Weirdschooling
Season 1 Episode 3:*Extra Credit* Research Gives Adults and Kids the Green Light for Nature Immersion
Originally Released September 6, 2023
Intro: <Original bright piano sea shanty music rising in the background with school bell sound.>
Sarah: Welcome to Weirdschooling. I’m Sarah.
Jennie: And I’m Jennie. We’re parents, friends, lifelong learners and self-proclaimed weirdos.
Sarah: We’ve found that some of the best educational methods have emerged when we let go of conformity and explore the unconventional and unique
Jennie: Because no one’s brain operates the same way and that’s exciting. And what works today may not work tomorrow, and we can adapt.
Sarah: We’re all in this weird and wonderful world together.
Jennie: So let’s learn outside the box! <Original cheerful, organ and piano sea shanty music fading out in the background.>
Jennie: Our extra credit episodes are where we go deeper and get a little bit more into the research are hopefully going to give listeners specific things that you can do for yourself, that you could do for your students, and specific things that have been researched/studied. And we will share those resources with you online so that if you want to dig deep into research papers, if you want to read articles, you can do that. But if you don't wanna do that, we'll give you the summary- that way we can take this beyond the anecdotal, beyond those stories and experiences that many of us have had in nature to “what does the data say” so that you know that if you're making a choice that maybe feels a little weird, maybe is a little new, you can have kind of that confidence boost of knowing there's like the real science-y science behind it.
Sarah: I'm super excited to do this episode. I'm going to focus on the benefits of nature for adults. Jennie's going to focus on the really important impact that nature can have on kids, in schools.
Last week we had a really fantastic guest, Judy Scoville was here, from Nashville Nature Explorers to talk to us about the impact of nature immersion. It was fantastic to hear her story. As she was talking last week, it really made me think of the very annoying thing that we all see on social media, and are reminded by very friendly flight attendants when we take a flight. The whole concept of putting on your oxygen mask before you put the oxygen mask on your person that is depending on you. And I think that there's a lot of really important lessons that we can learn from nature immersion and using that aspect to improve our own lives as adults before we even focus on the lives of the important kids that might be in our life. So just as a recap, last week, Judy from Nashville Nature Explorers thinks that adults need to reconnect with the culture of childhood, she called it, in which playtime is considered really valuable. And she's right. I definitely don't do that as much as I should. I try really hard, but it's hard to fit that into the day.
Another insight that I also think is really important to highlight is that access to nature might look different for different people. So in some cases, that's a proximity issue; like you just might not live near, beautiful forests , and lakes there might not be a park nearby. It might be difficult, because of practical reasons. You might not be able to actually get to the park. You might not have the funds or the transportation to be able to do that. And then of course, there's the third even more complicated aspect of access, in which some people don't feel safe outside.
We've heard lots of cases of people being pointed out, singled out, when they've been spending time in nature doing very innocent naturey things, and that's a very real access point issue that exists. And I was glad that she brought that up. Her positive spin on things is that our time in nature can be diverse. So some people might like to spend time on their front porches at the end of the day, or like Jennie said on a pool patio, others might like to go hiking and kayaking and foraging.
And every single one of those things is a valid and wonderful way to spend time in nature, but it got me thinking. How much time in nature are we talking about? What type of nature? Time counts, I just really struggle with self care, because there's all the trends that come in and there's always the newest thing that I'm supposed to do, whether it's “I'm supposed to meditate”, “I'm supposed to drink more water”, “I'm supposed to get steps in”, “I'm supposed to write in a journal”, “ I'm supposed to do all of these things”. And I keep looking at my watch and thinking, okay, well where am I supposed to find the time for that?
Jennie: So, Sarah, you're supposed to walk outside while drinking your water and journaling simultaneously and doing yoga during the walk, all of it at once. That's the only way to fit it all in.
Sarah: I mean, that would be a really interesting site to see, I think, especially because I'm not very coordinated. So that, that would be, that would be a challenge. , With all of that in mind, I really wanted to understand what counts and how much time do I actually have to spend to do these things.
So I was thinking, does it count if I'm taking my recycling to the curb-I'd be outside. But is that relaxing enough? I just decided to actually look at real research and the nerd in me was so excited because I really hate when people say, well, they say that time in nature is helpful.
