Permission
Teachers: You are enough. And you shouldn’t ask permission to do what’s right for kids. Or for you.
You mean I can just take my students outside to do the same lesson we do inside and it counts?
This question came from a master teacher with over three decades experience as a classroom teacher – high school special education – and a doctoral degree on top of that.
She was seeking permission. From me. She was wondering if just taking students outdoors to carry on with her regularly planned lesson counted. If it was enough. If she was enough.
I knee-jerked an excessively emphatic and encouraging,
YES!
Her body relaxed, eyes softened, face rested in relief.
Thank you.
Because I gave her permission.
Enough
And then we had some time together, so we dug deeper.
She had always thought outdoor learning was supposed to look a certain way. She needed to know more about ecology or biology or names of plants, insects, animals. Or how the local rocks formed. Or the ins-and-outs of ecosystems. Or how climate change works.
Maybe she needed to be more outdoorsy. To have spent more nights sleeping under the stars. To have hiked more mountains. To be more of a “nature girl.”
Outdoor learning was the purview of the environmental science teacher down the hall. Not hers.
Marshmallow Metrics
As we talked, we tossed around the modifiers “deep” and “shallow” to describe nature-based learning. In our conversation, deep NBL was something like an ongoing study of a local riparian area complete with taking water and soil samples in the field, recording data over the course of weeks, testing those samples in a lab, compiling a report, and presenting to City Council about what should be done based on the findings. Or a 6th grade camping trip where students did low and high ropes course activities, learned how to make a fire, cooked their own dinner, hiked to the top of a mountain, and roasted marshmallows for S’mores. Shallow, in our conversation, looked like taking regular teaching and learning activities outdoors. A spelling test in a forest. Reading poetry in a field. Think-pair-share activities while walking around the block and getting some fresh air. Shallow NBL wasn’t about nature – it was just taking place in a relatively nature-filled environment.
Yes. Shallow counts.
I reaffirmed.
Which at the time seemed like what she needed to hear. She wanted permission to “just” do “shallow” nature-based learning. She wanted to matter in a world dominated by marshmallow metrics.
To have that be enough. To have an external party – me, in this case – give her a stamp of approval or certify it as good.
Off With the Hierarchies’ Heads!
In retrospect, I cringe at that whole conversation. Those words. The hierarchy and snootiness. The better-than and less-than implications. The idea that I was an authority who could somehow anoint whether different types of nature-based learning count.
As the heir apparent Nature-Based Learning Queen for this moment only, I declare,
Off with nature-connected learning hierarchies’ heads!
And I renounce my role as queen.
I should have asked,
Do you think teaching your students outdoors is good for them? For you?
Yes.
she would have answered.
I know it is.
Feminist Soap Box
But then again, I feel like I shouldn’t have had to say that at all. And she shouldn’t have been seeking permission to teach in the way she knows is best for her students.
I wasn’t really intending to rant about feminism here and I’m also not saying she sought permission only because she’s a woman but I DO believe it’s a factor. And when it comes to nature-based learning, I am overwhelmed by how the things we carry – as women in particular – undermine positive changes that are good for students. And good for us.
Insecurity. Imposter syndrome. Feeling less than or not enough.
It has to stop.
This same social crap means my brilliant and accomplished girlfriend didn’t negotiate for a fair (higher) salary and is statistically underpaid by 16% (and actually probably more because she is incomparably amazing) compared to her male colleague in a similar role.
It means a badass woman athlete I know who has completed – I’m not even kidding – a 100-mile foot race through mountains at nosebleed altitudes wonders, with straight faced, dirt scratching, eyes down, soft-voice earnestness, if she’s ‘strong-fit-fast-good’ enough to join a new group of women on a morning run.
For the teaching profession – dominated by women both in the U.S. (nearly 77% in K-12 schools) and globally (67% in primary schools), the implications of these embedded feelings of inadequacy and deference to authority are massive.
“Not-enough” thinking in the context of educational change-making is a serious threat. Coupled with rampant disrespect for teachers, poor compensation, demeaning rote curricula, professionals in all kinds of other fields puppeteering what happens in schools with their big pocketbooks, boogey(wo)man narratives, and damaging “if-you-can’t-do…” adages that reinforce those feelings, the threat is existential.
I am worried.
And resolved.
If we truly want to mainstream apple-a-day nature-based learning (our mission here) in formal education, we need to bring it down from metaphorical and literal mountaintops and into the classroom.
We need every teacher to identify nature-based learning practices as teaching practices and part of their expertise.
And as their responsibility.
So let’s demystify what it means.
Let’s decouple outdoorsiness or “environmentaliness” from nature-based learning.
Let’s make nature-based learning accessible and relevant to teachers within the constraints and contexts of where they work each day.
Let’s celebrate each next right step.
Let’s support a teacher’s fundamental right to do what she knows how to do: teach.
And to improve her craft by integrating nature-based learning practices in bite-sized and big gulp ways that count. They all count.
❤️,
Becca
Thank you! Something I not only needed to hear, but need to share with others. Outdoor play/learning doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be... outdoors. I fall into the trap of feeling we don't have a "nice enough" space for outdoor learning. We have a few young trees and an open field (that's away from the standard playground). But I'm finding it is good enough! I really appreciate this perspective!
Thanks for making me understand it's Okey to do repeated lessons outdoors and indoors with special learners.we might not have fallen trees around tho we see some fallen branches.