Location

SF Roots Forest School is located at 573 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr., San Francisco, California, and our Forest School program takes learning beyond the traditional classroom into the beautiful nature spaces throughout San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

We spend our days outside, in all seasons and in all kinds of weather. As we travel through the park and explore our surroundings, children are encouraged to freely follow their sense of wonder. They ask questions, investigate, make discoveries, and ask even more questions.

Every experience becomes an invitation for movement, sensory exploration, dramatic play, creative expression, and discovery. A fallen log may become a place to balance, a stick may inspire a story, and a small creature may lead to an afternoon of observation and investigation.

At SF Roots, the focus is on the journey, not the destination. We give children the freedom, time, and space to create their own paths, follow their curiosity, and develop a meaningful connection with the earth and the natural environment.

Because our classroom is the outdoors, our drop-off and pick-up locations may vary depending on the day’s exploration. Specific drop-off and pick-up locations will be communicated directly to enrolled families.

OuR EDUCATORS

founder + Director

Lina Cerdena

Hello! I am Rodelina “Lina” Cerdena, an educator, a mother, and the founder of SF Roots Forest School. I was inspired by my active five-year-old child to pursue my dream to design my own program where children blossom and grow.

My passion has always been teaching and educating children. I came from a family of educators. I’ve learned so much from my father, mother, aunts and uncles whose lives were spent in the education field. I clearly remember how they spent countless hours in planning for their curriculum. But what I admired most was their dedication in establishing authentic relationships with their students. I have a huge respect for them and vowed to honor them in my teaching practices.

My love for nature started when I was a young child in my little town in the Philippines. I spent my weekends in our family farm where we had fruit-bearing trees and farm animals such as bunnies, birds, goats, chickens, pigs and cows. I enjoyed climbing up mango trees, doing kitchen play with mud, showering in the rain, petting bunnies and collecting chicken eggs. We also had a river where me and my childhood friends enjoyed splashing with water, collecting shells, feeling the sand on our feet, watching the birds fly and staring at the sun. My recollection of my childhood years brings so much JOY to me. I desire that my students would also make joyful and lasting childhood memories while they are in my care.

I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in Education at Pangasinan State University, in the Philippines, with honors. I continued my education in the United States and majored in Early Childhood Education at City College of San Francisco. I was awarded with various certificates of completion in Child Development including Professional Development and Advocacy, General, and Administration. I currently hold a Child Development Program Permit, the highest permit granted for preschool educators to be able to teach, lead, train and supervise early childhood programs, issued by the State of California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Over 17 years of being in Early Childhood Education in the US, I worked in various roles that help me deepen and expand my expertise. I have experiences in every aspect of the school setting from potty training to teaching, leading a team of educators and supervising a program. I am bringing all this wealth of wisdom into my own school.

I am wishing to be given an opportunity to care and co-create wonderful learning experiences with you and your child.

Lead Teacher: Riko Cerdena

My name is Manrico Cerdena III.  The children call me “Teacher Riko.” I am Lina’s husband, father to our son Apollos and the eldest of 8 siblings.  I was born in Philippines and immigrated here to America when I was 6 years old.  Since living here, I’ve been fortunate enough to experience both worlds, by noticing its cultural differences and what unites us as humans. 

My life’s journey started with a passion for mechanics and woodworking at our home garage with my grandfather. I eventually followed that passion in a career in SFO (San Francisco Airport) maintaining the ground equipment and fueling the large aircrafts.

Being the eldest of 8 siblings and supporting my family, I have always been involved with their education and development and enjoyed watching them grow. This passion eventually led me back to school and pursue an exciting career change into Early Childcare Education. My first experience teaching was at Spectrum Center in Daly City where I was teaching in a special needs program for 2 years. Afterwards, I found an opportunity to work as a teacher at a Reggio Emilia school program in San Francisco called Presidio Preschool for another few years, then moved to the Helen Diller Preschool at the Jewish Community Center San Francisco (JCCSF) where I was heavily involved with their transitional kindergarten program. My work with the children involved nature education and having the Presidio National park as our outdoor classroom. I was also given an opportunity to start the school’s woodworking curriculum in which I taught the children safety handling of tools, planning, designing, creating and building projects.

The progression of my life as an Early Childhood Educator may have started later in my life but with this pivot, I not only restarted as a student, then becoming a teacher but now has been called upon at times to lead workshops and sessions about Nature Pedagogy and how to implement nature experiences in classrooms. Now with SF Roots Forest School, I no longer have to implement nature in a classroom experience, but have nature itself be the classroom, and that education exists beyond walls and doors.