So like, who is they? And like, what are their qualifications and are they real? I was shocked at just the volume of research that is out there on social psychology, education, cognitive benefits of nature. There's tons and tons out there, and one of my favorite studies that I read was a researcher named Matthew White.
And this was in 2019 that he found that just 120 minutes a week can yield super substantial health and overall wellbeing benefits. 120 minutes a week sounds like a lot, but like with math skills, that is basically 17 minutes a day. I feel like I could fit in 17 minutes a day of anything, even annoying self-care, especially if it's gonna actually do something for me.
His study was just super interesting, because a lot of times in studies, being somebody who studied research methods in college, I find it very annoying when I don't actually understand how the study was conducted. If it looks like somebody just took a piece of paper and pulled their 10 neighbors and we're like, yep, my 10 neighbors said that life is better when they smile, like, that's not helpful to me. I don't like it. But he was able to really isolate the characteristics of the behaviors that he was looking at. So specifically, he was looking at whether or not people who spend time in nature for the purpose of recreation for these 17 minutes out of the day would be beneficial. So taking my recycling to the corner does not count- relaxing inside doesn't count.
Like if I was Netflixing and chilling, that does not count at all. So, the time spent would have to meet the two qualifications of being outside for the purpose of recreation, whatever that person felt was recreation. I thought that was really, really interesting, because it really, to me, isolated that it was the nature and the recreation piece that was important.
Sarah: It wasn't just taking a break out of your day and just meditating on your floor in your living room-that didn't count, that wasn't gonna do it for you.
Jennie: So the two characteristics were: it has to be recreation and it has to be at least 17 minutes
Sarah: And outside. So, and guess there's technically three things. Yes. Okay. .
And then once you're able to do that, he was able to see that people were achieving the kinds of benefits that people get when they are doing other things. That research has time and time proven to be beneficial to us. Things like getting enough exercise every day, things like having enough resources, so those are all real metrics that have been looked at by other social psychologists.
And yet I would argue that spending 17 minutes is a lot easier to do than doing all of these other things, and then we can have kind of the same benefits. So there's our answer to the time factor, you know?
Okay, great. It can be just 17 minutes a day and I can have some health benefits. I can do that because I love being outside. Next, I wanted to look at the idea about focus and how that might be improved by spending time outside. Judy talked about this last week as well when she was talking about seeing how kids in her class have experienced just a different attitude towards school.
And she also mentioned being neurodiverse and how that might look for her getting to spend time outside. I have ADHD and I have found that if I am spending time outside that I am able to increase my focus. But I'm not a researcher. That's just anecdotal. And again, that's not what we're trying to do here today.
So I looked and looked and I also found a huge amount of other studies that we're talking about the positive benefits of being outside for attentional differences for adults, attention focused concentration, productivity. There's lots and lots out there.
Kate Lee from the University of Melbourne did a study that was really fascinating. Some of it was, again, even more specific, and also way shorter even than the 17 minutes. Matthew White, in his study, was talking about. So, Kate Lee looked at having people do the task and then right before the task, look at a green roof. So on this roof it was, you know, this kind of like, just imagine the top of, a skyscraper or a multi-level building that has greenery on the top. Trees, gardens, what have you and it was just an image of that it wasn't actually physically looking at this.
And she'd have another group of people, doing the task and then just looking at just a regular non-greened building, and then to do the task again. So she was able to, again, separate into two groups. We had a control group, we had a test group, and what was fascinating is that just looking at the green topped roofs for 40 seconds had massive benefits.
The participants in the study, after just those 40 seconds, were much better able to complete their tasks. They had so many fewer errors in their work, they were way more consistent, and it was just so substantial that they were able to make ties from this sort of sociological study to actual real brain research.
Basically there are two networks in your brain that help you to sustain your attention. There's the first one where your network is trying to maintain your control of attention, and that's your dorsal attention network. And then secondly, there is the ventral attention network. And that's where if a distraction comes, that's where that's processed.
