Take Class Outside

What was taken for granted when I was growing up – unstructured time outdoors to play, explore, discover, build – is no longer the case for increasing numbers of children. Many children have little if any meaningful connection with nature. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, uses the term -‘Nature Deficit Disorder’- to describe the human costs of alienation from nature - diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses and feelings of isolation and containment. (Louv, R. (2008). Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature deficit disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books.(p. 430 ebook). Research continues to accumulate regarding the necessity of contact with nature for healthy child and adult development.

In Over Schooled but Under Educated, John Abbott says:  

“The outside world is the brain’s food – the richer the diet (experienced by the child through sound, vision, smell, touch, and taste), the more rapidly the brain develops.” 

“The method people naturally employ to acquire knowledge is largely unsupported by traditional classroom practice. The human mind is better equipped to gather information about the world by operating within it than by reading about it, hearing lectures on it, or studying abstract models of it.”

(Abbott, J. (2010). Over Schooled but Under Educated. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Pg 39, 430 (ebook)

 

Given these growing insights, it seems wise to ‘send them outside’ and to ‘take class outside.’ Here are two glimpses of what taking class outside might look like. The first story is of 6^th graders in Berkley California who are creating an edible school yard - - http://www.edutopia.org/edible-schoolyard-school-garden. The second story is about 4^th graders in Waterville, Washington who are engaged in a scientific study in collaboration with the University of Washington about the habits of horny toads - http://www.edutopia.org/naturemapping-technology-fieldwork-video.

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What is a great learning environment?

Spaces where learners flourish are spaces of discovery and possibility, spaces where imagination and creativity are nurtured, spaces where learners engage deeply and meaningfully with each other and the world.

I believe that most good teachers want to create such spaces for their learners. Too often, however, policies, structures, and unexamined assumptions push schools to “operate as if everything a child needs to know is on one piece of paper” and suggest that teachers need to “tear little scraps off that piece of paper and hand them across a desk to the child, who eventually has the sum total of the one piece of paper.”*

This is, of course, a caricature. However, it may come close to describing the approach of more classrooms, courses, and professional development workshops than we would like to admit. Is this the best way to support learning and development? Do learners flourish under such an approach? No and no. We need more innovative approaches that take advantage of the fact that we live in the "Wikipedia age."

I seek out stories of engaging learning spaces to open up my imagination. Consider what is happening in a Minnesota elementary school that is studying the ancient ecology of a prairie wetland - Learning Landscape: Kids Monitor Terrain with Tech http://www.edutopia.org/wetland-ecology-technology-video (6 min). I see discovery, possibility, and deep engagement. Do you?

* Pg 19 in The Third Teacher; 79 ways you can use design to transform teaching and learning

Why ‘spaces’? Why ‘learners’? Why flourish’?

When educators talk about learning our minds are conditioned to visualize activities within the 4 walls of a classroom (although the recent explosion of digital devices and Web 2.0 technologies are beginning to make inroads here). However, Steve Wheeler in a recent webinar on The Future of Web 2.0 Technologies in Learning said that only 20% of what young people learn happens in the classroom*. Where does the other 80% happen and how? What do those learning ‘spaces’ look like? How do they teach? I am hoping that if we change our language from ‘classrooms’ to ‘spaces’ we may be able to think more broadly and deeply about how and where learning occurs.

Similarly, when we talk about learning we tend to think in terms of ‘students’ – young people who attend an educational institution. The reality is that students are human beings who by their very nature are always learning. They learn from the structure of the learning environment, from educational procedures and processes, from relationships with people and the broader world, from . . .The question is not if they are learning, but what are they learning? Perhaps if we discipline ourselves to talk and think in terms of ‘learners’ rather than the narrower term ‘students’ we might learn to think more carefully about what the learner is learning both in formal and informal situations, inside and outside of ‘school.’

Just as discourse about the where, how and who of learning needs to be opened up. so too does discourse about indictors of learning. National, provincial, and state initiatives pepper that discourse with talk of meeting standards and raising test scores. In reaction, some assessment organizations have offered procedures that are more immediately embedded in the learning process, but somehow the discussion still ends up in the ‘meeting-the-standards' and 'raising-test-scores’ camp. What if the most important question we ask about learning and the learner was – Is this learner flourishing? Immediately we would have to grapple with the question of what it means to flourish – for this particular learner to flourish. Now we have a different kind of conversation.

 

The point being - language is important. The words we use can open up possibilities or restrict our practices to the familiar. Possibilities lie in wait when we talk in terms of ‘spaces where learners flourish.’

·      https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2011-02-23.0722.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350