A New Instructors Experience
By Robyn Gervais
I had a vision for my first year of teaching Early Childhood Education students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic. That vision was based on my experiences as a student in this program many years ago, and included passionate instructors, lots of hands-on learning activities, and a warm environment of people who want the best for our youngest people. When I started teaching, I also joined the Outdoor Pedagogy ECE Faculty Research Project. Inspired by this project, I decided to teach outdoors. We would start each class inside where I would introduce what we were doing for our 3-hour class time, then head out for the rest of class. Winter semester was a bit different, where we would go out for a specific activity and then go back to the classroom, but I still tried to get out as much as I could.
TEACHING ADULTS OUTDOORS FEELS DIFFERENT
Being a part of this project drastically changed how my vision of teaching would come to reality. I have always believed in the value of outdoor play and it played a central role in my work with children. This felt, and still feels, different. In my outdoor programming with children, nature was our most common provocation for play and expoloration. The learning was child-led and based on what was naturally occurring in the environment around us, similar to the idea of wild pedagogy, one of the topics of research in our project’s community of practice (Jickling et al., 2018). Teaching adults outdoors feels different, as we need to meet curriculum expectations. We “can’t” go roll down the hill to see how our bodies feel, collect dandelions, or jump in half-frozen puddles to see if we can break the layer of ice on top.
Of course, we can do these things, but how does it fit within the context of the courses I was teaching? I did not teach the play classes that more readily seem to lend themselves to outdoor teaching, I taught child guidance and professionalism. Those “feel” like inside classes. As I would come to discover this year, that is only partly true. I was put into a place of disequilibrium as I tried to do something with adult learners that I consistently did with children. The students were often also in disequilibrium as this meant school looked a lot different for them than they had previously experienced and currently expected.
It took all of us some time to process these changes, adapt our expectations, and embrace learning outdoors. Many of our students were not born and raised in our prairie climate. For most of them, this has been their first experience with winter. Prairie winters are intimidating to think about, and can be scary if you don’t already have positive experiences with them. ECE’s don’t always place great importance on going outdoors in the winter. There is a fear of it being too cold or getting sick, both for themselves and the children. Going outdoors can easily become something you do in spring, summer, and fall, and avoid in winter. Teaching classes outdoors from late summer/early fall through winter helped students adapt to our temperatures gradually, as they changed. It shows them that while it is cold and that doesn’t always feel great, there is still learning and playing to be done outdoors. It can still be enjoyable.
IT TOOK ALL OF US SOME TIME TO PROCESS THESE CHANGES, ADAPT OUR EXPECTATIONS, AND EMBRACE LEARNING OUTDOORS.
For a teamwork exercise one week, I tasked the students to build sleds using recycled materials and then we took them out to the big hill. Most of our students had not experienced sledding before and were quite nervous, but by the end of the class they were squealing with delight. This gave them the opportunity to equate outdoors with winter and with fun. Over the winter semester, we had several more experiences like this that all helped to support their comfort in the outdoors in our climate, which they can take into the field with them.
Being a part of this project has empowered me to bring my biggest passion working in the field – outdoor play – to my new position as instructor. It allows me to equate and reflect on my experiences in early learning with my experiences as an instructor and as part of a community of practice. It introduced me to new people on similar journeys, even if we are all at a different part of this journey. As a new instructor this year, the project has allowed me to shape my teaching practice alongside outdoor pedagogy research and embrace different, scary, and exciting ways of being with students.
References:
Jickling, B., Blenkinsop, S., Morse, M., & Jensen, A. (2018). Wild pedagogies: Six initial touchstones for early childhood environmental educators. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 34(2), 159-171.
All photos taken and owned by Robyn Gervais
