Detuned from Nature: Why outdoor experiential education is a neglected necessity for today’s youth

The experience of education in Western cultures for the last two centuries has remained largely unchallenged and unchanged. The factory model of education, that emerged in education in a response to the industrial age, has students spend 7-9 hours a day in a highly structured environment. Even though this style of education may have sufficed for students over a hundred years ago in an era when the norm was lifelong factory jobs through adulthood, I don’t believe this method of instruction is aptly suited for the world we live in today. Students today don’t have the benefit of living in such a structured and consistent world as those who came generations before did. The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex and interconnected and as educators we have a responsibility to aptly prepare our students for the world they will enter as adults. I believe that as educators we should  begin look to the outdoors for some of our answers as evidence has shown that outdoor education can address some of the issues inherent in our education system. Research has shown that outdoor education has the potential to increase student focus, student physical health, and the potential to raise self confidence for students.

A Traditional Middle School Building

Instead of trying to change the format of our educational systems to respond to the changing nature of our world, educational institutions have rather scaled up the content knowledge and workload required of students in recent decades. The last 20 years have seen an intense narrowing of curricula in response to increased standardized testing and an increased dependence on the use of technology to attain knowledge and demonstrate content mastery (school based experiential outdoor ed). This trend in educational practice constrains the opportunities students have for learning and has been proven as an ineffective method to provide the best educational experience for all students. Luckily, recent efforts in the field of education have been moving towards changing curricula and assessment through personalization and proficiency based grading, but even so are we doing enough as educators to reimagine how we could provide the best learning experiences for our students. No matter how much we challenge ourselves to provide the best curricula and methods for educating our students there is still another barrier to education that I believe we must begin to break down to find more effective means of teaching our youth. What I am speaking to is the inherent lack of outdoor experiential learning opportunities for our students. Outdoor education opportunities for youth are few and far between and the potential for learning in outdoor environments has remained largely untapped by educators. Yet, studies show that there is evidence to demonstrate that outdoor education has the potential to improve the well being of students, and the potential to be able to provide a more effective and engaging learning environment over a traditional classroom setting.

Students using a microscope outdoors at
 Fiddleheads Forest School,
a pioneer all outdoors school in Oregon

Improving student focus isn’t the only benefit of spending time in the great outdoors either, there are numerous health benefits that our younger generations both desperately need and deserve. For example, just by spending more time outside, people are less likely to have nearsightedness (Spencer, 2014), they are less likely to be obese, less likely to be depressed and they will have lower rates of heart disease, osteoporosis and MS (Klasky, 2014). Honestly, these reasons alone should be enough to convince someone to break out of the brick and mortar institutions. If the future well being of our students is what we care about, why do we choose to continue to make such an egregious error in trying to create a productive learning environment. We struggle as educators to make an effective environment for learning when a perfect one has already been created for us.

The benefits of the great outdoors and outdoor experiential learning are not only limited to physical health and student engagement either, student self image and self worth is drastically improved by spending time in nature. This is especially true for young women as well. Through the middle and early high school years our society puts a lot of pressure on adolescent girls to adhere towards aesthetic expectations that are often unreasonable, unattainable, and often unhealthy. Spending time outdoors may be a healthy component that could be added to the lives of these young adolescents. By spending time outdoors, young adolescents can escape the systems that confine their perception of identity and form new ones. For example, say a student has a novel outdoor learning experience that involves her learning how to use a kayak for the first time. This student now has gained a new life skill and can now add that to their own list of self identifying traits.