So you have the two sides, the maintenance of the attention, and then the dealing with the distraction. So when you're trying to focus on a task, you have those two parts of your brain that are trying to work together in tandem to keep you focused. And it's super, super hard to do that. I mean, there's so many times when I've been trying to do something and maybe, I hear something outside or I get interrupted, my phone rings, or the kids say something, I get pulled away from the task.
Or if there's no distractions, I am maybe just sitting there, maybe I'm trying to read a book , and I just can't maintain my own focus on the words that I'm reading on the page. So, it's a complicated thing and researchers find that no matter how skilled we are-how educated we are-that most adults cannot maintain control of their own focus after five minutes.
So that kind of made me feel a little bit better, because, I think a lot of times we're just really hard on ourselves, when we're looking at all of our to-do lists and our things that we have to focus on. So that made me feel a little bit better. It made me feel validated for sure that okay, all the other adults out there are similarly challenged.
Sarah: If I can stop for a minute, I understand that hearing all of this brain stuff, hearing all this research might feel a little bit tedious, but I think it's really, really important, because there are so many things that we can be doing as adults to sort of help ourselves without the pressure of, oh, “just another self-care thing.”
Or “oh, I'm gonna read this trendy thing”. Is this really gonna actually do anything for me? But it is, and so going back to the green roof situation, the attention restoration theory, which is actually by another group of psychologists, Kaplan and Kaplan. They said that a restorative experience can boost your mental resources, which help us to control our attention. So that goes back to that study 'cause the whole purpose of looking at that green roof was to determine whether viewing nature in that format could be restorative enough to your brain to allow your attention resource tanks to fill up again, and they can, and I love that because that touches on the aspect of access. So, like even if you don't live in the woods, even if you're not hiking in a forest, you can look at a picture of something green for 40 seconds and have these very same benefits like recentering and filling up that attention tank.
Sarah: I think that was a really great way to think about it when I read that other study, to then be able to say, “Okay, great. I fueled up, I'm ready to get back to my book that I was reading or my budget report that I was writing” or something that does take a lot of mental energy.
I know that when I look at studies, I wanna see the actual objective results, and the researchers did brain scans on the participants, and they could actually see changes in stress, anxiety areas of your brain. When looking at these pictures of nature, again it wasn't even a verdant stream kind of situation, it's a building with green stuff on top. So again, I think that maybe that can take pressure off.
Again, just thinking about the equity and access piece that Judy brought up, I do think it's really unfair to expect that all of us in the world who are balancing lots of things, Big things, small things, all the things can then be expected to go find a park and relax. Like that's just not reasonable.
Sarah: That's not actionable for everybody, and I think that it's really important, especially on Weirdschooling, to just remember that we're all different and come from different places in our lives, including our access, our ability to access resources. So we are not a fancy YouTube podcast. You're not seeing our beautiful faces right now. So we can't flash a screen of something green right now.
So, I think since I can't give you a green roof, I just wanna read one of the most restorative poems, before Jennie tells us all of this exciting stuff about kiddos and nature, because I'm really excited to get to that. But this poem is, “The Peace of Wild Things”, and I've read it lots of times in my own life, when things have been feeling like they're basically falling apart.
And so I wanted to share it with everybody.
“The Peace of Wild Things: by Wendell Berry.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
https://youtu.be/-ewB0WL3bNw
I will link in the show notes. There's a cute animation of this, where the poet is actually doing the reading so you can hear a better reading than I did and see a really nice visual.
And I'll also link all of these studies so that you can see that I didn't make them up.
Jennie: You would never, you would never. It's so helpful though. It isn't frivolous to just be outside. It's actually deeply restorative and evidence-based, and I'm gonna look through all of the research too Sarah that you had, and I was really excited to find some big meta-analysis of, hundreds of surveys, hundreds of experiments and research and um, I'm excited to get into those today. Before I do that, I wanna kind of ground ourselves again in children and in learning and in these spaces that we learned with kids.
When I had the privilege of teaching, I was able to take kids on field trips and one of the classes I taught was “Art in the Community”. One of the things I did for our students was we learned about the nature artist Andy Goldsworthy.
And I put them in the bus and we drove to the woods. And these are kids that I did not realize until we got there had never been in the woods. They lived five minutes from this arboretum and they had never been.
