WHY NATURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION?
Sunnyside Environmental School has the amazing focus option of nature and environmental education. This is a central component to why I teach at this school, in particular. The greatest gift that nature education brings to our students is a shift away from isolation and towards community. Studies have shown that students who learn in nature report an increased connectedness to both nature and to other people. They feel inspired to take action within their communities on issues that they are passionate about. Finally, they report an overall increase in how much they value community and closeness. I feel this increase in community at my school because of our environmental focus option. I see how the community impacts all families as well as student academic performance.
Decades of research, learning, and experience has shown us that nature education has tremendous cognitive and physical benefits on students. I believe that nature education should be a student right of Portland Public Schools and therefore be implemented at every school in Portland. Students all over the world have been using this model for decades and continue to outperform our students in both academic and psychosocial measures. An initiative like this would take a shift in resources and a new spark away from mediocrity and towards thriving students. Why take this leap?
In addition to community connectedness, here are just some of the many reasons why I believe that every school in Portland Public Schools should have a nature education program. These are also central foundations to why I believe in Sunnyside’s Environmental focus.
Decades of research, learning, and experience has shown us that nature education has tremendous cognitive and physical benefits on students. I believe that nature education should be a student right of Portland Public Schools and therefore be implemented at every school in Portland. Students all over the world have been using this model for decades and continue to outperform our students in both academic and psychosocial measures. An initiative like this would take a shift in resources and a new spark away from mediocrity and towards thriving students. Why take this leap?
In addition to community connectedness, here are just some of the many reasons why I believe that every school in Portland Public Schools should have a nature education program. These are also central foundations to why I believe in Sunnyside’s Environmental focus.
- Spending time learning in nature leads to heightened imagination and enthusiasm, especially when integrated across subject areas. It can serve as the spark for learning, especially for our most vulnerable students.
- Nature education leads to an increase in critical thinking skills. Students must research, investigate, and make their own decisions when they are in nature. This transforms learners into informed consumers, workers, and decision makers.
- Spending time in natural environments promotes examining multiple perspectives. A tree, rock, bird, and worm have four different experiences of a forest fire or a river surge. Children notice these perspectives and can relate them back into classroom learning. Students are also able to relate their own behavior and that of others to natural experiences. In a sense, nature provides empathy stories amongst living creatures that can be taken back to any urban setting.
- When students witness nature, they are more likely to embrace sustainable living within their own lives outside of nature. They are also more likely to partake in sustainable behaviors like reusing natural materials for building and crafting.
- Nature education provides an increase in self sufficiency and lowers adult involvement. Students learn to identify, share, and responsibly consumer natural resources. They make connections between natural spaces they have visited and how these places are affected by educational and political decisions.
- To be in nature is an active act. Students who are often passive in classroom learning MUST fully participate in nature. They will absorb the silence of a lake. They experience the mindfulness of a hike. They must move when it starts to rain or when an ant crawls up their leg. They learn to reengage with this world and, therefore, their own learning.
- Nature does not have walls. There are many walls in the world of society. Students learn to understand who creates boundaries and borders in the urban world when they witness the free expanse of a natural place.
- Most of the time, natural spaces are free to access.
- Educational content and national standards can be applied to almost any natural setting. Students become explorers, scientists, wonderers, mathematicians through authentic, natural, hands on learning.
- Nature education provides a sensory experience that balances out the often neuro-overloaded classroom environments with balanced, brain healthy, and neurodiverse friendly natural environments. To touch a leaf, smell fragrant bark, stumble across a balanced log, and hear a hawk are all skills that turn the brain on to sensations only found in nature. All of these sensory experiences increase academic success and self esteem.
- Nature education, when done intentionally, is child driven and student-centered.
- When students interact with living things, they witness flourishing, progressing, coexisting, breathing, decaying, and other essential processes. Many natural processes also occur within the ecosystem of a classroom community, making them applicable and necessary skills. As students become adults, they can also carry these processing from nature into their occupational and social environments.
- Nature education helps children increase their boldness and become more carefree. Nature exists outside of social limitations and oppressive dynamics, resulting in the space to genuinely exist as themselves without limitations. Many studies have shown a direct correlation between time spent in nature and self esteem. If our students have an overall higher self esteems, then we will watch them thrive inside the classroom as well.
- Time after time, studies have shown that nature education increases mental and physical health. While decreasing depression, anxiety, and apathy, nature education also increases attention, calmness, and long term health measures. Students who breathe fresh air, run, climb, and tree bathe become healthier people. If we have healthier students, we create healthier schools and therefore a healthier city. This is common sense science.
- We are at the forefront of a worldwide environmental crisis. We owe it to our students to connect them to the natural places in their communities. This is the only way they will see why the world is worth saving from environmental disaster.
I believe that every school needs a nature education program. I am delighted to find home in Sunnyside as a staff member.
Over the course of the year, students will participate in nature and environmental education. We will create year-long field study journals. We will ask questions, make observations, and connect ecosystems to the non-natural world. We will find peace and groundedness in the flow of rivers and the calls of birds. We will think about the impact of local lawmakers on our natural world and resources. We will question who makes decisions and how and why they do so. We will build relationships as naturalists and community advocates. My hope is to also form connections to local programs and places so that every learner sees their place in both local natural and city communities. This year, students will dive deep into exploring Trees In Community and learning from Sky Stories. I am eager to take this journey with them and here to answer any questions you have along the way. Do you want to join us in science labs and nature education? Please contact me at [email protected]. Here are some things to consider:
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Books, articles, and websitesAnastasia. (2017, April 6). The many benefits of learning in nature [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.montessorinature.com/benefits-nature-learning/
International Journal of Environmental Education (2018). Addressing Policy, Practice, & Research That Matters. Retrieved from https://naturalstart.org/sites/default/files/journal/ijecee_52_spring_201_1.pdf Laws, J.M. (2012). Opening the World Through Nature Journaling. Retrieved from https://johnmuirlaws.com/nature-journal-club/ Liftoff, Learning (2017). 6 Tips for Taking the Best Nature Pictures with Your Kids. Retrieved from https://www.learningliftoff.com/6-nature-photos-tips/ Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2008. Print. Owen Wilson, L. (2019). The Eight Intelligence: Naturalistic Intelligence. The Second Principal. Retrieved from https://thesecondprinciple.com/optimal-learning/naturalistic-intelligence/ Wild Diversity (2019). Retrieved from https://wilddiversity.com Naturalist Book List for Kids Click Here!
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