To Live is to Risk

Following on from my previous posting, I am going to end 2008 with a quote from an unknown source. If you do know who wrote this then let me know.

"To laugh is to risk appearing the fool, to weep is to risk appearing sentimental, to reach out for another is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss, to love is to risk not being loved in return, to live is to risk dying, to hope is to risk despair. To try is to risk failure, but the risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave. He has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free."

Let's keep taking those risks in 2009.
Let's keep taking more children outside.
Happy Hogmany!

Risky Business

At the weekend I made a rare appearance at a social do. I knew the food would be delicious and the company fine, so I persuaded my husband and son that this would be a Good Thing to Do as a Family.

When making small talk as such events, people inevitably make a polite enquiry as to what I do for a living. When I state that I am an outdoor learning consultant, this inevitably results in a pregnant pause of confusion. Then the person asks if this involves team building outdoors for oil companies on a jolly away from the office. It doesn’t. I have to confess that I work with children or people who work with children. My mission-vision-hallucination statement is simply to increase the quantity and quality of time children spend learning outdoors during school hours.

Miraculously, the person I was talking with stayed and continued the conversation instead of retreating to the kitchen for another Budweiser. The chat moved naturally into health and safety which seems to be a common bond between going outside with children and oil workers. My husband, who is a forester, joined in. This is also a hot topic in the world of hot logging (where you get trees cut, stacked, removed and on a boat to Finland within 2 days).

It turns out that oil companies have once again taken health and safety levels of consciousness to new heights. In climbing terms, they are French 9b rock jocks. Schools seem positively dangerous places in comparison to an oil office. Every meeting begins with a “Safety Moment” where the Chairperson gives a “Thought for the Day” on a particular health and safety theme, regardless of its relevance to proceedings.

No hot drink may be carried without a lid. And, if you are caught running up or downstairs, those in promoted positions have been told to admonish you. If you run up the stairs, two at a time and without holding the handrail, you may receive an official conduct warning. Middle managers may also be giving a verbal warning if they are seen to ignore such dangerous behaviour. The official reason for this seems to be that if managers do not confront their workers on minor health and safety matters, then the chances are they will be unable to do this when it really counts.

All this seems a far cry from schools and nurseries, where research overwhelmingly demonstrates that children need to learn to take risks, manage risks and accept responsibility for these risks. Grahn et al (1997) undertook a year-long comparative study of two nurseries, one an outdoor nursery where children spend 80% of their time outside, mostly in woodland areas. One of the most significant conclusions that came from this research was that children need uneven surfaces in order to develop their physical abilities. They have to learn to balance and deal with slips and trips. Practitioners are beginning to understand that we need to be making children’s lives as safe as necessary rather than as safe as possible.

Should I ever venture into an oil company office, I will bring some bubble wrap just in case I meet a thrill seeker running down stairs two at a time with a drink in her hand.

Reference
Grahn, P., Martensson, F., Lindblad, B., Nilsson, P., & Ekman, A. (1997) Ute på Dagis Stad and Land 145. Håssleholm, Sweden: Nora Skåne Offset.

In the early years

Last week the Scottish Government published its strategy for the Early Years. Basically all the muggers, murders, drug addicts and other wrongdoers are going to be sorted out in the future. The grand theory being that if it’s all nipped in the bud when these adults are Very Little People society will save itself a small fortune in prison and social services costs a few years down the line.

Sadly I think this is a bit of wistful thinking along the lines of the Labour government who introduced the NHS all those decades ago. The principle was that we’d all be so healthy that the cost of the NHS would decrease as the years go by. Hmm.

If you have ever read Freakonomics, the authors have an economic rationale to falling crime rates in the USA in the Nineties. They compared the data against the year when abortion was legalised in each state and came up with the conclusion that it wasn’t Zero Tolerance or smart politicians which sorted out crime...it was the fact that criminals were not allowed to be born. Ouch! Not surprisingly not everyone likes nor agrees with this theory.

