What makes Ayla a Trailblazer?
“(Ayla) helps her fifth-grade students discover their passion for nature. Her innovative teaching methods allow her students to learn science through art.”
Ayla Mae Wild is an artist, bikepacker, Nordic skier, and Waldorf teacher who lives and plays in the Sierra Valley with her Husky mix, Topo. She spends her week teaching creative, kinesthetic, interdisciplinary, and colorful curriculum to her tiny pod of students, the #greywolvesgirlsquad. Together, they trampse around Tahoe identifying birds, comparing and contrasting tree species, converting fractions to decimals, painting, drawing, and singing in rounds. Her weekends are spent reading by the hearth, making beaded earrings, skijoring with her dog on frozen rivers, water coloring landscapes, and making huge dinners with her community. Ayla worked as an outdoor educator and National Park ranger in Yosemite National Park and Maine for a decade, and predominantly exists in hiking boots, ski boots or barefoot; she even wrote a children's book about young girls finding themselves wearing hiking boots called "The Princesses I Know." She is delighted to take her new boots on adventures near and far, and to get them muddy as soon as humanly possible.
