Outdoor Zoom

In the midst of a global pandemic, I miss hanging out with kids. I miss their questions, their stories, their insistence on snack time, the whining, the cheering, the running; I miss it all. I hope that we will be back out there soon, but for now, I have to be content with Zoom life. My colleagues and I have been working on a website to provide outdoor education lessons to parents to lead in their backyards. The project is called Home Growin' Kids and our hope is that families will take a break from the screen to get outside to wonder and explore.

Unfortunately, I could not test my lessons in person and was forced to use the screen as tool of facilitation. Using Zoom, I taught my first virtual outdoor education lesson using the curriculum I am writing for Home Growin' Kids. Despite some of the challenges that come with internet connection, inability to follow the kids, and 6 year old on video chat, it felt so good to teach and facilitate exploration again. The kids were awesome at coming back and forth from the screen and felt free to roam around the yard.

One of the biggest challenges (beyond the technological ones) was not being able to catch all the little comments they were making as they explored and ask follow up questions to instigate more wonder and excitement. One of my favorite parts of being an outdoor educator is building upon students existing knowledge and using their observations to craft questions that help them expand their thinking. Zoom created a barrier that made it difficult to respond to the student's observations in real time but we still had great discussions.

The lesson was built around wondering about what lives in a backyard ecosystem. Students draw a map of their observations and then draw connections between different parts. At the end of the lesson I asked them if they thought they could add themselves to the map and what connections they could make.

Towards the end of the lesson I asked, "on the map, if you were to add yourself, what kind of connections could you make? How are you connected to your ecosystem?"

The 4th grader replied, "well, we need the clouds to give us rain water that we can purify to drink. And we need the sun to give us vitamin D. And all the plants and trees give us fresh air to breathe.'

The kindergartner said, "and also some plants give us nutrients to eat to make us healthy."

I asked, "Awesome, so if you were to add yourself to this map, you could draw a lot of connecting lines?"

The 4th grade student says, "yeah, almost everything."

This kind of thinking is exactly where I was hoping to the lesson would lead. Students who are system thinkers can make connections on multiple levels. These students were able to situate themselves in their own ecosystem and make connections between living and non living things around their house. This shows how they are thinking broadly about the interconnections of ecology and systems.

I am excited to continue to write curriculum for families to facilitate in their backyards and neighborhoods. As schools take a break and outdoor education programs are a dream of the future, I want to encourage families to take their youth outside and discover all there is to learn through the power of exploration, observation, and wonder.