In our changing city children are spending less time outdoors in natural play settings. Many children attend daycare, school, and/or after school daycare programs. That means that educators have a huge influence on the quality of engagement that children can have with the natural environment. Ken Finch states “American children spend 27% of their time with electronic media. How much time do they spend outdoors?” (greenheartsinc). Although these stats are for American children, I believe this is also an issue for children in Vancouver. As educators this is a critical question to think about. How much time in our programs provide time and space for children to play in nature? What kinds of outdoor spaces do we have for children to play in? and what do these natural spaces invite children to do? What is our ethical responsibility as teachers to provide opportunities for children to explore nature?
As our city changes natural spaces are becoming more urbanized, children are living in apartments with little or no access to nature, our play ground spaces are becoming more artificial with metal and plastic structures and asphalt or concrete on the ground. There are also so many fears that limit our access to the world outside of our schools and even to go to the creek across the street many centres require field trip notices and consent forms.
Children are learning about the natural environment through books, TV and even video games. This provides children with opportunities to learn about and see pictures of many animal and plant species around the world, but how much are children engaging with animal and plant species in their own outdoor environments? This comic illustrates this division of children and their interactions with the natural world.
In a changing society where technology is becoming a big source in our learning about the world, are we growing an ethical relationship of care and empathy for nature? How can we as teachers respond to these changes and create spaces in our classrooms and outdoor environments that invite children to connect with nature and species of insects and animals in an ethical way? How do we disrupt the division between children and nature?
I recently attended an event called, Bringing Children and Nature Back Together with Ken Finch as the host. He asked us, “what are the challenges that are keeping us from providing children with opportunities to engage with nature?”. Some of the answers where, “time and space”, “safety”, “lack of money to create natural spaces in our playground”, “parent complaints about there children’s clothing getting dirty”, and “teachers lack of knowledge about nature restricts their comfort of teaching children about the natural environment”. Engaging in thinking together about these challenges as a group allowed for many perspectives to be heard and what we discovered was how easily these challenges could have solutions. These challenges require teachers to have discussions with their teaching team. If bringing children and nature back together is valued, then teachers need to think together about ways in which they can make space and time in their programs for nature exploration. Exploration of nature gets messy so a way to support our families and reduce or eliminate extra laundry for our families is to buy extra clothes from the thrift store or ask for donations of clothes for children to wear outside. Ken Finch responded to the issue of safety by stating, “ humans have the natural sense to recognize dangers and will respond accordingly. If children are playing with sticks than we need to teach them how to use them safely instead of restricting their interaction with this material”. The money restrictions for creating natural play spaces can be difficult, but often centres spend thousands of dollars to make their outdoor spaces more artificial. The natural materials are replaced by plastic, metal, concrete and asphalt. These values of nature play need to become apart of the planning for our outdoor spaces. Often our lack of knowledge about nature and the species that inhabit them cause us to resist teaching children about nature. This invites teachers to learn along side children. As interests emerge from the children teachers can seek out knowledge with children by using the internet, and books. This way our experiences of learning come from what emerges though our interactions with nature and then connects to books and technology.
Ken Finch asked us before we left the event to think about three things that we can do to bring nature exploration into our programs. The first is what we can to today, the second is what you can do over the next few months, and the third is what you can do by the end of the year. I encourage you to think about this for yourself. I bring back the quote I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, “Ethics is a very practical matter. It is the ‘systematic and critical reflection on human action... [and this] is not limited to the domain of many academic texts), but takes place in all kinds of social practice’ (ibid.). Ethics can be - and, we would argue, should be - the basis for preschool (and school) practice.” (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p.65) How can we take our theorizing about the importance of nature exploration and create action towards bringing children and nature back together in our programs as ethically as possible?
References:
Dahlberg, G. & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. Rouledge Farmer.
Finch, K. Retrieved from: www.greenheartsinc.org
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