So can you open this Google doc that I sent you?
Sarah: I am loving what I'm seeing. Okay.
Jennie: Oh my gosh. So you're in . So this is the slideshow from my class, and this is all my kiddos out there. And I won't be using any of their real names, but there's one student in particular that I wanna draw your attention to.
Can you kind of describe what you see in these two images on the slide?
Sarah: It's a split screen. On one side we see, I'm assuming, Andy Goldsworthy, with a sculpture and it looks as though he's in it. And then there's a picture of a kiddo who looks as though they have created their own really neat structure also out of, pieces of wood, , similar to the Andy Goldsworthy's art.
Jennie: Exactly. I'm gonna call this student for the purposes of privacy, Student G.
He is beneath a structure that he has built himself. He was allowed free reign to make anything he wanted out in the woods for the few hours that we were there. And can you just describe the look you see on his face?
Sarah: The sun is on his face also, which just makes it an even more beautiful kind of striking image, he looks, kind of at peace and at awe at the same time.
Jennie: Peace and awe is it, and for me, knowing this student, seeing this look in his face was honestly a teaching moment I will never forget.
So this was a student who had a really hard time in school. He was often in trouble.He was often getting asked to leave class. He was just having a hard time, fitting in the bill. I just got a vibe from him that he just felt like he was about to bust out of every situation he was in.
But whenever I took him out here, he had this peaceful experience with nature. He had the sun on his face, and for the hours that we were in those woods, he was at peace. No one had to redirect him. He had his own focus and so, again, another anecdote, but from my experience, the reason that I was pretty invested in this research to back up my gut feeling and my own experience was that when he went back to school for the rest of the year, it wasn't just the art history class, he was invested in the eighth grade US history class that I also taught.
He was a different person. He was more invested in all of the learning, and I think that he kept that feeling with him, through the rest of the year.
But we're gonna circle back to Student G at the end of this discussion just to check in on where he is now and how that might guide our thinking in how we approach nature for kiddos. So let's get into the nitty gritty.
Jennie: In the past 10 years, researchers have described what it's called as a second wave of nature education, where it's not just like, “get outside and feel your vibes and hug a tree.”
Jennie: It's-do that great- but also, What does that mean for real learning outcomes? So it was researchers from the Netherlands, from Italy, and from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. And they took two schools and they did the exact same study in both of them where they had a hardscaped playground.
Jennie: Then they also had a really wild kind of nature-y playground, and they let the kids go outside for a period of time. The same in the hardscaped one, the same in the more wild green spaced one. And after the kids came back inside, they tested their various responses. So how quick were they at performing a series of tasks? How quick was their attention? What were their cognitive abilities? And in both schools, it turned out that the more wild green naturescape did in fact increase their attention. So it happens in schools.
Jennie: And then we move into my favorite research paper that I found. And it was a 2019 integrative research analysis done of dozens of studies and experiments by the researchers in an article published in Frontiers in Psychology that confirmed that the benefits of nature-based immersion are real and significant across multiple domains of wellness and education. And that was done by Catherine Jordan from the Department of Pediatrics at University of Minnesota, Michael Barnes from the Department of Forest Resources. Of University of Minnesota. And then Min Kao, Landscape and Human Health Laboratory Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
And so all these different people come together and they look at all their different areas of expertise and they say, is there evidence across all of this research that it is in fact beneficial to make a point of having nature-based education? And the answer is “Yes.”
So first off, it has a rejuvenating effect on attention similar to that study that I kind of highlighted. Next, it relieves stress and there's like eight points that they have. Contact with nature boosts self-discipline specifically among children who are neurotypical and have ADHD.
Another one is student motivation. Enjoyment and engagement are better in natural settings, specifically school environments where they allowed, for more, um, nature specific outdoor education had greater satisfaction and less absenteeism. Probably in line with the story that Judy told when she talked about how she had a ‘D’ in French, but then whenever she had the engagement, the trust, support, and investment of the nature-based environment, she went on to major in French.
I mean, if you talk about a turnaround and investment and commitment, that's huge. And it's also what I saw with Student G, that he was more invested and less likely to try to skip at least my class.