You may be asking now, how can a student learning how to kayak improve their learning? And albeit, the connection isn’t terribly direct either, but let me explain. According to psychology a big component to our feelings of purposeful existence is due to Role Theory. Role Theory argues that a large component of our self identity is from the roles we fulfill through our day to day experience. By providing a novel skill or experience for a student through something such as outdoor learning, we provide students the opportunity to develop new roles within their lives. Why is this significant? Well, because often times students don’t feel as though they can uphold or adhere to the roles expected of them in their day to day lives. What providing this new role or experience can do for a student is both creating the opportunity for new intrinsic interests to develop and also allows for student to expand their personal identity into other facets of life. Through expanding the number of one’s own defined roles it can make perceived failure at one role far less detrimental to the individual’s own well being. A personal example of this for me was in highschool. If there were times when I felt excluded from my peer group at school as a student, I always had the role and peer group of being a snowboarder to fall back on. By having this additional dimension to my identity throughout my high school experience I was able allow failure in other facets of my life impact me to a lesser degree. This tertiary role I identified with helped me to both persevere academically and socially. Speaking from my experience, I feel as though every student deserves additional self identifying roles like I had and as educators  we can through outdoor education help to create experiences that can develop into lifelong passions for our students.

I believe as educators it is our responsibility to provide the best experience we can for our students to help prepare them for adulthood and if we can begin to include outdoor experiences into our curricula I think we will be headed in the right direction. Outdoor education has been shown to improve student focus, student physical health, and has potential to raise self confidence for students. That being said the cost of using nature as a classroom is very little in terms of capital required as the classroom has already been created for us. If we wish to provide these outdoor opportunities for our students our responsibility as educators is to figure out the logistics of bringing our students into nature. If we can manage to do that, then I believe that in the same way nature provides us the resources to survive, nature can provide the our students the opportunity to thrive.

Bibliography

Abbatiello, J. (2014, January 1). Perceived Impact on Student Engagement When Learning Middle School Science in an Outdoor Setting. ProQuest LLC,

Henry, Chris. "A Classroom as Big as All Outdoors." Kitsap Sun. USA Today, 14 Feb. 2017. Web.

Hovey, K., Foland, J., Foley, J. T., Kniffin, M., & Bailey, J. (2016). Predictors of Change in Body Image in Female Participants of an Outdoor Education Program. Journal Of Outdoor Recreation, Education & Leadership, 8(2), 200-208.

Klasky, B. (2014). “Get hooked on Nature.” USA: TEDxRainer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArhjLa4xbNk&t=306s

Quetteville, Harry De. "Waldkindergärten: The Forest Nurseries Where Children Learn

in Nature's Classroom." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 18 Oct. 2008. Web.

James, J. j., & Williams, T. (2017). School-Based Experiential Outdoor Education: A Neglected Necessity. Journal Of Experiential Education, 40(1), 58-71. doi:10.1177/1053825916676190

Spencer, Ben. "Too Much Time Indoors Damages Children's Eyes: Lack of Natural

Sunlight Thought to Be Driving up Rates of Short-sightedness among the Young ." Daily

Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 24 Apr. 2015. Web.

Advising Reflection

Middle Institute SP 2017 Blog post II

Based on the research and readings, what makes a strong advisory program?  What would this look like in practice.  

From the readings and my experience in class it seems that what makes a strong advisory program is the length at which the advisory program goes to support its students. During this tumultuous time for adolescents what they need most is a sense of self worth and peacefulness and through strong support that is what middle educators must strive to provide through their advisory programs. Advisers must do their best to get to know and understand their students to provide effective support as well. In practice, this would require the learning institution to ensure it dedicated enough time for it’s faculty to advise and meet with students.  For the educators working with students this means they have to do their best to make personal connections and deeper understanding with their students. Doing so will help educators understand the student’s perspective and will provide educators with further insight on how to most effectively teach to all of their students needs.

Teaming Reflection

Teaming is the heart and soul of middle school organization.  What are you wondering about middle school teaming?  What ideas in the readings or class discussions have challenged your thinking?  What ah-ha's have you had thus far?

