Why you should take your students outside

An outdoor education project connected to Vergennes Union High School in Vermont. Sponsored by the Willowell Foundation. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” ~ HD

 Mission Statement This program is offered to any high school student who is interested in an integrated approach to education. This interdisciplinary project will seek to present links across and within the traditional curriculum of Science, English, Math, and History. Students will ask critical questions and engage in problem solving that appeals to verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, body/kinesthetic, musical/rhythmic, interpersonal and intrapersonal styles of learning. Additionally, students will be asked to be active members of their community, both within the alternative program and the community-at-large. This involvement is intended to cultivate positive relationships to their selves, their social milieu, and their physical environment.

 The Walden project is now in it’s tenth year and more than 100 students have gone through the program.  That group of students have included honor students, students who had been though drug rehab, students with a great loss in their life, and students that just thought it would be cool to go to school outside, all found that it is so much more than that and with few exceptions have all graduated from high school

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“Watching an excellent facilitator working with a difficult group in an experiential education program can be both inspiring and depressing. Inspiring-because of the skillful way in which they are able to manage the challenging aspects of group facilitation. Depressing-because they highlight the discrepancy between excellent group facilitation and the sort of attempts we lesser mortals often make at facilitating”

 Only students who can’t learn in the “normal” school system benefit from these programs  Students get too excited when they get to go outside and don’t absorb any of the information that is discussed  You cannot make it challenging for the students or teachers when you don’t have the regular materials a classroom provides

The focus in outdoor education systems is to put the learning in the hands of the students. This makes the student wholly responsible for their education and therefore those who do not learn in the normal school are still required to develop or have a responsible personality and a passion for what they are learning.

 Students could choose to do nothing  They may want to learn about things that will not help them with the test that they are required by the state and government or both to take.

 Putting students education in their hand can provide the student with room to explode with ideas about things they want to learn about  Excitement about learning is key to remembering and retain information about the subject at hand

The lack of materials that as teachers and as students we are used to will create a great challenge. Imagine trying to explain how the democratic system works without creating a diagram on the board. You have to create a clear enough picture for the student to imagine it for themselves.

Students will get excited about going outside because it is something new. Excitement can be channeled to create productive lessons and the students will likely remember “ that day they got to go outside and learned about different kinds of trees” instead of just reading a text book.

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