A Riverbend Journey Comes Full Circle

When James Miller was eight years old, the day at Riverbend began with a guitar.

Camp opened in the Outdoor Amphitheater, where a counselor strummed and sang songs like “Thank You Dirt, You Made My Lunch.” What sounded silly at first slowly revealed something bigger: that every part of a sandwich—and every living thing—was connected.

Those lessons continued on the trail, where shoes were optional and mud was required. On one adventure, James and a small group of campers followed the creek all the way to the Schuylkill River. When they decided they wanted to fish—without fishing poles—their camp counselor showed them how to make one from a stick, yarn, and a thorn from a locust tree.

They didn’t catch anything. But for James and those campers, catching fish wasn’t the point. “Every one of us was gaining an appreciation for the natural world,” he remembers, “by discovering new things through experience.”

Those early lessons didn’t stay at Riverbend. James carried them with him through college, where he studied ecology, and into graduate school.

Today, James has been teaching science at The Agnes Irwin School for more than a decade. His approach is grounded in a simple belief: “If you are learning about the natural world, then sitting in a classroom and looking at pictures is a poor way to learn about it.” Whenever possible—especially during the COVID years—he brought his students outside to learn science through experience.

James also helped reignite the school garden at Agnes Irwin. As he tells his students, if they get dirt under their fingernails or on their white polos while working in the garden, then they’re “doing science right.”

For James, “connecting with the Earth requires feeling the Earth.”

The experiences that shaped James at Riverbend are the ones he passes on to his students today.