July AmeriCorps Spotlight- Toni Coulter with Nevada Outdoor School

 My name is Toni Coulter and I am currently serving at the Winnemucca Nevada Outdoor school as an outdoor educator. I was born in Reno Nevada and have lived most of my life in Reno and Winnemucca. I currently reside in Winnemucca with my husband and two adult children, along with our assortment of pets. 

I learned about the AmeriCorps program, Nevada outdoor school from my child Sedric who was a member before me. They suggested that it might be something that interests me and I have been enjoying my time here since September 2022. I chose to be an outdoor educator because I enjoy working with children and have had previous experience.  To me AmeriCorps is a great help in communities bringing people together to learn and share new experiences, in our society that revolves around cellphones this service is beneficial.  Members too are enriched by this program, not with just the human connections, but with life and job experiences. We as the AmeriCorps team are here to enrich, improve, and give back to the community. 

I have personally grown much during my service.  I am a very shy person who has a hard time interacting with people, I am more confident in my interactions with people and my public speaking skills are improving. Also the knowledge of our environment and its wildlife that I have gained is a bonus.                

Mostly I have led and participated in lesson in the schools, just seeing the logos on our shirts as we walk through the halls is enough to excite kids and our lessons not only educate, but encourage them to share bits of knowledge they have on the subject. We are not their just teaching lessons on good stewardship of our land, but encouraging participation and teamwork.  

I’d like to share the Battle Mountain Watershed lesson; I feel that the Watershed lesson is overall the most challenging of all of the lessons. Not only is it a very physically exerting event, but its full of information that members must absorb to share in the lesson and takes a lot of memorization. This lesson was done on a particularly windy day, gusts constantly blowing our materials away, but we made it work and still it was a great lesson.  As a team we overcame the obstacle and pulled off a lesson that was both informative and fun which is our goal.