I’ll start off by saying that I went to both a middle school (grades 7-8) and an upper elementary school (grades 5-6) that had divided their student body into teams. Through these four years and up until this class really I had never really understood the purpose of teaming in a middle school. This I think was due to the lack of commitment to team building and team building in my middle school experience. The only purpose I derived of having team organization in a middle school from my experience was to create a localized environment to prepare students for the more independence needed in high school. The academic teams in my experience lacked much of what is emphasized as necessary for creating a successful team in our readings. After reading and discussing teams in class, I’m starting to see as to why teaming is considered a good approach to teaching middle schoolers. Teaming, if done properly, does seem to have serious potential with regards to student support and academic achievement.

Vocabulary Lesson in my Unit

Here is the lesson plan and student worksheet for my vocabulary mini-lesson, there is no learning plan attached to the lesson plan because the student worksheet is the lesson outline I used to conduct the lesson. For this lesson, I had wanted to extend beyond just learning terms through breaking down definitions and allowing students to understand the lesson vocab in a simulated real life application. So after familiarizing the students with the definitions of the  lesson vocab on quizlet I had students use the vocab of the lesson in a stock market simulation. Using the corresponding worksheet, students responded to questions that applied the vocab in a manner that related to their own faux stock portfolio. The goal of this practice was to provide meaningful context to help students learn and understand the vocab presented to them.

Performance Criterion 3.1: Candidates design learning environments that support individual learning marked by active engagement.

This lesson relates to PC 3.1 as the tasks at hand in the lesson required the students to complete independent work to apply vocab in a meaningful way. The engagement factors stems from the tech integration through the student stock trader app. Through the use of this app the goal is that not only do students learn the vocab, but also to give students to use the vocab in a meaningful way that relates to their own personal experience and allows students to simulate how the vocab would be used in a real world setting.

From this process I learned to look at vocabulary in my content area in a whole new light. I realized that in history there are essentially two potential types of vocabulary. The first type is historical content vocab, these would be vocab words that relate to a specific period or event in history. Words such as sharecropping, the holocaust, and the nuremberg trial would fit into this category, these are all related to content as they tie to specific events or periods in history. The second type of vocab in my content area I would consider to be historical theme vocab, these are words that relate to recurring themes throughout history. Words such as revolution, independence, or freedom are all typical historical themes. What sets these terms apart from the prior group is that they can be applied across multiple periods of human history and often have definitions that are more open to interpretation. Considering I was able to to pull this realization out of one lesson building experience I look forward to discovering more ways to approach historical vocab in the future. Looking forward, I also want to begin to identify sets of common historical themes that can relate to vocab found in human history. I feel that through finding common themes in history, I as an educator will be able to both make content more relatable across different historical periods and to the present day experience.

Through this process I’ve also been able to identify that my biggest crutch seems to be my talking pace. Though not approaching hyperspeed I know that my oral communication in a classroom setting can accelerate faster than I can stream my own consciousness. This nervous reaction to speaking in an academic setting can often lead me to move too quickly between points to allow myself to consider what I am going to say next, often leading to accidental “ums” and “likes”. This was also a problem when I first started teaching snowboarding and addressing groups, but as time progressed and I began to gain comfort speaking in that setting those problems faded away. The same I expect will happen as I get to spend more time addressing a formal classroom. What’s great though is that I am now conscious of this problem and have been able to catch myself speaking too fast on a few occasions since teaching this unit. This makes me look forward to the future opportunities I will have to build and hone in this skill and to consider other aspects of oral communication I can improve upon to become a more engaging speaker.

Resource Evaluation

The central resource for my unit is the text “Brother Can You Spare A Dime”, linked here is the resource evaluation I created earlier in the semester for this text. For this resource evaluation I calculated the readability, discussed text organization and structure, language and syntax and a variety of other factors that helped me to analyze whether this text would be appropriate for my unit. I also delved into pre, during and post reading strategies that could be used with the text.

Performance Criterion 7.1: Candidates plan instruction by drawing upon knowledge of content areas to meet rigorous learning goals.

