. Krishna Patel found that phrase on a sticker at a campsite in the Indian Himalayas after her 21-day NOLS backpacking course. She put it on her Nalgene. It became her life motto. And it might be th...

It Starts With One - How two Australian risk managers are using community for conservation 15.06.2026 48:45

The beach where Scott Shepherd learned to surf is closed. Not occasionally — up to 300 days a year, Imperial Beach in San Diego County is posted as unsafe for swimming. Decades of inadequately treated sewage from the Tijuana River have contaminated the Pacific Ocean in the southwest corner of the United States. The waves are still there. The water is not safe. This week on Hopeful by Nature, Scott...

We're in the Goo -- What a blind father, a broken wood stove, and a bed bug infestation taught two dads about raising outdoor kids 08.06.2026 33:06

Alex Terry's father has been blind most of his life. He couldn't drive, couldn't see the trailhead signs or the snow conditions. But he could get excited. And when a young Alex came home talking about some upcoming adventure, his father would light up — not politely, genuinely. That's what started it. Not perfect outdoor education. Not expert instruction. A blind man getting excite...

"From Fear to Frontier" | Forbah Sandra N. — Leading Ocean Literacy and Environmental Education. 01.06.2026 35:19

She learned to swim two years ago. Now she's teaching kids in Cameroon to dive. Forbah Sandra Ngwemetoh grew up in Limbe — a coastal city on the edge of the Atlantic, inside one of the most biodiverse marine environments in Africa. Environmental science wasn't in the curriculum. Ocean literacy didn't exist in her school. When she became an educator and asked her students what careers they dreamed...