Nevertheless The Early Years Framework talks a good talk. Whether we let it walk its talk is another matter. What particularly interested me was the statement:

Nurseries and schools supporting outdoor learning and outdoor play. Trying out innovative approaches such as nature kindergartens is a medium term priority. (Section 5: Priorities for Action – medium term priority, The Early Years Framework, p26)

Clearly when Adam Ingram, the Scottish Early Years Minister, visited Norway in August, he liked what he saw. I’m not surprised. When you visit an outdoor pre-school, the differences are blatantly clear. In Sweden I visited 3 different “I Ur och Skur” nurseries and I did not see any overweight children let alone a clinically obese one. The levels of creative play and high degree of positive interactions between children and also between adults and children were easy to observe. The physical abilities of these children were amazing. Their ability to climb trees, skip and hop over uneven surfaces and balance on wobbly logs was noticeable.

There is some research which suggests that children who are exposed to the natural world a lot as youngsters grow up to be more environmentally understanding, especially if there are keen, committed, supportive adults around to share their love of nature . What I have yet to find is a piece of research which compares adults who, as children, attended a nature kindergarten with those who attended a regular nursery. Is there a difference in the number of criminals in each group? What about the physical and emotional health of each group? What about their lifestyle and career choices? For nature kindergartens to avoid being a political fad, their impact needs considerable monitoring in the long term as well as the short term. And that is a job for all outdoor and education professionals to ensure happens.

Counting my blessings on my fingers

I am feeling despondent. Whilst in the Little Outdoor Shop of Horrors in Sweden, I purchased a pair of Houdini wrist gaiters. Two weeks later, one escaped whilst on a night tour of downtown Prague. Whilst it may have had a fleeting moment of excitement, the gaiter is probably now buried under a pile of junk in the city dump. All I have are memories of what had promised to be a blossoming partnership.

Wrist gaiters are an ugly invention, if I am being honest. They are a completely fingerless tube of material with a slit for one’s thumb at the side. Have a look on the Houdini website. But in terms of being a practical item for an outdoor teacher, they are a blessing. They allow for full use of the digits to tackle tricky jobs like tying up shoe laces and can be slipped down to the wrists, leaving the hands completely free and no loose gloves to look for at the end of an outdoor session. It's much easier writing outdoors in winter too.

Despite searching endlessly on the internet I have been unable to find another pair to buy online without having to pay extortionate shipping fees. Houdini is a Swedish company that does not recognise the UK market yet. The collapse of sterling against all other currencies doesn't help either. Last week I was considerably heartened to find some very funky wrist warmers in Ragamuffin, a semi-designer wool shop on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Alas too much choice and too high a cost both confused and frightened me. I made a quiet retreat and soothed my shaken nerves with a nice hot chocolate in a nearby coffee shop.

Snow of wonder, snow of joy!

I am delighted! The cold spell has continued which has resulted in more than 90 school closures in the NE Scotland and thousands of children given day release. However I am not sorry that my school remained open throughout. Snow provides fantastic learning opportunities.

The other day I sneaked outside with a group of Primary 5 children. Their teacher was delighted! She is a strong advocate of creating awe and wonder in children. After five minutes of acclimatising to the conditions (that's edu speak for running about), we settled down to the task of drawing a picture on paper with felt tip pens. In a classroom this is nothing special. Trying to draw on soft snow is a completely different experience. To begin with you can’t spend too much time producing highly detailed work as your hands freeze. But a rough picture is fine. Next we turned our drawings face down on the snow and rubbed them furiously, which warms up your hands and, like magic, the picture fades and gradually disappears altogether.

This result brings forth a fountain of questions and comments from the children who became fascinated to find out where all the colour has gone. We finally found the evidence from one child’s work where a pale pink print of a window could be seen on the snow.

Back indoors the snow stuck to our mittens allowed us to continue our experimenting. We peeled it onto one of the faded pictures and watched to see what happened. Hmm. It turned out to be a highly interactive affair with the children prodding the melting snow and tapping the paper which got wetter and wetter. The stream of on-task chatter was amazing as they wondered about the amount of water created, discussed the disintegrating paper and in the process created a simple cinquain poem to describe snow. Mostly importantly they experienced joy as they learned.