Through completing a resource evaluation I am able to draw upon my own knowledge of the content area to see whether the text is appropriate for the unit I am planning. This in depth process allowed me to put more thought into what reading skills and strategies can be applied to this text as well as, allowing me to begin to think about methods of implementing this text in a meaningful manner.

When reading and using texts in history/social studies I think there are two prevailing factors the texts level of language complexity and content depth, both of which can lead to students “drowning” in the text.With regards to content depth, it’s very important to be sure the text your are supplying is not too broad or too specific.One of the great things about history is the amount of content you have availiable to draw from in the subject matter, but that also means as an educator you have to consider whether the text covers the appropiate amount of content for its intended use. Historical texts also vary greatly in language complexity, and there is definitely a wide breadth of texts in a wide variety of formats within the content area. There are many variables within language complexity as well, before thinking about supplying a text to a student a teacher in my content area must consider things such as authorship, style of source (primary, secondary, tertiary), readability, how accessible the text is to a modern reader and so on. The list of thing to consider with regards to language accessibility is far from scarce.

I think one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had from the use of resources in my own teaching segments and in my placements, is the value of structured note taking exercises and options for historical texts. By providing students with a structured note taking option/assignment allows students to know ahead of time what content to focus on in the text and what I expect them to gain as learners from the text. For students new or uncomfortable with note taking, structured note taking resources can really help students build note taking skills.

Back To Back Mini Lessons

There were a fair amount of materials and resources I used for my back to back mini lessons, so I will do my best to include all of them and my purpose for their use. First here is my lesson plan, my lessons were two twenty minute segments investigating the Great Depression. These first two lessons were an introduction to a larger unit about the Great Depression and understanding historical perspective. For both of these classes my main content resource was “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” by Milton Meltzer. The two lessons were shaped around preparing students to read the text and use the text to support their own faux narrative piece

To begin the unit in the first lesson, I started with a 3-2 pre-assessment, asking students to write three things they know/think they know and two questions they have about the Great Depression. I used this to help me understand the level of comfort and understanding students had with the historical period. Afterwards to hook students, I played a recording of Brother Can You Spare A Dime, which is a period song sharing the same namesake as our text and is based on the struggles of an average American man a year after the market crashed in 1929. Next in the lesson I created a nearpod presentation on a few key vocab terms, such as interest, stocks, shares ect. Through the course of the presentation I had all the students read the definitions aloud and then redefine them in their own words. At the end of the presentation students each took a fill in the blank quiz on nearpod to demonstrate their learning of the vocab words.

Between classes I had students read the first three chapters of our text, to check for reading I had students respond to a low stakes, one question reading quiz that asked students to list one of the six causes of the Great Depression outlined in the text. Afterwards we read a portion of the fourth chapter of the text and then culminated the lessons with a short performance assessment. Students responded to one of two prompts and used information from the text to create their own fictional narratives. At the end of the lesson after finishing the prompts, I handed out the unit final assessment to students.

Performance Criterion 3.1: Candidates design learning environments that support individual learning marked by active engagement.

If there was one thing I was really happy with after teaching my two lesson segments, was the level of engagement and participation. Granted, I was teaching my peers and not an actual 9th grade classroom, I still feel though that even though I may have rushed or included too much content in my unit I was able to create an engaging classroom experience. Between group reading strategies that allowed everyone to read and attempts at more creative forms of assessment and content presentation I feel as though the lessons I taught at some level required each student to actively participate in a meaningful manner. I feel as though within the field of history it is easy to slip into a focus solely on teaching and assessing content knowledge, that it can be difficult to reach levels of understanding and to create meaningful performance experiences. I feel as though I created an engaging environment by extending past an emphasis on content knowledge. I gave students opportunities to understand and relate more with the content and an opportunity to “do” the content per se, through a short narrative write.