Sarah: Well, were you just a favorite though, like, have you adjusted for that factor in this study?
Jennie: I probably haven't. So where is this happening? There's this concept that came up in the research in this paper and in several other papers that I looked at. And it's a Danish concept called Udeskole, which embraces the idea that nature education is holistically important to lifelong learning and realized actual outcomes in learning.
And one fifth of all, Danish classrooms practice the Udeskole principle, where they make a point to do learning outside, even if they live in an urban setting. They'll maybe go outside and if they're measuring volume, they will measure the volume of a tree. They will accept risk, they will teach kids confidence because if they're out in this wild environment and it starts raining. The children understand that you have to be flexible. It teaches children that their adult that's helping them will look after them and that they will find a way through and that they're resilient. Learning doesn't have to be so highly manicured that it undercuts a child's independence and confidence because if they think that's the only way they can learn, then that in itself is limiting.
And in the Udeskole school concept, that is one thing that they've seen. And when they did research, not only on the Danish schools but in another study as well, what I loved the most was that whenever they took students outside to learn a nature-based specific lesson, like “Let's go measure a tree,” it's gonna be about nature. The kids had all those benefits that we're talking about. Great, but let's say that you're a busy public school teacher or a teacher who's never taught nature-based education, the research showed that if you take the exact same lesson that you were gonna go do inside, maybe it is a workbook and a worksheet, and you took that same lesson and you just did it outside, you're going to see the benefits.
And so if you need an entry point- that's one. You can literally just take the time to go do your lesson outside. Now that probably doesn't count as recreating for the kids, but you are gonna see those increased cognitive benefits. And I wanna circle back, Sarah, to something you talked about, about societal implications and about access.
So the majority of students do attend public school in the United States, and the recommendation by the C.D.C. for what kids should have is at least 20 minutes of recess a day. Except when you look at the research, which I'll link to, that since 2000, over 40% of schools have reduced their recess time, and only 8% of states specifically require schools to provide the national guidance to provide at least 20 minutes of recess a day. That brings me back to Student G, who for those hours in my classroom got to experience the bliss and the peace and the like self-regulation of nature and the added academic benefits of trust and investment in my US history class. He was part of the unfortunate half of the wealth gap in the United States, he was lucky enough though, to be in a choice magnet program, but unfortunately he wasn't able to stay in that magnet program.
Jennie: Because he ended up in high school one year after he left me getting expelled. And so I didn't know what was going on with him. So when I was doing my research for this, I also did some research into him. And I'm gonna send you a link, Sarah, to where I did find him.
Jennie: You'll find him on the very bottom row second from the left.
Sarah: I was afraid that this is where this is going to go. So this is a page with mugshots, and it looks like he had been arrested for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in 2018. Judging by this website, I'm wondering if there's a possible gang affiliation too.
Jennie: There was, and I knew at the time, whenever I was teaching him that he had family members who were pretty active in gangs and he was doing his best to get by. And whenever I was teaching him, he was probably about 13 and doing his best and that day in the woods with him there was lightness in him that I don't think his life often afforded him.
And whenever I was reading through all of these fancy research papers, it's easy to get lost in the data. It's easy to think, “Well, obviously everyone should be in nature.” And I think the takeaway here, the headline is, “Yeah, everyone would benefit from being in nature more”. But our big ask is how can we make that happen for kids like Student G who need it, they need that outlet.
Because I'm not gonna say if he spent more time, you know, chilling with trees and looking at green rooftops, that he would have totally different life outcomes. Because there's a lot of factors that go into this, and I'm not naive enough to think that that would've stopped, the outcome he had, but I do know that he probably could have benefited from a few more moments or hours in his life of lightness. And a few more days under the trees, and even just a few more quiet moments in the sunshine on a sidewalk. I'm just putting this out there to say the choices we make as educators matter, and when you see research, when there is evidence that something works, let's find a way to do it.
