Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the importance of outdoor education for children?
Hi and welcome to School Shorts with me, Melissa Chan-Green, journalist and mum of two with a passion for education. In this episode, we're talking about outdoor education and particularly what that looks like in primary school years.
But we're also looking at the benefits for families and how you can bring some of those skills and experiences into the things that you are doing with your kids at the weekend or after school. We're speaking with Harry Scott, who runs the Barefooted programme. They run programmes across schools in Auckland, as well as programmes for families across the city's parks.
Harry, thank you so much for joining us.
Hi, thanks for having me.
So where did this idea come from?
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Chapter 2: How did Harry Scott's Barefooted program originate?
How long has Barefooted been around since the original idea?
Yeah, so it was actually one of my silver linings from COVID. So Barefooted started in 2020, so about halfway through the very first lockdown, because I was working in school camps and that sort of thing. And so obviously schools weren't going to camp or going back to camp anytime soon.
So I kind of had the thought of like, well, if we can bring outdoor education to schools, maybe that might be something that they'll be keen for. And then also just there was so much messaging from the government around wanting the kids to be outside and not stuck in classrooms all the time. So it was like.
a perfect opportunity it was like my silver lining of of of that to kind of go okay it's time to go out on your own and kind of start start my thing and and and get kids passionate about their community like and get them so they uh uh you know, spent so many years teaching kids about really cool marine reserves or regional parks and that they'll probably never come back to.
And so for me, it was like with Barefooted, if we can teach them the cool stuff to do in their school or in their local park, then for them to recreate that experience is so much more accessible and so much easier for them to do. And I think that's, been my big passion of like just allowing kids to have the chance to recreate it and to be passionate and to enjoy being outside again
There might be some people that go, can you recreate a school camp experience in a school? Because I have actually been along with you to a school, I have seen that, yes, you definitely can. And I'm going to ask you about how you do that soon. But I just want to stay a little with about how this idea came about, because...
not only were schools not able to do certain things because of COVID, but you were seeing kind of before that a lot of schools saying it's actually getting a little too hard to go on camp or some schools kind of maybe had more resource to do it than others. So that was a concern for you too, right?
Yeah, like... for me it was like the outdoors being outside exploring playing is like a Kiwi rite of passage and it's part of our culture it's part of our identity it's who we are and that was getting lost because of accessibility you know because school camps were becoming more and more expensive so they couldn't go for as long or that EOTC
camp turned into a bit of just a checkbox for that for schools to kind of go okay we need EOTC we go to school camp done what is EOTC just for people who wouldn't be familiar with that education outside the classroom right and so it turned into a well from what I felt it started to turn into a bit of a token thing Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love school camp.
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Chapter 3: What benefits does outdoor play offer for childhood development?
I can't wait to go on school camp with my kids once they get to that point and they have a place. But I just think we also need to be equipping our tamariki with skills and the comfortability of being outside before they get to year four, five or six school camp.
And bringing it into kind of their everyday life, whether it's at the weekend with family or just equipping them with the skills to be comfortable in the outdoors and know how to interact with it.
Yeah. And that was like one of my first programs that I ever developed for Barefooted was that...
it was like a sensory based program so it was you know it was a term long program we work on our five senses and so each week we just focus on one of our senses because one of my big things that i was noticing is that the comfortability in outdoors was low you know kids didn't know how to engage they didn't know what to do when they were in there and they
really just ended up getting overwhelmed by the whole experience.
What age are we talking about?
From this one, I went from five to seven. So that year, year zero to year two, or up into year three. And yeah, so there was just, there was no comfortability for them. And so it was like, we really had to start from
basic outdoor ed you know and just you know getting kids to feel what it's like to have their toes in mud or sand and grass and all the different experiences does that kind of seem crazy that
You're talking about seven-year-olds in New Zealand where we are so blessed with abundant, beautiful grass fields and beaches and parks that there would be seven-year-olds who would be uncomfortable in that environment. And I'm not talking here about children who are neurodivergent and would have Those kinds of sensory challenges anyway.
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Chapter 4: How can parents facilitate outdoor play for their children?
We need to get back to letting the kids go for the whole day and explore in parks or do this, that, the other. And I totally get that and I totally see it and I agree.
to an extent but we can't go back we're now working in the present day we're actually unfortunately for a variety of reasons kids can't just go down the road and disappear the whole day in parks you know whether it be traffic whether it be um
you know more dog walkers and that sort of thing in parks whether it just strangers and there's such a variety of reasons that it's like that's such a lovely image that we had and an amazing time but it's just our communities have moved on now so Unfortunately, it is more dependent on parents to take kids places to have these experiences.
Yeah, and there's a little bit there of, because we've spoken on previous podcasts with Constable Brian Ward and with Jo Robertson around stranger danger and actually that term is not really liked in some sense because there's... just as much risk to children online or unfortunately within the community that they know, people that they know.
But what you're also saying is there's all these other environmental factors. And so are you saying, let's think about what was great from back in the day and we can't go back and have it just how it was, but let's take what was great and use it with what we've got now.
Yeah, yeah. And I think like that's the awesome thing that we're seeing lots pop up, especially in new like playground designs that in lots of parks we're seeing more of what we would call like Te Marahupara, which is like traditional MÄori playground play sort of thing. Lots of those features are getting thrown into playgrounds now.
So they're in that kind of slightly more sanitised environment of outdoor. Yeah. But kids are getting able to play along, you know, big log rounds and tree trunks and, you know, not everything's plastic smooth finish or metal poles or monkey bars or anything like that. So it's kind of nice to see that lots of those features are popping up in parks as well.
Yes.