From this experience with regards to this Performance Criteria, I believe my next step to creating learning environments that support individual learning is to avoid content overload. I think if I were to teach this unit in a classroom setting I would have had too much content for 9th graders. So in the future I believe that I should plan my lessons more loosely and consider that students may need more time to learn and understand concepts. For instance if students are having trouble with a vocab word in a lesson, have time set aside so I can provide a different way of instructing the content.

Performance Criterion 6.1: Candidates implement multiple methods of assessment to monitor learner progress to  inform instructional practice.

Through pre-assessment, formal and summative assessment I was able to reach this criteria in my mini lessons. My first assessment, the 3-2 prea-ssessment allowed me to actually reconsider the part of the focus of my unit. Through asking what students know and questions students had about the depression I was able to have a better understanding of what they already know and they want to learn in the content area. Later on I was able to use nearpod’s built in quiz feature to create a fill in the blank quiz to formatively assess vocab through selected response. Then the final assessment, a performance assessment journal prompt allowed for me to assess student understanding of historical perspective as well as providing a more creative form of assessment. I honestly felt the best part of my lesson was my assessment structures and uses throughout the lesson. With regards to creating assessments in general, I haven’t had much experience forming selected response questions, so in the future I plan to be sure to take some time to practice creating meaningful selected response questions.  

Tech Contract and Tech Letter

Tech Contract

Technology Contract For a Fake School

Teachers, Students, Administrators and Parents are expected to understand and/or follow the parameters laid out in the following document and are subject to punishments and repercussions if these parameters are not followed and/or understood. Please read through and sign the following document and return this to Mr. Boyd by no later than tomorrow.

[  ] Students understand Tech is a privilege

[  ] Guided use is a must

[  ] Understanding not to tamper with soft/hard ware of School Devices.

[  ] No food or drink near tech

[  ] Stay on your own account do not tamper with others.

[  ] Only visiting teacher approved sites

[  ] Headphones and personal devices are only to be used by teacher’s discretion.

[  ] Not sharing personal identification information

[  ] Understand damage forgiveness

[  ] Understand what level of ownership of a device you have     

[  ] I forfeit the rights to have a computer issued by the school.

[  ] Respecting privacy (i.e. not sharing photos of others without permission)

I understand and agree to all of the following, and submit to the consequences if any or all of these are broken.

Student's name.                                     Student's signature.                              Date

_________________________.       ___________________________.    _________

Parent/guardian name.                          Parent/guardian signature.                    Date

_________________________.       ___________________________.    _________

Technology Letter

Fake Union High School

Technology Agreement letter

2016/2017 School Year

Dear Parent or Guardian of a Fake Union High School student, During this transitional period in our school year, our administration has deemed necessary for our students to be allocated the means to interconnectivity through “One to One” technology. Our one to one program is intended to allow students to be immersed in the world of technology through educational formats, in order to propagate interests and proficiency in academic areas whilst allowing educators to further personalize learning in order to better reach and react to their interests.

Leading up to this administrative decision, students have been slowly weaned into the concept and application of technology in the classroom. Many classes already incorporate technology in their classes in the forms of smartphone apps and classroom laptops which students can rent out of our high school library. We believe that this early immersion will act as a broad base for students to expand upon in order for them to greater understand the use and responsibility in accordance with our expectations of this one to one initiative.  

The one to one initiative in our school has a lot to offer your children and we foresee tremendous growth with them through the tools a laptop has to offer. There are many free to download programs that we can use to thoroughly engage our students in nearly every class; other programs that cost money the school is willing to/has purchased for use on the laptops they will be receiving. The laptops offer more opportunity to individualize projects, and also gives them their own time to do their work when at home. When every student has their own computer, they can share information quicker and easier, as well as collaborate more efficiently.

Students are expected to care and maintain for their laptops for the course of the school year. Students are expected to bring their laptop charged to class. If any issues arise with the technology it is imperative that students bring their laptop to the IT department to resolve the issue. Outside of system and program updates students are expected to have school faculty perform maintenance on their tech. Since students are allowed to bring their tech home they can use the computer for personal use as well. Students are allowed to download programs and store data on their laptops. Be aware though at the end of the year the laptops are factory reset so make sure any personal data that you want to keep is saved externally!

