Learning in nature = backward
How will I build a community of learning through nature while they think nature = backward?
Dear People Who Care About Students:
(For those short on time, the Tl;dr summary follows these pictures)
Write (or type) the first 4 words that come to mind when you see this picture. GO!
Now, do the same exercise for this photo:
Share your words for photo 1 and photo 2 in the comments please 🙏🏻.
Tl;dr
Lots of people think outdoor learning is backwards. Many also think “high tech” learning is best. The genesis of these views — held by a huge variety of people — has to do with both lived experience and dominant narratives.
In Kenya, a group of teachers participating in the Good Natured Learning Fellowship are ready to take on the negative view of nature-based learning — bringing their knowledge, skills, and will to bear on integrating 🍎-a-day nature-based learning into their teaching craft.
Learning in Nature = Backwards
Only a few hours into our Nature Retreat for the first cohort of Kenyan Good Natured Learning Fellows, (a group of 14 teacher-innovators from schools in and around Nairobi who are adopting, adapting, and innovating 🍎-a-day (routine, modest doses) nature-based learning in their practice) each Fellow scribed one hope, wonder, and concern they had about nature-based learning on three small pieces of paper. Then, they crumpled the papers in preparation for Kenya’s first-ever (I’m pretty sure) “snowball fight.”
I laid out some snowball fight rules of engagement from growing up in Wisconsin (neck down, no aggressive beaming). On the count of three, Fellows threw their paper snowballs creating an anonymous flurry of hopes, wonders, and concerns.
Then, each Fellow picked up three snowballs.
One by one, the Kenyan Fellows read one another’s’ hopes, wonders, and concerns about nature-based learning. Having done this exercise with educators in Colorado, what was most striking was the universality of these musings – some almost identical despite vastly different geographies, schools, systems, cultures, and environments. I have seen lots of concerns about if colleagues/administrators will be supportive of nature-based learning, especially outdoor nature-based learning. Plenty of mentions of risk. Wonderings about if students will really learn. I’ll pick through other snowballs over the coming months, but for now, I want to start with this wonder:
Valid Perspectives
Remember the outdoor classroom photo above? I extracted it from an article from United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) about a refugee camp in Tanzania. The article powerfully conveyed “nature=backward” thinking. It went farther, actually. Nature isn’t just backward. Nature is hostile. Here are a few quotes from the article juxtaposed with the image:
The outdoor classroom is portrayed as an environment completely antithetical to learning — and to basic human wellbeing. The students and educators are stuck outdoors because no one cares enough to put resources into making a “real” school building. They are at the mercy of the weather – with wind and sun and rains and branches literally attacking them. It was a short piece, so there was no mention of insects and snakes and a litany of other reasons why this outdoor classroom is bad, but you can probably imagine. Bottom line: the outdoor classroom in this refugee camp wasn’t a place that supported learning; it actually inhibited it.
I have heard this question and perspective in various forms a bunch of times since I moved to Kenya and started sharing my work to mainstream nature-based learning, especially learning outdoors. Many people – both Kenyan and “wazungu” (white people) expats – asked/cautioned:
‘Becca, we (they) finally moved away from learning under a tree in the village where we (they) didn’t have any schools - why the hell would we (they) want to go back(wards) to learning under the tree?’
This is a pit in my stomach, nausea-inducing question-cum-caution.
And it’s not the first time I’ve heard it.
In Colorado, I heard it from Latine immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, and other Central American countries.
The gist:
‘We worked so hard – and immigrated to this country – to make sure our kids have better opportunities than we did (learning under trees in the pueblo.)’
To boot, in Colorado, the cold climate, distinct from that found in most of Central America, generated worry that students would get sick being outside in the cold.
I heard it from White parents and educators too, who just wondered if outdoor nature-based learning was effective.
These perspectives are valid. They are based in different lived experiences. Let me never discount any of this.
