Outdoor Classrooms

In the November/ December 2010 issue of Wonder, the newsletter for the World Forum's Nature Action Collaborative for Children, there is an article entitled Our Path To An Outdoor Classroom.  The article explains how a the Burlington Little School in Washington worked tirelessly to raise funds for a bike path that wound through an undeveloped grassy area of their playground.  After all of their hard work, they were dismayed by the reaction of current and former students once the project was complete.  While the teachers and administrators were full of pride and excitement at the grand opening of their new bike path - they were met with cries of "Where is the tall grass?  Where will we play?"  All of the money and expensive resources in the world could not replace the joy of nature in the hearts of the children - the children the bike path was created for.  

As a society we have somehow forgotten how much happiness we, as children, found while playing in the natural world.  For a child, crawling through a field of tall grass becomes an adventure.  A simple patch of nature is a laboratory, ripe with opportunities for discovery and imagination.  Not only were the children at The Burlington Little School perfectly happy with their patch of untended grass - they mourned the loss of it deeply.  It seems interesting that we keep demanding more funding in order to improve quality in Early Childhood Education - when the children find the most value in the natural world - which is free.

The Burlington Little School decided to make up for taking nature away from these children by working towards something very different from the concrete, slides and swings usually found in preschool playgrounds.  They started their fundraising all over again - this time with a vision of a beautiful outdoor classroom that revolved around nature.  Now their outdoor classroom is teeming with life - gardens, grassy knolls, a fish pond, and natural stone paths.  The excavation required a great deal of digging, and all of the extra dirt was piled into a corner of the playground to be used in future projects.  While the children love all areas of their outdoor classroom, their favorite activity by far is playing "king of the mud hill, especially after a rainy day."  (Sarah Bishop, 2010)

Works Cited

Sarah Bishop, M. V. (2010, November/ December). Our Path To An Outdoor Classroom. Wonder , pp. 1-2

Poverty in Serbia

I made contact with a kindergarten teacher in Belgrade, Serbia, named Zora Petrovich.   I asked her how poverty affects the lives and education of young children in her country.  She explained some of the recent history of Serbia and the devastating affects on families and children.

Formerly, Serbia was a part of communist Yugoslavia.  While the communist party was oppressive in many ways, all people had jobs, homes, food, and equal education opportunities for all children.  In the early 90's, the Bosnian war hit its peak, and the communist government was overthrown.  Yugoslavia was dismantled, and split into several independent countries - one of these being Serbia.  Serbia is now a democratic state.

Unfortunately, the loss of communism created a huge social gap between the rich and the poor, and an unprecedented problem with poverty.  The majority of the citizens of Serbia are extremely poor, and there are almost no social reform movements in place.  Additionally, many children were orphaned during the war, putting a great financial burden onto the state.

Many many children go hungry, work at a young age, are in orphanages or homeless, and do not have the means to a good education.  school is still publicly funded, but children must have a means of transportation that is not available to poor children in order to have access to school.

Disease and malnutrition are becoming huge problems for Serbian children - and there are currently no strong programs working towards relief.    While Serbia has a very old, traditional culture, they are a young country due to their former dependence on the Yugoslav government.  It may be a long time before they find a way to equalize opportunities and health for their children.

Learning about the plight of children in Serbia was very difficult for me emotionally, but it also made me thankful for the types of programs that are available for American children.  While we are far from perfection, we have much to be thankful for.

Professional Resources

World Forum Nature Action Collaborative for Children (NACC)
http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/nacc/index.php

Due to my personal love for and reverence for nature, and my concern for the effects that a lack of connection to nature could have on the lives of today's children, I was very excited to find the NACC website.  This project of the world Forum is in place to increase awareness of the need for nature activities for young children as well as provide resources and networking possibilities to people working with young children.  


The NACC pots out a bi-monthly newsletter entitled "WONDER" which addresses the  need for nature education in Early Childhood, highlights programs that are providing Nature Education, and gives ideas of ways to include Nature Education into the classroom. http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/nacc/wonder_newsletter.php

The NACC call to action:


"The Call To Action beckons families, educators, and community leaders worldwide to take action, to strengthen children's connection to nature - making developmentally appropriate nature education a sustaining and enriching, fully integrated part of the daily lives and education of the world's children."


The website explains that Nature deficit Disorder is affecting children around the world.  as children become more and more dependent upon electronic devices and games, they become less and less connected to the world around them.  This is a problem that crosses ethnic and cultural boundaries and affects us all.

Early Childhood Education Across the World

After reading the blog assignment for this week, I immediately started sending e-mails to all of the organizations listed by The Global Alliance of NAEYC.   Because my husband is Serbian, I was most interested in The Center for Interactive Pedagogy in Serbia.  However, I decided that the more messages I sent out, the better chance I had of establishing contact with somebody.  The following day, I excitedly checked my e-mail expecting to find messages from all over the world.  what I found was a lot of my messages returned marked undeliverable, and no responses at all.  


Well, I didn't give up there.  I had just gone to see the Justin Beiber movie and decided to "Never Say Never."  The innovative and successful thing Justin Beiber did that led to his unprecedented swift success was advertise himself through social networking.  Justin posted messages on twitter and grew a fan base at an exponential rate.  I decided to try to find people willing to communicate with me through facebook.





I searched facebook for international early childhood organizations.  I found several and joined their facebook pages.  On each I posted a wall message asking if there would be anyone interested in corresponding with me.  I then scrolled through the member lists, picked out people whose names and pictures looked interesting to me (since that was all of the information that there was available to me), and began sending messages via facebook to individuals around the world.  All together I probably sent about fifty messages, and I got two responses.  These two responses, however, had me so excited.


One response was from Kristín Dýrfjörð in Iceland and the other was from Bessie Rios in The Phillipines.  Both expressed their willingness to correspond with me about the Early Childhood field where they live.  I sent each a message of thanks, some information about myself and about my understanding of the assignment.


I was thinking about what an amazing form of communication computers and social networking really are.  On pages like facebook, you can send instant messages out to people across the planet who share similar interests to you.  It really does bring us all closer together.  So, thanks Justin for such a brilliant idea.


While I was searching for international contacts, I came across the World Forum Foundation: Nature Action Collaborative for Children (NACC) http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/nacc/index.php.  I quickly decided to join and become involved in this initiative.  If I were to choose one issue of importance to focus on throughout my career in Early Childhood Education it would be what has been termed "Nature Deficit disorder."  I spent my childhood outdoors, and I feel an enormous love for and connection to the natural world.  I have a strong belief that children are an integral part of nature and need to explore the outdoor world in order to develop normally.  I feel it is my personal mission to expose all of the children to nature as much as possible in order to lessen the adverse effects of growing up in the electronic age. 

"Children in today's world are being adversely affected by their diminishing connection with the natural world." (NACC)

"As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unself- consciously to the soughing of the trees."  Valerie Andrews, A Passion for this Earth