Nature-Based Education Helps Students Grow After the Pandemic

We are proud to present this invitee post past Amanda McMickle, Principal Fellow at Compass Rose Public Schools, about the value of nature-based education for supporting students' resilience.

In the impending wake of the global pandemic, among other changes impacting our country, including greater recognition of the need for social modify, school leaders across our community are beginning to plan for the upcoming school year. I think I speak for many when I recollect a yr full of uncertainties and unknowns along with feelings of isolation and concerns for the condom of my staff, students, and family. With no place to get during much of this year, similar many of you, I headed outdoors. As a nature-based educator, I knew that although there may non exist answers on the trail, truths tin still be constitute.

Nature Teaches The states Virtually Alter

Ane truth that repeatedly emerged throughout the year was the one thing that gave me the most feet during the pandemic, and that was change . I have always feared modify of any kind, and living through a pandemic only heightened that fearfulness. Learning from the changes nature endures immune me to meet the discomfort from both external and internal sources; external in that I had no control over these changes which filled me with a sense of relief, and internally as it immune me to lean on the natural world that I had come to embrace as a source of refuge.

Noticing how nature responded to all of us staying domicile was shocking to us at the global level. Revisiting trails on a regular footing allowed for me to personally meet how landscapes inverse through the seasons. When the snow striking San Antonio, we saw and then many plants perish, just inside weeks, dark-green life returned. Embracing alter through the lens of nature altered my perspective on many of the lessons that grounded me prior to the pandemic.

Here are a few of the lessons I held sacred before the pandemic, how embracing modify in nature during the pandemic has altered those lessons, and how I hope they can be practical in our schools.

Lessons of Nature-Based Instruction

Restoration Over Resilience

Resilience was probably the lesson from nature that I spoke of the most. In fact, it was one of the core principles of my former school . Our planet is resilient. There is no doubt information technology will endure all nosotros do to it and recover from what we accept washed. Of course, nosotros might non be here to experience the recovery equally the earth has to but shift and milk shake to rid it of humans.

Through the lens of change, I realized that we should supersede resilience with restoration. Some areas of nature need just to be left lonely to restore itself, while other areas need back up for restoration to occur. Doesn't this sound like many of the people y'all know? Nosotros need to focus less on picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves off as resiliency implies, and more focus on sitting in those heavy spaces and doing some personal work before we get up and move forward.

During the pandemic I would often walk at a park that has had volunteers working to restore it to its native state for the past 70 years. What an incredible reminder that the work to restore a site, and ourselves, never ends. I now see resiliency every bit a destination. A person is either resilient or they are not. Past switching the focus to restoration, it tin exist experienced equally a process that we continually work on to restore usa to our authentic selves.

My hope for schools is that nosotros can back up our students in their personal restoration efforts allowing each to progress on that journey at their own pace.

Grace Over Patience

Gardens are a great teacher when nosotros desire children to learn patience. To constitute a seedling and wait for the time to harvest a vegetable to eat requires patience. Fifty-fifty though nature teaches patience, often patience has come to have a negative connotation. Being told to be patient implies that a pupil has the strategies required to expect and command themselves.

Change has taught me that perhaps we don't all accept those strategies, and that is okay. Being told to prove others grace suggests we demand to come across them where they are and offer support if they are showing upward without strategies.

My promise is that schools develop environments and cultures that allow students and staff to show grace and so that students enter with a strong sense of belonging that leads to a place of 18-carat progress and growth.

Awe Over Observation

Observing nature is powerful. Students larn how systems and processes piece of work, they learn cause-and-issue through ascertainment, and they come across how our earth changes over time. The outdoors, I believe, is the all-time textbook. Emerging out of the pandemic where students take had an abundance of screen fourth dimension, I think we need to allow students to not only observe nature, only also be in awe of it every bit well.

Existence in awe of nature is less about documenting findings and more about sitting in a space of presence and reverence. Research has shown that by existence in awe of nature, humans are more empathetic towards others every bit they realize from a very personal place that they are part of something much bigger than themselves.

My hope is that our schools proceed to teach through observations, but likewise allow students to be in awe of the beauty of the natural world.

Postal service-Pandemic Lessons from Nature

I exercise not recall we will, or should, return back to the style things were earlier the pandemic. We take all changed, individually and collectively, and it could be detrimental to our students to move forward in hopes of returning to normal every bit it will diminish the lessons learned along the way. Schoolhouse leaders demand to develop a specific plan along with their staff and families to apply over a determined number of years to ensure space for restoration is available, grace is offered to all, and there are opportunities to enjoy the wonder and awe of the globe around us.

Charter Moms Chats

Amanda McMickle, Principal Swain at Compass Rose Public Schools, joins Inga Cotton on Charter Moms Chats on June 15, 2022 at 4:00 PM Central live on Facebook and YouTube .

Amanda McMickle is a Main Beau at Compass Rose Public Schools. She will be developing and implementing nature-based and place-based educational activity at their Journey campus opening in Baronial 2021. She is the former director of Will Smith Zoo Schoolhouse and founder of NEST—Nature-based Didactics Back up in Texas. Amanda is a pupil at UIW, working towards her PhD in Adult Pedagogy, Social Innovation, and Entrepreneurship.

Nature-Based Education Helps Students Grow After the Pandemic

Nature Teaches The states Virtually Alter

Lessons of Nature-Based Instruction

Restoration Over Resilience

Grace Over Patience

Awe Over Observation

Postal service-Pandemic Lessons from Nature

Charter Moms Chats

Read More Nearly Educators and Advocacy

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