5292: Growing and Learning with Nature-Based Outdoor Education

Speaker: susanne leslie

Hi, I'm Susanne and I'm the course designer for course 5292: Growing and Learning with Nature-Based Outdoor Education. The question is, what do we hope teachers will take away? A couple of things. First of all, is that you can start small. So if you feel intimidated or you have some fears about taking students outdoors, start small with an activity or something, even as simple as having them bring books outside and finding a cozy space to sit down and read. The second thing is I think many teachers will find that students that might be a bit challenging when indoors, become natural leaders when they're outdoors. They feel like they belong, they feel like they can be big and loud and strong. And that's been a delightful discovery for many educators.

What do we love about this course? Well, everything! It's a positive course, it gives us lots of motivation and lots of reasons for getting those students outside. The research throughout the course, expresses the strong connection between behavior and learning when we take kids outdoors. So it's a benefit to our students, but it's a benefit to us as educators as well. And if you track your progress from starting in the fall, perhaps into the spring of taking students outdoors, you can really see some positive results and so we hope you'll take the course and learn about the research behind it. Everything about it is good.