I recently gave an interview with a fellow nature educator and the incredible mind behind the website
Outdoor-Classrooms and over the course of the conversation got on the topic of nature-based classrooms as an inclusive and accessible space. I've put together a three part series here on
building your own outdoor classroom, whether at home, in a school setting or even on the go. I've touched upon a variety of reasons I am so passionate about outdoor play--an area of childhood development that I feel has been hijacked by adults at best and completely neglected at worst. Those who know my professional background know that I also have a passion for inclusive and accessible classrooms and learning spaces.
My classroom teaching experience has provided me with a multitude of opportunities to see and facilitate inclusive classrooms in action. Teaching under the traditional inclusion model, I learned that my own personal ideal was not
always ideal for the students in my care. I firmly believe that educational opportunities should be readily available to all children regardless of ability and/or disAbility. I also firmly believe that all classrooms function best when everyone in them is able to access these educational opportunities. In some settings, the "inclusion model" was functioning well to serve this purpose most of the time. In others, it was not.
Through these experiences, I also came to reframe my own concept of what inclusion looked like. Whereas my lens had previously been focused on integrating and eliminating visible lines between "typical" models and peers with "special needs," I came to feel strongly that a well functioning classroom community was not necessarily about making these boundaries disappear but rather recognizing the unique needs
and the common needs of each individual in their environment. Meanwhile, I also noticed a common trend among all children: a significant decline in play skills. Teaching pro-social behavior through play was no longer something I did for children specifically on an educational plan, it was an area of deficit for nearly all my students.
And this extended to the playground. Whereas just about 5 years beforehand most of my students begged to go outdoors and were immediately and consistently engaged, now my students maybe still begged to go outdoors but were quickly disengaged, engaged only in repetitive play schemas (particularly scripted re-enactments of television shows or movies) or even asking to go inside and complaining of boredom. I attributed this play deficit to a lot of potential factors including (but not limited to) an increase in technology/screens, an increase in helicopter parenting and teaching, an increase in focus on "academics" earlier on and a correlating decrease in open ended toys and child led play opportunities. And when it came to the physical layout of classrooms and outdoor spaces, even the toy aisles in stores--things had changed as well. There were more and more single-function, brightly colored, noisy and battery operated materials that encouraged various developmental skills but not a whole lot of movement.
Areas intended for movement also changed. Outdoor nature spaces as well as indoor gross motor spaces were fit with colorful plastic playground equipment and while I certainly value swings, slides, ladders and monkey bars, they also serve only a limited set of functions. But one thing remained consistently true: given the same amount of time in an indoor gross motor space as an outdoor one, children
outdoors eventually engaged in some sort of meaningful play activity whereas indoors, many would literally just run in repetitive circles. And cognitive, social and/or developmental differences that seemed blatantly visible inside of a classroom setting or even an indoor gym were almost invisible outdoors.
Here are a few anecdotal examples:
The Garden of Eatin':
In one of my first years as a lead teacher I taught in an inclusive Pre-K classroom with a high ratio of very aggressive and energetic boys. We had four adults to 12 children and many parts of most days still felt like a battle to merely survive. Indoors we had a divide and conquer mentality. Group times were all about location and proximity to key players. Teaching in a climate with a cold winter meant that we were often indoors for the duration of the day--a whopping 9 hours for some children. We had a gross motor room and even the addition of new (and expensive) play equipment didn't seem to change the amount of spinning, stimming, running in circles and disengagement of most or even all of my students on some occasions. These kids needed to be outside and I, being the teacher who got outside no matter what, was often the one who would gladly take them regardless of the elements. There was a lot of running involved and a lot of space; in related news, I lost 25lbs that year. The kids were all over the place,
but they were all engaged in meaningful play activities even if it took a chunk of time (and physical space) for that to begin and looked different from child to child.
