ImagineIT Phase 4

Dilemmas in Outdoor Education

Dilemma 1: Structuring Outdoor Experiences

Teachers are pressured with a lot of concepts, skills, and processes to teach. Our administrators make sure that we are spending our time on activities that are justifiable and will increase student abilities as measured by test scores.

However, time outdoors, in order to truly teach students about exploration and cultivate their creativity requires informal experiences in addition to formal ones. My dilemma is how to navigate these two domains of the rich formal lessons that can be learned outdoors with the loose unstructured time required to develop nature appreciation.

This dilemma mirrors larger trends in our society noted by scholars like Richard Louv. As growth of formal outdoor activities like soccer leagues has increased in recent decades, “mounting pressures [to manage children's time] has eclipsed unstructured time and natural play.”

Addressing the Dilemma

On the field trip and introductory activities, I need to be generous with the time allotment in order to provide some extra time so that there is time for unstructured exploration.

Dilemma 2: Student Comfort as Naturalists

Here is a dialogue from the first field trip I led, in which I brought a group of 3rd graders to a nature center and went on a hike in the woods.

Student: Mr. Newman, are there bears in these woods?

Mr. Newman: No. There have not been bears around here in many, many years.

Student: Okay. Are there wolves here?

Mr. Newman: No dear. The only wolves in this city are in the zoo.

Student: (A short time later) Are there lions here?

This took place within a forest preserve in Chicago. Traffic and road noise were visible and audible through the trees. As I tried to assuage the student's fears, it became poignant how

different my own experiences have been with my students.

Many of my pupils associate forests with fear and danger. In much of their lives, they are cut off from a vivid interaction with the natural world - the windows of my school do not even open. Students fear people in the forest (What Louv refers to as the Bogeyman Syndrome) as well as nature itself in the form of mosquitoes (West Nile Virus) and brown recluse spiders.

Addressing the Dilemma:

I will be starting off slowly in a space where students are already familiar. I have a series of activities on nature appreciation and developing awareness of the natural world that can be done at the school. I also have observational games that can be played on the school groundsso that students can associate the program with fun activities.