Children today are growing up with a stark divide between everyday life and the natural world around them. While there are benefits to this era of technology, individuals, especially young kids, are growing increasingly disconnected from the great outdoors. It is widely accepted that spending time outdoors is highly beneficial to the physical, mental, social and emotional health of children, so what happens when the need for nature is not being met?
Richard Louv defines this disconnect as “nature deficit disorder” in his bestselling book Last Child in the Woods. This fascinating read brings together a body of research to draw a link between lack of exposure to the natural world and the rise of issues such as childhood obesity, anxiety and ADHD.
These findings sparked a movement in the United States known as “Leave no child inside”, which aims to increase environmental literacy among school children. Essentially, students are more likely to care about an issue if it is relevant to them. If we aim to get our students outdoors with their hands in the dirt and their hearts with the trees, they are exponentially more likely to care about protecting the world around them.
During my Link2Practice school visits last semester, I was fortunate enough to see
this kind of thinking in action at a Saanich elementary school. This particular school was situated in a semi-rural, wooded area with an abundance of rugged land nearby. Taking advantage of their natural landscape, the school had developed a strong outdoor focus- classes spent time outside everyday (outside of regular recess). The school grounds featured a “nature playground” with wooden obstacles for students to play on, and a garden with one plot for each class.
The students really responded well to having added time outdoors . Not only does time in nature “burn off steam”, allow for social bonding and benefit children with behavioural needs, but it creates individuals who can connect to their natural surroundings on a deeper level.
There is a reason why many high-level athletes in outdoor sports are also environmentalists. Forming a connection to place (part of Indigenous pedagogy) enables us to care more deeply about its wellbeing.
All this to say, educating students on environmental issues may not necessarily begin in the classroom. In order to create citizens with a drive to push for a more sustainable future, it is critical that we forge a connection to nature from an early age.
This may sound simple, but not all schools have the privilege of access to nature in their own backyards. To make matters more complicated, these schools are characteristically in densely populated areas where students are less likely to encounter nature in their daily lives. As educators, it is our job to recognize this and use whatever tools are at our disposal (field trips to nearby parks, naturalist talks and bringing plants into the classroom) to allow our students as much exposure to the outdoor world as possible.
