Doing school outdoors – key practices

Locations and buildings

The question of location comes up immediately when thinking about an eco-school. One of the first questions to ask is: Do you need a school building? There are examples of both public and private eco-schools with no central building: learning takes place outdoors throughout the year, typically in more than one site, perhaps depending on the season or on the curriculum or on other factors. Other eco-schools do have their own building, which in turn may constrain the choice of outdoor learning spaces if they have to be within walking or cycling distance. In short, this is a highly consequential decision.

Another way to approach the question of location is to make an inventory of natural and semi-natural areas that the school might be able to use for its programming. It is helpful to note such characteristics as jurisdiction/management, the size of the area, what features it contains (e.g., streams, wetlands, cliffs, special habitat, community gardens), what activities are allowed, how much use can a site reasonably withstand, are there seasonal restrictions and opportunities, who are the other users of this site, what safety considerations are there, what are the access points, etc. Identifying two or three of the most promising sites may help you make decisions about whether a building is required, and if so, where it would ideally be located.

A cautionary word needs to be said about relying on the urban outdoor environment. Urban parks are generally shaped according to human aesthetics and needs, not on the terms of the plants and animals living there. You may perhaps have access to places where the city is involved in ecological restoration (e.g. of stream or forest habitat), but those are fairly uncommon. Most parks are heavily engineered environments designed for a lot of foot and bike traffic, playing and picnicking, and with easy maintenance in mind. Not only are they low in native biodiversity, but they offer an image of the natural world that is “created for humans” rather than existing and flourishing on its own terms.

 This is not to say that meaningful nature-based learning cannot take place in urban settings—that can be a valuable dimension of the eco-school curriculum, especially when undertaken in a spirit of critical inquiry. However, we think it’s important also to have students experience “wild” or “backcountry” places, places where human intervention is minimal and the voices of the natural world can be heard more clearly. This could entail a few field trips a year to wilder places. Ideally, some of those trips will include overnight stays so children can experience an evening walk in the forest or can hear a chorus of unfamiliar birds early in the morning.

Picture showing the sky and mountains

Weather

When thinking about how much time you want to spend learning outdoors, the issue of weather immediately comes to mind. You will be familiar with the range of weather to be expected in your particular context, but perhaps you have not considered it from the viewpoint of a group of young learners. In our experience, kids are tougher and more resilient than many adults give them credit for. We’ve often seen a child be perfectly comfortable in a t-shirt, even in the pouring rain, while visiting adults are struggling to keep warm. But of course there are safety margins to adhere to as well (see further discussion below). The fact that students will happily learn outdoors in a BC coastal rainforest in November does not mean that is realistic to do so in Nunavut. Likewise, in the heat of an Arizona spring or late fall, it may be too hot to learn outdoors.

So considerations of weather will certainly influence your decision about whether a school building is needed. Yet other solutions are worth considering. One BC school erected a yurt for use in the winter months, allowing students to warm up and dry off on particularly wet and cold days and affording a warm and cozy space for some kinds of learning activities. In another location, existing park shelters provided small zones of dryness, and tarps could be hung up to increase the covered area. On certain days, a trip to the library or to the swimming pool brought variety to the outdoor experience.

Above all, however, the school must work actively to build students’s capacities of self-care and resilience. The message should run something like this, adapted of course to local conditions: “We are careful to keep all of the kids warm and safe; however, they will spend significant time outdoors when it’s wet and cold. Proper clothes, good nutrition, and physical health are all important for students to benefit from what our school has to offer. Recognizing that some students may have had limited experience of the outdoors, we work to help all of them become comfortable and confident in outdoor settings, and to develop the skills needed to flourish there.”

Supplies and other practicalities

If students are spending extended time outside in all weathers, they need to be equipped accordingly. This is, of course, a potential equity issue; the school might seek donations from sponsors or fundraise to make sure that every child has access to good quality outdoor clothing and supplies. While the number of items needed is not huge (e.g. for the BC rainforest it might include thermal underwear, waterproof outerwear, hat, gloves, waterproof boots…), children also need to have a change of clothes available (possibly two), and a backpack that is reasonably weather-resistant. Labels on all clothing are essential.