A teacher in another classroom had a garden she worked on with her students each year and one day, in the early spring, she invited my class to come work in her garden. I was honestly a little intimidated. This was her brain child and she was truly epic in her time--the hipster of outdoor teaching if ever there was one! The garden space was adequate, but small and I wondered what would happen when I released 12 very active students into this space, some of whom had probably never seen a garden up close before. Not a lot of the other teachers were running to volunteer to join us on our visit, so I entered those gates with my kids in trepidation. And an amazing thing happened out there. It became almost silent. The students were all crouched low, shovels in hands, pulling weeds, discovering worms and roley poleys and lettuce that had overwintered and returned. And you would never have been able to tell for even a moment "who was who." Students on the autism spectrum, students with medical needs, students with backgrounds of trauma and "typical peer models" all looked exactly the same working in the garden.
Line Up: In another classroom, I had a student who had various learning and processing difficulties. In the classroom, he struggled with impulse control particularly in instances when his ideas and emotions would precede his ability to verbalize them. For instance, he might not immediately think to use words to ask a friend to play but rather hit the boy he desired to play with. He thrived with verbal support, a calm environment and time and space to process. He had a strong need for organization and also for large body movement and heavy lifting. Inside, this may have been portrayed by disruptive behaviors at group times when a number on the calendar was upside down. He might struggle with the compulsive desire to move our classroom furniture (sometimes rather aggressively). He struggled within a small indoor space to move his physical body in ways that were not destructive to his peers' play or their physical bodies at times. And in his play, he loved to organize things and line them up.
Indoors, these tendencies stuck out like a sore thumb. Peers often talked about his behaviors or avoided him altogether at times. But outside, something incredible would happen. Every day, this boy would bypass the bikes, bypass the playground structure, bypass the shovels and pales and even the swings and head right for a collection of plastic chairs, tables, push toys, riding toys and other similar sized objects/equipment. He would begin to lift them, move them and line them up. For the longest time, teachers asked him to stop. They gave him other things to play with, had him sit out at times, you name it--anything to stop the repeated process. And one day, I asked why? Why did we need him to stop moving the furniture and equipment? And so one day, I asked the teachers not to disallow it, but rather to observe with me. And we noticed that as he lined up chairs and tables and other items, that other children were also joining in. Sometimes it was a train. Sometimes it was a plane. Sometimes it was a restaurant or an ice cream shop. Sometimes it was a tower or skyscraper. And maybe the intended "purpose" of a chair was not to be a building block, but why, in the safety of enough space and support, could it not be used as such? Instead of being the kid who other children avoided or asked questions about, he was now the leader of a plethora of outdoor games and activities. His peers sought him and couldn't wait for the day's adventure.
Eye Contact and Nature Contact: In yet another year of teaching, I had a very small class with very close knit families. The students all had pretty long term relationships with one another and their families did as well. Even in this small group, there were unique personalities and learning differences. One student in particular had increasingly visible difficulties with focus, attention and certain social/play skills. As his peers grew to engage in joined schemas of symbolic play, he remained very literal in his play. A block was always a block, never a telephone. As his peers grew to naturally move through routine and repeated classroom and self care tasks, he struggled to remember to get up from his chair and move on to the next activity or how to organize and dress himself in outerwear. He was incredibly bright and soaked up information like a sponge, even if he was staring out the window tracking a ball being thrown back and forth during Circle Time.
Visual tracking is visual tracking, and he was also successful at tracking words on a page earlier on than most peers. He did, however, struggle with making eye contact and given the choice to play and engage with others or independently, always chose to remain alone and watch his peers at play. He would take out a Montessori work mat just like his peers. He would set up a toy, activity or learning material on it, just like his peers. But he would not actually use what was in front of him. A puzzle might remain in the box with the cover on the entire time if no adults intervened with support. Rather, he would watch his peers engaged in their activities. Sometimes, he would scoot closer to them. He never asked to join in an activity and even when prompted, still had no interest in joining. At almost 5 years old, he was still engaging only in parallel play, developmentally typical of children several years younger. More and more his peers noticed and spoke about some of his quirks. He compensated by acting silly or saying "I forgot" but indoors it became increasingly obvious that his focus, attention and gaze were different in many ways from his peers'.