You know, maybe it's a pediatrician asking how much time did your child spend outside? Or maybe a school district at a school board meeting saying, “What is your policy on recess?” Just bring it to the front because these kids need to read, they need to do math, but the research says you can do both. It can be as controlled as taking your kids out and doing your read aloud outside. It can be choosing to support programs. Like for example, the nature boarding school that Judy mentioned that she was privileged enough to get to go to. They have a scholarship foundation to try to help kids from all sorts of backgrounds get to have that experience just like she did. And so I end today just saying the research is there, the anecdotals are there, and the stakes are really high. So if we can work together to get some more kids outside, we'll all be better for it.
Sarah: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing your story about, Student G I think, it's always hard to hear stories like that, because I think what is really easy, and you've referenced this, that when you're reading research, it gives some sort of validity to the things that we are interested in and that we're talking about. But then when you talk about the individual, the context is different. The reality of how education and the world and society impacts Student G versus kids, it feels different and it hits different. And I think, one more thought that I just wanted to share is that, to your point, that bringing these things to the forefront is important.
Sarah: I agree. And, again, with our mission here at Weirdschooling that can feel hard. It can feel really hard to be the weirdo standing up at the school board meeting trying to talk about outside time. It can be hard to be that public school teacher, trying to suggest to the principal that I would like to take my kids outside for this block of my day. That could feel strange depending on your school setting and all of that. And that's okay. It's okay to say, yeah, that could feel weird. You know, you might be considered, oh, that's a little bit hippie. But I also would like to just encourage us to push past that a little bit and say like, okay and you know, I think that's always the best response when somebody says something that might have a negative sort of meaning is to say, and “So what maybe sometimes the conventional is not the best and if I am a little weird-okay, and your point is what?”
Jennie: You know what? I think that you saying that reminded me of too, is that when you let your own weird show,the other people who share your weird weirdness are gonna find you. Maybe there's someone else in the school board meeting who didn't feel comfortable doing that, and so if you can find those other people, you're only gonna do it by letting your own weird show.
Jennie: And so Oh, absolutely. Just have faith Absolutely. In that. And then that you'll find them
Sarah: Oh, totally, find your fellow weirdos. And, I think the last thing that I was just thinking, as you were sharing, that important research and Student G story is that, what's really interesting when I read a study. Is that it feels like that exists in singularity. So like the studies that I shared felt very much important and, great, you know, great job researchers, , on looking at that one aspect. But when you combine both of the research that you shared today and the research that I shared today, I think it's actually a really easy implication to suggest that not only would spending more intentional time outside be beneficial on lots of levels.
But also just thinking about the teachers as people. I think that's one thing that we sometimes forget when we're looking at student outcomes is, you know what I'm guessing, those teachers who had the freedom or ability to take those kids outside and watch the kids, their students' growth, and have them enjoy all the benefits that you were talking about.
I'm guessing that they're enjoying sort of the side effects, as well. Like even if it's not direct, I'm guessing that there's some positive benefits for the teachers too, and I think that's really important to, to think about as well.
Jennie: That’s exactly right. This has been a great conversation and I hope it's given people a sense of support that if you do wanna take this weird step, we are here for you. If you need that to help you feel empowered to do this kind of sometimes maybe hard thing, go for it. And also we'll share more this week on our social media about what works for you. What challenges have you had? I'm not gonna pretend that taking a bunch of kids outside for the first time to learn is easy.
It is not, it is difficult. But we are here as a communities to support you and to work together to find any resources that you need to help make these real changes so that we can give a little bit more light, a little bit more air, a little bit more nature into our own lives and the life of the children that we work with.
Outro: <Original bright, organ and piano sea shanty music rising in the background.>
Sarah: Weirdschooling is a My Kind of Weird Productions podcast and is co-created by hosts Sarah Woolverton-Mohler and Jennie Ziverk Carr with music by Brooks Milgate.
Jennie: You, your ideas and feedback MATTER, so like, subscribe and leave a review! Share your weirdschooling experiences or challenges on our social media channels at instagram, facebook, or our website at www.weirdschooling.com.
Sarah: We’re here for you– so feel free to join our engaging Weirdschooling Community Facebook group for inclusive, open-hearted idea sharing and camaraderie.
Jennie: You’re dismissed to go be the weirdest brick in the wall of this wonderful world!
<Original bright, organ and piano sea shanty music fading in the background with school bell sound.>
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