The internet, libraries and bookshops are full of excellent teaching materials that help indoor teaching folks take our learning activities outdoors. Practical tools for safety and comfort outdoors, descriptions of learning activities in almost any kind of nature setting you can imagine, and ways to link the academic work in the classroom with the outdoor learning activities.
And still, a lot of indoor teachers hesitate to take learning and teaching outdoors, perhaps checking out one more book, one more website, putting off crossing the threshold; or hoping that they can still be good teachers even if they never go out; or even actively tearing their hair out, wanting to go, but not daring.
And let’s be real: us indoor folks have years and years of experience with learning and teaching indoors – our own years in primary and secondary school, teacher training, our own teaching experience – we’ve logged thousands of hours in the classroom. No wonder it is daunting to head out. It seems like a true TransformerTM act to shift from working with blackboards, books, pencils and walls to …. the great beyond!
At Snail Academy, we’ve got a couple of professional tools for you to deploy for your own personal teaching and learning practice. And yes, your own personal LEARNING practice, because going outdoors means YOU will be doing a lot of learning too!
In our next three blogs we are going to share those tools with you, in the hopes that you will find them useful when you set up and explore your own outdoor schooling practice. Our tools are not directed towards any particular academic subject or to any particular space outside school. But in our experience, they can help us indoor folk think through the process of taking things outdoors. And also, they are not something we’ve invented – in fact you may have encountered them already and you may have been using them in your classroom for years!
Still, if facing up to taking it outdoors is making you feel like a snarled-up Autobot from Cybertron, give these three tools a whirl – your transformation might go more smoothly than you thought!
This blog is part of the series about outdoor teaching for indoor people.
Click here to read part 1: Outdoor Teaching for Indoor People
Click here to read part 2: Who is the Teacher Here?
Click here to read part 3: Outdoor has a Trick or Two Up It’s Sleeve
Click here to read part 4: The Many Hats of Teaching