Celeste Royer has retired from environmental education twice — and she’s still working, this time on a bill headed to the California Senate.
Celeste spent over thirty years directing environmental and outdoor education for the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education, running the Rancho El Chorro Outdoor School before becoming a consultant with Ten Strands. She’s been in the room for nearly every major piece of California’s environmental literacy infrastructure since 2014 — the state Blueprint, the California Environmental Literacy Initiative, and now AB 2158, the Outdoor Learning and Environmental Literacy Act of 2026, which just passed the State Assembly 77 to 0.
Celeste and host Scott Shepherd talk about what it actually takes to get people who disagree about nearly everything else to agree on kids — and why the bill’s coalition went looking for support from pediatricians and English-language-learner specialists before it ever wrote a page of legislation.
In this episode:
- How AB 2158 passed the California Assembly with unanimous, bipartisan support
- Why “student health” became the unifying frame for the outdoor learning campaign
- The California Environmental Literacy Initiative’s Partner Portal, and how it connects teachers to nearly 700 community-based organizations
- Scott’s own research on field trips and school motivation
- What forty years in one field, and two retirements, actually teaches you about advocacy
ABOUT CELESTE ROYER Celeste Royer is a consultant with Ten Strands, working on the California Environmental Literacy Initiative and the campaign for AB 2158, after more than 30 years directing environmental and outdoor education for the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education. 🌿 tenstrands.org
ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net
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