He
loved to go outside. In fact, he couldn't wait to get out there every day. Even so, he would always be the last one ready and needed continuous and consistent support to get his outerwear on and line up with his classmates. Many times, he also needed a quiet space to carry out these tasks so as not to be distracted by movement or noise in the classroom. In transit, his eyes were rarely on the space in front of him and he might wander off or bump into someone/something directly in front of him. On the playground, he did somewhat engage in play. He enjoyed climbing and even sometimes copied or mimicked play behaviors of his friends. They continued to invite him into their games and while he couldn't adapt a stick to be a magic wand, he could repeat Batman's line verbatim the first time he heard it. One day, it was rather rainy. Not necessarily a great day for our playground, but a perfect day for what I called a duck waddle. As we filed out of the front door and waddled down the sidewalk, quacking, I heard our little friend call "Stop! I see something!" He'd found a garden snail on the front step that none of the rest of us has even noticed. This little boy who struggled to focus, to tune in (or tune out) and even to make eye contact was the only one in the group who discovered the snail. His peers were enthralled and everyone spent the remainder of the walk honing in on the ground to see what we might discover along the way...
Playing in the field levels the playing field. When children (and adults for that matter) encounter nature, something phenomenal occurs. Our experience outdoors is so unique and so individual that there is an inherent shift of focus from "standards" and "norms" toward commonalities and a shared sense of wonder. Those who indoors might be more active may be more reflective outside. Those who are not as confident in organized athletics might be more confident exploring the boundaries of a rocky terrain or climbing a tree. I, for instance, was a child with low muscle tone who was quite prone to falling and not at all coordinated with a ball, a bat or even a jungle gym. I lacked the confidence to play most sports games and felt intense anxiety over the performance aspects of gym class. In my own backyard, I climbed a Japanese maple tree and stood on a plastic saucer trying to ski down the snow covered hill in the winter. I had little to no risk aversion in my own backyard when I could navigate when and how to try things but intense aversion to climbing any higher than the second rung of the monkey bar ladder on the playground.
Indeed, the children who may be more likely to "follow" indoors often emerge as leaders outdoors. Children with strong language skills, observational skills and interests in science thrive outdoors even while these may be less sought after traits on the basketball court or in the playroom. And when it comes to setting up an outdoor classroom versus an indoor one in a manner that is inclusive and accessible, the work is almost always already done for us by Mother Nature herself. Abundant in loose parts and opportunities for discovery and learning, very little needs to be added to an outdoor space. Physical accessibility is an area of challenge in many buildings and often less so outdoors where spaces are open and surfaces are varied. Additionally, gaps in ability to navigate the variety of terrains and surfaces are a shared experience by all based not just on whether or not a person has a "diagnosed disability," but rather also on age, experience, confidence level, interest, etc. Children can play "differently" and simultaneously and not be "different" in doing so. Everyone is having a novel experience outdoors. Everyone is discovering something for the first time. Everyone is working toward an independent goal and everyone can share in the wonder.
When we look at the benefits to health and well being of all children in open ended outdoor play, it really brings forth the question of why this is something we are limiting and eliminating in our education model. In a tireless effort to knock down walls and barriers, we are building more walls and more barriers. Our spaces for learning and discovery are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. A friend of mine who is very active in the world of advocacy for disAbility awareness and inclusion once said that being inclusive is not about treating everyone the same, but rather about treating everyone differently. It sounds odd, but when you reflect on it for a moment, it makes sense. Our education model and even our current models of inclusion are often about erasing those differences or attempting to make them "less visible." But what if instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole, we allowed a space for both? Outdoor classrooms and natural environments provide a space completely uninhibited by walls (or a roof for that matter). Pace, space and purpose are accessible to all and everyone can engage in
happy playing!