In our experience, students have little trouble learning to go to the bathroom in the outdoors, as long as the school provides adequate and consistent guidance. In some areas toilet facilities are provided; the school may need to communicate with the facility operators about the increased demands on the system on school days. In other areas the school may bring in porta-potties, or pack along a shovel to bury the waste, or devise a system for packing the waste out. Children adapt rapidly to “how things are done around here”, and of course these intentional approaches to the disposal of human waste are part of the ethos of the eco-school itself. Similarly, if hand sanitzers are being used to prevent the spread of germs, it makes sense to build awareness of viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoans into the children’s understanding of themselves as part of the natural world.

Outdoor learning may mean that equipment and  supplies need to be portable. Pull-carts can be extremely useful, allowing scientific instruments, field guides, art supplies and much else to be brought to where they’re needed. Some schools make use of iPads or similar tablets for taking pictures, others use inexpensive cameras that are easy for students to carry and use. If the school has a building, one room can function as a resource centre where all of these things are housed securely and signed out when in use. As an alternative, the school can purchase a trailer and set it up as a mobile resource centre, either towed each day to the learning site or locked up nearby. One use of such a centre is as a portable library, with books available for reading outside on dry days. It can also serve to collect resources developed by the teachers year after year, along with teaching materials from other sources.

Safety and risk management

While it is not commonly recognized or integrated within mainstream schools, there is a large body of expertise developed by outdoor educators and outdoor programs to ensure student safety, wellbeing and flourishing. Not infrequently, eco-schools are started by people with extensive experience in that field, who will naturally integrate safety policies and procedures into the routines of the school. This is not always the case, however. We cannot stress too strongly that every eco-school should be familiar with the standards that have been developed for outdoor learning, and if necessary bring in someone with the necessary skills and qualifications to help with policies and training.

To give you a sense of what is involved, here are the elements of an adequate, standards-based approach to outdoor learning:

  • Underlying philosophy/theory: students need risk – understanding benefits and students evaluating risk and making choices;
  • Risk management plan;
  • Risk assessment – site evaluations & updating;
  • LOP—Local operating policies and procedures;
  • First aid training, first aid kits;
  • Emergency procedures;
  • Training staff and students in safety, risk assessment and management.

In addition, of course, public schools need to follow the rules of their districts, and all schools need to ensure their activities are in compliance with local laws and bylaws.

As noted in the last point above, safety plans and risk management are not just something for adults to pay attention to. Students themselves should be involved in setting boundaries around safety, such as defining the perimeter of where they should go and what hazards there are. So, arriving at a site, a teacher might ask, “OK, what hazards do we see here that we will want to stay clear of?” And after looking around, one might hear back from a child, “I can see there is a log there with a giant spike, we shouldn’t go near that.” Then the students and teacher agree that log with the offending spike is off limits. Part of the goal is to enlist students in the self-enforcement of safety plans and procedures, so that they remind each other of boundaries and safety rules. Once this culture is established at a school, though it needs continual reinforcement, it usually requires less effort on the teachers’ part to maintain.

Because of this, the first weeks of each school year are often spent fostering a sense of community, exploring the learning sites of the school, and having students connect with each other and then the teachers. In safe and familiar conditions, students practice basic things that will be important during their time outdoors, such as safety rules, walking in a line with your buddies, getting your backpack ready, and other practical and logistical skills.  Little by little, the boundaries of learning are expanded in order to keep things new and engaging. Over this period of two months or so, students really learn the importance of boundaries and internalize the safety protocols that will be used every day. Often this incorporates playful or imaginative language that becomes past of the safety culture of the school. For example, at one school we worked with, stick play was identified as a potential risk. Teachers told the students that they had to resist picking up the “Jedi mind sticks” that were calling to them as they walked along the trail, and after a while, the kids would remind each other, “Don’t let that Jedi mind stick control you!”

As students get older, more and more skills can be taught. First aid training for students will help with safety while giving them valuable life skills and self-confidence. Kids can also be taught to recognize changing weather patterns that might imply that plans need to shift, such as in the case where strong winds come up and being in the forest implies a hazard from deadfall. By introducing the language of “safe choices,” teachers can help kids think more carefully about risk and make better decisions. It’s important to keep in mind that the goal is not to reduce risk to zero, since that would mean avoiding doing anything at all. Kids need opportunities to engage in outdoor “risky play” and to learn to make their own decisions around risk, even as teachers or other adults set boundaries to what they are prepared to accept. The school will have to evaluate what range of needs it can realistically accommodate, and as diverse children join the school, it will need to make adjustments to its procedures to ensure their safety while having them benefit from what the school offers. Many of these assessments will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, and may require additional training or resources, including staff.