Outdoor Education— Thoughts From an “Elder” (continued)
called outdoor education for a reason and it is true, there is no bad weather, there is only bad gear and lots of children have bad gear. Be aware: wet, cold and tired students are not going to learn. A shorter outdoor lesson with more focus is better than a longer les- son to the point of whining. Location, location, location, it matters where you teach. Think about the places you stop. Is there sun in their eyes? Is it noisy? Are there distractions? Is it wet? Is it safe? Is it safe for the plants and animals that live there? Don’t be a slave to your agenda, sometimes it will be time to move on before you are ready and other times lessons slow down when children are so engrossed time stops. Whatever material you don’t get to, it will be okay. Don’t worry about not finishing, you are never going to teach everything anyway. Don’t be afraid to admit a lesson is a failure. It is better to cut your losses and
EE Research: Memories from Residential Outdoor Education Have Long-term Impact
THE RESEARCH: Liddicoat, K. R., & Krasny, M. E. (2014). Memories as useful outcomes of residential outdoor environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 45(3), 178–193.
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move on rather than to plow through. Be aware of what they have already learned and activities they have already done. If you are at a center where more than one instructor will be working with the children be sure to know what the other naturalists are do- ing. There is too much to do and learn to repeat things. Outdoor education is less about the content and more about the experience. Almost always chose action over talking. Enjoy, let the children see your passion and if you don’t have
it anymore, it is time to do something else. Be the best you can be, don’t settle for mediocrity even if others are. Know why you’re doing what you are doing and do it with passion.
❏
Dan Kriesberg is the author of A Sense of Place, Teaching Children about the Environment with Picture Books and Think Green, Books and Activities for Kids, as well as over 100 articles on environmental education and essays about his personal experiences in the outdoors. He lives on Long Island with his wife, Karen and two sons, Zack and Scott. Dan is a sixth grade science teacher at Friends Academy. Whenever possible he spends his time in wild places backpacking, hiking and hanging out.
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or students, spending several days at a residential outdoor environmental education (ROEE) program creates many new and powerful experiences, some of which are remembered for years to come. Yet, to date, only limited research has considered the role of memories as an outcome of environmental education. This study investigated the memories of students five years after they completed an ROEE program. The gathered memories served as a means of qualitatively measuring the long-term impact of these programs on the students’ environmental knowledge, behaviors, social interactions, and personal narratives. There are many different types of memory. For the purposes of this study, the authors focused on long-term episodic memories, which are memories of a specific event or episode, rather than generalized knowledge (semantic memories). Specifically, the authors focused on autobiographical memories, which are considered a subset of episodic memories that create a part of a person’s coherent life story. These memories were considered best suited for investigating the long-term impact of the ROEE programs.
In addition to learning what the participants remembered about the programs, the authors wanted to know how the participants have used these memories. Previous research into memory, reported in the psychology literature, has divided the uses of episodic autobiographic memories into three main categories: directive function, social function, and self function. Directive function refers to when a memory of a past experience
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