        

It is very clear that this will be new to many of you, and you may be uncomfortable with your child having a large responsibility and tool at their disposal. You may be worried, for instance, that your child may not be able to properly take care of such a large responsibility and that they may break it. The school has implemented an insurance policy, wherein an initial fee of 25$ and a deductible of 25$ will cover any accidental damage done to the laptop just in case. You may also be worried that they will be distracted by their computer in school, but we have installed an app that monitors their laptops during and only during school hours, to make sure they are not doing inappropriate tasks. At home, the distractions may be useful to teach your child how to manage time between fun and work. During school, your students will also be taught how to use their laptop and surf the web safely, as well as shape an appropriate online identity.

Attached to this letter is the Fake Union High School Technology Contract which will require you and your child’s careful review and signature. We ask that the content of the contract and the contents of this letter is diligently assessed and that any questions that you or your child may have about the contents are posed to our administration at

FakeUnionHS@gmail.com.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely, Administrative Staff of Fake Union High School.

Tech Contract and Technology Letter

The Both the technology contract and the technology letter were  group endeavors by myself and other students in the secondary education program. The technology contract is a list of explicit expectations of the students with regards to technological integration in the classroom. Outlining what is permitted and proper conduct in the classroom. An agreement between teacher, student and parent as to how the technology will be implicated in the classroom. The technology letter states the reasoning and offers a more in depth description of the pseudo tech program. Its purpose being to inform students and parents in depth the use and application of tech in our school’s classroom.

Performance Criterion 4.2: Candidates accurately address common misconceptions of the discipline.

I believe through the process of creating both a technology contract and a pseudo letter to parents regarding how technology would be used in the classroom, allowed us as future educators to consider the misconceptions that are often associated with tech implication in a classroom. I feel as though oftentimes tech integration is seen as a cure all for improving a school's educational practices. I believe that going through this exercise really allowed us to consider multiple dimensions that result from the implication of a 1 to 1 technology initiative. That, while technology has the potential to enhance the learning experience of students; its effectiveness relies on the best judgement of the educator. The potential of tech in the classroom is not only limited by its availability but also how effectively it is implicated by the instructor.

Reflection

As a future educator I hope that the use of technology in the classroom can provide the opportunities for a more in depth and complete learning experience for students in the modern age. That with technology comes not only more accessible and more diverse assessment and learning tools but also more pathways for students to accumulate knowledge and engage as citizens in a global community. I believe that technology has the power to empower students by providing more opportunities for students to convey learning and original ideas. I also believe that technology has the potential to create more globally literate individuals, that it has the power to inform provide future generations with the wherewithal to create positive change in the world. I genuinely believe we are at the tip of the iceberg with regards to the way technology will change and reshape the way we interact with each other and the rest of the world. With that being said, the ever increasing complexity of technology and its implications in our world also spearheads my biggest concerns with tech and tech in the classroom. I worry that as a future educator the tech skills I teach the students in my classroom will prove useless or outdated after a short period as tech evolves into new forms and formats.

I think my biggest takeaway from this lesson was the value of clear expectations with regards to tech and the use of technology in the classroom. That explicit and clear understanding between the instructor and their pupils on how they will use tech in the classroom is crucial. Having a set list of boundaries and expectations to refer to create a solid foundation for how technology will be used in the classroom. This lesson also allowed me to further consider the different dimensions of tech integration as well. That the student, teacher and parent/legal guardian each have their own realm of concerns and perspectives on technology in the classroom. Technology is its own wide encompassing dimension that has many implications both in and inside the classroom and like any tool has its own strengths and limitations. When used properly it can enhance the quality of learning but, without proper implication tech can be as effective as hammering a nail with a screwdriver.