Our Team
Kelsey Campbell
Owner and Operator of Cedar Valley Farm and Forest
I graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Outdoor Recreation, Parks, and Human Ecology with a focus in Early Childhood Development. My love for nature and connecting people to it started at an early age. I grew up on 22 rolling acres and spent all of my childhood sharing that with my friends and teaching them the lessons the land had taught me. Through this unstructured free play in nature, I was able to develop creativity, resilience, problem solving skills, and empathy that I continue to draw on daily in my adult life. When I started college I went back and forth between majoring in nature focused and child focused career paths until finding the perfect middle.
I have experience working as a Naturalist at Spring Mill State Park, as a camp counselor, an outdoor educator at another forest school, and as a full time early childhood educator at Indiana University. My partner and I started our farm, Cedar Valley Permaculture, in 2014 with the goal to connect ourselves and others to healthier foods and more sustainable solutions. Since then, our mission has grown and we have offered classes to children and adults about nature as well as farming. Our three daughters have since joined our farm/forest and seeing our project through their eyes has really inspired me to continue to grow an immersive farm/forest opportunity for toddlers and young children. Their intense curiosity and vigor for the world around them has reignited those feelings in me. It has been such a joy to be able to provide opportunities for them to learn naturally and discover the magic that the world has to offer. I am always working to further my education in both child development and nature based practices to provide the best possible experience for growth and connection for the children I am teaching.
Sarah Kolodziej
Afternoon Lead Teacher
After completing my English degree at IU, I stumbled somewhat accidentally into a teaching career after I got a job as a special ed para at University Elementary. I pursued my teaching license while working there, and was then hired as the librarian at an elementary school in south Baltimore, where my husband and I had moved temporarily for his graduate program. Although I really loved my teaching job there, we were very happy to return to Bloomington, my favorite place in the world, to have our son. A younger brother has since followed; both attend Cedar Valley.
At Cedar Valley, I’ve found that helping to foster kids’ natural curiosity about each other, how things work, and the world around them has unexpectedly combined everything I loved about special education (improvisation and flexibility, interpersonal connections) and library work (deep immersion in a subject, critical thinking). As the afternoon lead, I enjoy having the opportunity to think on my feet about what the group and each individual child needs during the more low-key, recovery-oriented portion of the day. The kids and seasons are always changing, which means that every day at the farm is different in the best possible way.