I actually went to the Hundavasa Museum in Whangarei a little while ago with my kids. And I really liked reading about how, why the floors were all uneven and the stairs even, and everything was uneven. And he talked about needing to feel that kind of unevenness.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do children face in connecting with nature today?
So it was like they had to... So they didn't feel comfortable. Yeah, they had to crawl the first 20 or 30 metres to get through where there was roots or a bit of slippery ground or whatever until eventually then there was some flat ground that they popped up on and continued on. But that was...
They literally had to go back all those developmental stages back to crawling to get them through until they could.
Because their bodies probably wouldn't have developed the balance and the muscle coordination to handle that. So it's not like a fair thing. It was probably we understand our bodies may not be quite equipped for this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
And we are actually teaching these movement skills in school because a lot of people talk about how important they are for other aspects of learning.
Yeah.
But does it seem crazy to you that we could just be developing those movement skills by just playing outside, giving adequate play outside anyway?
Yeah, yeah, it is. Again, it goes back to that same thing of, like, I can't believe that I have to do this job in Aotearoa. Like, I love my job, but it's just, it is there sometimes. And I look back at the end of the day and I'm like, I literally just taught kids how to play in mud. Like, and that's what I did for my day. And it was like, some of it was really easy and kids took to it real quick.
And some of it was really hard and it was, you know, and I get that even like my oldest is really adverse to mud. Like she loves being outside. She loves climbing trees. She loves doing that sort of stuff. But the sensory side of mud for her really overwhelms her.
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Chapter 6: How can schools incorporate outdoor education effectively?
And then, yeah, it is. It's so hard when it's like all of these tech things come in. You know, and it's like we're losing that personal touch of it. You know, we're losing the connection, especially in intermediate schools that I go into. We really struggle with kids interacting with each other face to face because they're so used to doing it through a headset and a monitor.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I had one kid tell me that, who was in one of my sort of targeted groups at an intermediate, he plays, I think he said 50 to 60 hours a week.
Wow.
Which I was like, that's more than I work. Wow. You know, like, that's crazy.
I totally agree with you that we have incredible teachers and that connection is amazing. just so key to good learning.
But I would just say this, and I'm really just saying it as a kind of devil's advocate too is, but aren't those teachers also under so much pressure and arguably more than they ever were before, because there's a whole lot of changes going on, but also because we have better understanding about the different ways our brains are and how different brains, I guess, process the world.
And so aren't we putting so much more expectation on teachers?
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: What role does risk management play in children's outdoor activities?
executive functioning you know we're working on um all of those following instructions we're just working on you know being in a space and staying within a boundary that's not four walls you know it's it's easy to obviously contain a kid in a classroom um we're also doing that alongside, so they're doing PMP as well.
So I take one class for outdoor ed and then they're doing another class in the hall doing PMP and then we swap over. But yeah, so that's so cool that they've seen sort of outdoor education as a tool to be like, okay, let's help these kids develop with it. And then it becomes, like my thing is, Outdoor ed needs to become an inherent part of every kid's day. So an inherent part of your school life.
And so I try and come in with programs that work alongside teachers instead of adding another brick to their barrow.
Yes.
And so I always want to be really conscious of that when I'm in schools because I know, like you said, there is so much going on for teachers. They've got so many things to get through. And it's just, I don't know how they do it.
But without those executive function skills for the kids, like time management, knowing, I guess, when to, like impulse control, all of that kind of stuff, they... What kinds of experiences are you seeing in schools now in terms of.
say climbing trees like are kids allowed to climb trees in schools now yeah it's it's very dependent on which school and where you are I'd say it's more common now to have a tree climbing school than not which is nice um I think it's so tricky sometimes because it's like and there's there's The fear around liability and what happens if someone falls out and breaks an arm or blah, blah, blah.
You know, like it's, there's a lot of fear around the kickback from adverse results.
And different pressure from different parents, probably. Like some parents would really want them to. Then some parents might have had a kid who's had a fall and then they say, I don't want you to.
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Chapter 8: What are some practical outdoor activities families can enjoy together?
And it's like, what? Like, is that? In what world is that a big enough deal that a principal needs to send a mass email home to parents that's like, you've got muddy shoes, but it's like, okay, get it. But that's what that community needs. And so it's like, okay, like, you know, we'll roll with that.
So there's letters going home by some, your kid's going to have muddy shoes. Some schools, you were saying, are wary of children running around.
Yeah, yeah. So I had another experience where when I was working in school camps, all the kids got off the bus and, you know, they've been on bus for however long and they're full of energy. So I was like, let's... run them around and let them bounce around the place, blow off the energy until, so then we can get them to sit down and actually get to what we need to do.
And then this teacher comes in, they're like, oh, hold on, we've got to stop. I was like, oh, okay, like, you know, oh, we don't run. And I was like, oh, that's really bizarre, but okay, whatever, we'll move on, but I'll talk to you later about it. And so I went,
over to the teacher later and I said oh just out of curiosity like why are we not running like that just seems a bit unusual and she goes oh well we've just had too many incidences of people running around corners and crashing into each other and it's like oh okay
And so I actually said to her, you know, I could argue that you're making our roads really unsafe in five, 10 years time, whenever these kids get their licenses, because right now is the point in time where they are developing the skill of risk management and them running around.
is allowing them to develop the skill of assessing risk at speed and assessing the risk of running around a corner that's blind running around a corner that's slippery whatever and then the result that happens on the other side yeah okay you don't want two kids smashing into each other but It's also a lesson that you need to learn.
So then, you know, your brain then goes, OK, taking that corner really tight or whatever. I won't do that next time.
Yeah.
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