Nature's Classroom

Just look how physically active the children are in the below video and it makes it clear just how simple it is to teach Physical Education, why its almost like it doesn't need to be taught at all but just allowed to be! The physical benefits of outdoor education are just the beginning it is truly a pedagogy for teaching the whole child. "Holistic Learning is at the very heart of Outdoor education". It impacts a students' mental, emotional and social wellbeing just as much as their physical wellbeing (Dudley 2021:341).

Further to that it allows students to be truly emerged in they sense of place, place based learning allows students to be deeply grounded in their sense of self.  Whilst there is a strong traditional of outdoor education in Australia it has traditionally continued to have a masculine, colonial overtone, almost like going out to hike a mountain trail is about conquering the mountain. Let me be very clear that this idea of outdoor education is not what I am proposing in the main, outdoor education in the forest school model is about students being immersed in the environment at free to naturally being at one with the trees and creeks and tapping into the healing qualities that we all feel in nature. (Cumming & Nash 2015)

Dudley, D et al. (2021) Teaching quality health & physical education, Second edition. Cengage Learning Australia, accessed 25 September 2021

Cumming F &Nash, M (2015) ‘An Australian perspective of a forest school: shaping a sense of place to support learning’, Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 15(4):296–309.