Brown Bear

I’m Marlin, or Brown Bear. I actually got Brown Bear working at Outdoor School at Penn State University, which is very similar to Outdoor School here in Oregon, where fifth graders from around the area come for three days and two nights. Why is it important? It’s incredible. I know for a fact, kids do things they’ve never done before—even in rural Pennsylvania. Kids did not know about finding owls at night and echolocation and fishing and finding newts and crayfish in the river and stuff like that.

Here, before the kids go they’re like, “This is going to be so ridiculous. I don’t even want to go.”

But every time the kids come back they’re like, “It was amazing!”

They’re coming back singing camp songs and all this stuff. It’s literally life-changing. That’s when I started working with kids is when I worked at Outdoor School. I knew this was going to be the job for me and I did it and I was like, “Oh my goodness. Brown Bear is who I is [sic] and that’s what I’m doing!”