Letter 3, Part 1: Maslow

Outdoor education, environmental education, and nature-based learning - Love them all - and they're not the same

Hi hi! It has been a minute, again. I miss you between letters! Write me back (comments section -woot!), won’t you? 

In fact, I’m realizing I miss you too much between letters, so I need to write a bit more frequently (i.e. more than once a month). Also, I have so much to say (surprised? I thought not.)

This particular letter is part of a ??-ogy. I don’t know how many letters will make up this series, hence the ??. I just know it’s going to be more than one and probably fewer than 26 (But don’t hold me to it! That’s just my favorite number. What’s a series called after trilogy? 26-ogy?).

Speaking of which - I know you’ll want to receive all of these letters. Best way to do that is to:

OK. I hope this letter finds you well. How are things going for you and yours?

I imagine this series of letters might put a bit of a bee in your bonnet (not literally, of course, as that would be super uncomfortable and unfortunate for the bee and your noggin). You get the idea, though. You see, this particular letter is about definitions and Venn diagrams and hierarchies of needs and all kinds of things loaded with my subjective analysis of information. And evolution of ideas. 

When Erin Allaman and I started Good Natured Learning (check out my Day Job 👆🏻at the top). Woah, I just almost gave you the middle finger emoji instead of the pointer finger emoji, which would have conveyed quite an unintentional message! This is the danger of emojis in letters that are supposed to be harkening pen-paper-analog stuff. I would never have accidentally drawn a hand pointing its middle finger at you. I wouldn’t have drawn a hand at all! Anyhow, when Erin and I started Good Natured Learning, we originally called it the Nature-Based Learning Project. This felt straightforward, honest, to the point. We thought we really had nailed it. 

Insert months of protracted, frustrating, and uninspiring conversations about what we’re not. About substantive, much-more-than-semantic differences between what we’re trying to do and the incredible fields of Outdoor Education (OE) and Environmental Education (EE). We love ❤️ OE and EE. (BTW - I totally would have hand-drawn a heart, so that emoji is fair game).

Now, I must pause to reiterate an important point. And since this is my substack, I won’t use the royal “we” and make Erin speak through me here (though I know she feels the same about this one):

I LOVE ❤️ Outdoor Education and Environmental Education. 

In fact, if you read my last substack letter, you will know that I’ve spent almost my entire career in Outdoor Education (with some Environmental Education woven in here and there). So, as I continue here, I want you OE and EE lovers to go sit under a tree to read the rest of this letter and breathe deeply and remember my love for OE and EE (and go back to that centering as needed). 

Let me come out and tell you what I think. This is my letter, after all. You don’t have to agree with me. In fact, I would love to hear about your disagreement (or agreement) in the comments.

Here’s what I think. 

1. Nature-based learning is not the same as Outdoor Education.

2. It’s also not the same as Environmental Education. 

And, even though it is often part of excellent OE and EE, nature-based learning’s reputation is suffering from its constant conflation with those awesome fields. 

Nature-based learning needs to break free from the trappings – good and bad – of OE and EE to become its beautiful self. 

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Let’s start with how my thinking on this evolved through months of discussions. 

First, Erin and I both made Venn Diagrams –  here’s mine:

Please don’t judge this piece. It was my F.irst A.ttempt I.n L.earning (have you seen FAIL as an acronym?). I’m including it here to spell out the evolution of my thinking. I do actually move well beyond this. 

This chicken scratch thinking was a useful thought exercise, but I still felt trapped in cyclical and counterproductive conversations with partners in OE, EE. And with prospective funders, and really with lots of peeps. So many conversations in our early days started something like: 

Other person: “So the Nature Based Learning Project, eh? I love nature education. My 6th grade class went to this forest…mountain…lake…camping…campfire…singing…s’mores…transformational. I still remember that to this day.”

Me: “That’s awesome. I love camps too. The Nature Based Learning Project isn’t really about camping though.”

Talk about a winning conversation starter. It only got better from there where I had to spend entire conversations explaining what we do not do rather than what we do-do. 

Early on, we had what came to be a pivotal conversation with Katie Navin. Katie is a badass environmental educator and change-maker getting kids access to nature with the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (an org I love and respect). In that conversation, she said some impactful things in response to my verbal diarrhea about how NBL is different from EE. She was concerned that if we (then the Nature Based Learning Project, now Good Natured Learning) insisted on nature-based learning (NBL) being different or apart from EE, then we risked “splintering the movement.” She explained that geologists and biologists both identify as scientists - so couldn’t NBL folks, OE folks, etc. all identify as educators? Fair point. 

I got really stuck on that idea of splintering the movement and the experience we were having trying to explain what we do. You might even say I was fixated on it, letting this gentle provocation bounce around my brain a bunch more than is probably healthy (not your fault, Katie 😉- just a sign that I needed some nature time to stop ruminating!). 

In thinking about the relationship between NBL and EE (and OE too, as that was my first love ❤️) I got really hung up on these fundamental questions: 

1. Would separating NBL from EE/OE be detrimental to the environmental education/outdoor education movements? I definitely didn’t want that to happen – I love EE and OE and have spent almost my entire professional career working in those realms. I wrote about that in my last letter, if somehow it got lost in the mail.

2. Is NBL distinct from EE and OE or part of those fields or what?

3. And, (gulp) what is nature-based learning (NBL)? 

Photo by Josiah Farrow on Unsplash

Like most llamas 🦙, this one is slowly blinking at you (or me) and full of judgment. Even though he has grass on his face. Should I tell him?