Different Worlds, Different Words
You’ll be unsurprised by my first 4 words for the outdoor classroom photo above:
Healthy, Free, Learning, Growing
And, here’s where my world and words diverge from many others:
Where I see blue sky, beauty, opportunity, and all of the best ingredients for healthy, learning, growing, thriving humans (students and educators alike), a refugee or an immigrant or people from a huge array of different backgrounds might see risks, carelessness, shoddiness, shabbiness. Poor quality education. They might feel a sense of unease. Of being left behind. That no one cares about them. A lack of safety. They might even experience real fear. At the very least, they might find the outdoor classroom lacking the “right” ingredients for learning.
Indeed, there is a massive gulf between my lived experience and those of people in different situations, especially people closest to humanity's greatest challenges (being ripped from home and homeland, genocide, poverty, trauma, violence, the climate crisis, disasters – including, importantly, natural disasters).
I won’t pretend to comprehend what that feels like. I will listen and learn and adjust and empathize. I can imagine, if I were living a different life, maybe it would just feel good to have a real roof over my head, walls around me, and a sense that someone cared enough to provide those things for me.
I think I would want the nicest schools money can buy…
If fact, I do want the nicest schools money can buy
The desire for “nice” things is quintessentially human. Our definition of “nice” just varies.
In education, “nice” (too) often boils down to “high-tech” — classrooms filled with tablets, e-readers, infinite access to online learning platforms, Smartboards, etc. Students making films, using 3-D printers, coding. (Also nice buildings, state-of-the-art performance halls, top-notch athletic facilities).
LOUD messages from power players in education (including, notably, tech billionaires who eschew tech for their own children) shore up the perception that money buys learning in the form of technology. It follows that low-tech is backwards. Learning under a tree is about as analog as it gets – so you can imagine where nature-based learning falls in this conversation.
Even in refugee camps — in a context of undeniable hardships without many trappings of “nice,” technology gets high marks. Consider these quotes from the UNHCR article about the Instant Network Schools in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya superimposed on the image accompanying them:
My first 4 words here? Crowded, Chaotic, Stale, Hot
I zeroed in immediately on the girl in the foreground who I feel is looking at me (at the photographer, I suppose). She looks unhappy. Angry, even.
I have no idea if it was hot on that particular day. I do know if it was I would have wanted to be anywhere but inside that room. I don’t know if that girl had a particularly hard morning, or was sitting with the trauma of having lost a parent or siblings or had seen innocent people killed in conflict or a hundred other awful imagineable-but-unimaginable reasons for her expression. Maybe I’m misinterpreting it entirely.
And, I will say that in the outdoor classroom picture, when I squint to look at students’ faces, I can’t find a single child with a similar expression.
Obviously my lived experience impact my interpretation here.
In the Bag
There’s A LOT to wrestle with here. About what “state-of-the-art” education really is. Of what is the best education money can buy. About what can be done to make an outdoor classroom a high-quality learning environment. About opportunities and innovations. About all.the.things. You know I’m here for it!
For now, I want to return to this Fellow’s wonder:
Is this really doable? How will I build a community of learning through nature while they think nature = backward?
At the end of our 5-day, 4-night nature retreat in which the Kenyan Fellows immersed themselves in the theory and practice of nature-based learning, we brought out the snowballs (miraculously they hadn’t melted!). We had a new snowball fight, and then as each fellow read a snowball out loud, the cohort decided if that hope/wonder/concern was “in the bag” (i.e., dealt with) or if we would still have to reckon with it over the course of the year. The reckons we placed under a rock for safekeeping and later reference.
Imagine! This particular wonder ended up IN.THE.BAG!
Perhaps this is a sign of true believers who have now imbibed the nature-based learning Kool-aid. (Bwahahaha).
I think it’s actually indicative of master teacher-innovators who are ready and willing to put their newfound knowledge, skills, and will1 for 🍎-a-day nature-based learning to use with their students.
I know it’s an action taken by a group of teachers confident that education isn’t inside computers, but learning might just grow on trees.
❤️,
Becca
Credit to Elena Aguilar who has identified 6 gaps that adult learners need to overcome to change their behavior: knowledge, skills, will, capacity, cultural competence, and emotional intelligence.