I felt super exposed. Not quite an emperor with no clothes, because a) I’m a woman, b) I was in charge of very very very little, and c) I knew I had integrity in what I was sensing and trying to articulate. I knew there was something fundamentally different between what I had been doing for the bulk of my career (OE) and what I was focused on now (NBL). But still, I felt vulnerable in my inability to answer those very basic questions, and especially in my inability to define nature-based learning for what it is not just for what it isn’t.

So I dug into definitions of EE and OE from various sources (and other related acronyms too - the other EE - Experiential Education, AE - Adventure Education, PBL - Place-Based Learning, etc.). 

I talked about this for a minute (*cough* lots of minutes) to many, many kind listening ears (🙏) that were very turned on (funny aside: I recently learned that Clara’s - my 4.5 year old - listening ears weren’t working the other day at school and so she had to take a day off of the tire swing…). Anyhow, my friends’ listening ears were definitely working. Erin, of course. Eric. My whole Leadville outdoor exercise crew. 

One day I yammered about this with Carrie Mallozzi and she mentioned the broader relationship it seemed like I was trying to explain. As I listened to her, I thought she was describing a spectrum (NB: this was my filtered interpretation of what she was saying – and maybe she was suggesting something else and I just couldn’t quite understand). Anyhow, after we chatted, I started to make a visual graphic that eventually looked like this:

Phew. Finito! I had done it – I had made my Venn Diagram into a spectrum and had noted some key distinctions:

🌿📚 Location - NBL takes place nearby/indoors whereas EE and OE typically are “field” experiences 

🌿📚 Duration - NBL includes super short - even just minutes-long - nature connection whereas EE and OE typically are hours-to-days long

🌿📚 Purpose - NBL is a basic set of classroom design/instructional tools; its purpose comes from whatever the teacher’s learning goals are whereas EE often has lofty purpose goals of problem solving, civic action, and advocacy skills and OE generally seeks to foster community and build leadership

🌿📚 Content - NBL is content agnostic whereas OE is typically used for leadership/community/culture development content and EE for applied environmental knowledge and civic skills.

I was finally gaining some clarity and a definition for nature-based learning was starting to emerge! And, in classic Becca form, I eagerly started talking about this shiny new spectrum and all the ideas it represented with everyone. I showed this to my friend Daisy Pistey-Lyhne (do you remember Daisy from Stanford?) at the tail end of a conversation about why politicians should care about nature-based learning (a later letter, my friend). I can’t remember if you two know each other, but two of Daisy’s many gifts are being a super fast processor and offering ideas. 

Both shone through when, almost immediately, she said, 

“Hmm…I wonder if this is more of a pyramid rather than a spectrum? Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or something?” 

Well crap. I thought I had finally created a graphic that worked so well – and there Daisy went poking holes in it. But knowing Daisy, I was sure this insight deserved some further thought because Daisy is not about bursting peoples’ bubbles. Especially mine. 

So I did what I do – I went outdoors for a walk or run or bike (it was summer, so I’m sure it wasn’t a ski) – and I chewed on this unsolicited feedback (❤️ you, Daisy). 

After taking some nature-time to metabolize Daisy’s feedback, I came back and in a flurry of creative inspiration, I made this:

If I’m being honest, I actually made a slightly different version of this where there were some unfortunate graphic design choices (OE and EE were on the “short bus” for example) and where there were 5 levels with some confusion at the indoors zone. This version reflects subsequent changes based on feedback from Daisy and others, especially the inaugural cohort of Brains on Nature Fellows. 

So now, I really felt like we were onto something. Lots of the same distinctions emerged as those I’d found by drafting the spectrum, but visually, this allowed me to simultaneously represent how awesome top-of-the-pyramid stuff is (as I mentioned in my last letter, I have spent the vast majority of my adult life working at the top-of-the-pyramid-days-and-nights-under-skies-capital-N-Nature experiences – and much of my adolescence and adult personal life partaking in top-of-the-pyramid-style experiences). I LOVE the top of the pyramid. Bonafide Nature Junkie over here. 

I have to tell you, though: the pyramid representation also had another major advantage. Even as it elevated to the tippy top the transformational beauty of immersive Outdoor Ed and Environmental Ed learning experiences and nature connections, it established nature-based learning as an essential, foundational, basic need. It gave me a real sense of the “both-and” value of all types of nature-connected learning. Because there is value at all levels of the pyramid. 

In a nod to Daisy’s musing, I call this “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Nature-Connected Learning.” For short, it became “the pyramid.” This tool helped Erin and me to crystalize our working definition of nature-based learning:

Nature-based learning is learning outdoors or bringing elements of nature indoors for learning – in any grade level and any content area.

This definition has been super useful to Good Natured Learning. It captures how simple-simple-simple NBL is and why our work is one of connecting dots between proven benefits of nature-connection and this low-cost, attainable set of tools (I wrote about that here). Finally, we had a definition that allowed us to positively present what nature-based learning is – and what we are doing – rather than starting flat footed about what we are not. We finally got to liberate ourselves from being shitty Outdoor Ed or mediocre Environmental Ed. Phew.

Cliffhanger! But I really have to go - my family is trying to get out the door and I’m holding us up. More soon. Write me back.

Hugs,

Becca

PS - Will you please share this with someone who should read it?