Teaching Nature Part I of II – Outdoor Education Tips & Tricks: Prep, Safety, Discipline & Building Community

Although I love the outdoor skills we teach at Wolf Camp & School of Natural Science, the actual skill of teaching is my real specialty. Teaching in the classroom is difficult enough, where walls and rows of tables and chairs help keep students focused. Outdoors, it’s a real trick helping students learn efficiently, and to help them avoid developing bad habits that can come back to haunt you and them later. – Chris Chisholm

Teaching: It’s All In The Prep

If you want to create excellent classes and other forms of educational programming, outdoors or otherwise, the key is preparation. Prep time is the same no matter how many times you have taught something in the past. What you prep varies, however, depending on whether it’s the first time, the second, third or ten thousandth time you teach something.

If you teach for the first time, your prep should focus on developing “community” with your group. Until you establish a sense of community, i.e. a positive mental and emotional connection, a feeling of safety with rules and boundaries, you won’t be able to teach any subject matter. Preparing subject matter should begin with a story or other intriguing introduction so the students look forward to learning it later – read below for tips on that.

If you are a veteran teacher, or if you are teaching the same material a hundred times to different sets of students, your prep time should include a review and improvement on how the “community environment” is developing. The bulk of your remaining prep time can then focus on how to keep the material fresh – that’s not something you needed to do the first time or two you taught it, because back then, the students could just sense your excitement for it. Now you need to work on freshness. Study it more, push yourself and your students to learn more. Give them more, and their love for the subject will grow.

Something that has always fascinated me is that the first time I teach a program, it’s like magic. Call it beginner’s luck, or that our angels are right there with us. The second time, if we don’t prep much, it goes fine, like our angels are giving us a chance, but we’ll only win 4 stars from students. The third time, if we don’t prep, things go bad. Sounds metaphysical, but in my experience, it’s a tendency of nature. I say let’s go do something other than teaching if we can’t discipline and humble ouselves to prepare every time to be the best of teachers.

Creating Safe Teaching Environments: Physical, Mental & Emotional

The bulk of the Wolf Camp mission, vision and guiding principles revolves around the creation of safe teaching environments. The physical, emotional, mental, and social health of students is our top priority. We expect students of all ages to seek their truth, develop self-sufficiency, respect hazards, strive for success, be emotionally sensitive, express art and music, improve physical health, honor their own religion or spirituality, be tolerant of differences between people, and recognize similarities among everyone on earth. Some of the highlights we, and all good teachers, strive to achieve include:

Safe learning environments through effective risk management including solid trip preparation and emergency response protocol.
Fun and collaborative working environments based on healthy staff, clear policies, and a dedication to teamwork.
Courteous, responsive, and professional conduct with all students and family, honoring every individual for unique skills, talents, beliefs and contributions.
Profound experiences and challenges that result in the maturation of students, real confidence and self-reliance, deeper understanding of self, greater love of nature, and a respect for the ethic of conservation.
Good role modeling for peer and life mentoring at programs in order to nurture the success of every student.

Achieving the above goals demonstrates the reason people should get good teaching and educational administrative degrees. Unfortunately, most of the practical stuff on how to achieve those goals isn’t taught in college. You learn it on-the-job since learning to teach is a life-long pursuit. Maybe there’s no way to learn how to do it in college – you just have to keep practicing, solving challenge after challenge, assessing what happened, prepping some more, then doing it again. Eventually, you’ll need to learn how to deal with everything, including:

Recognizing & Addressing Homesickness
Teaching to Students with English as a Second Language
Hearing Loss, Visual Impairment & Physical Limitations
Weight Disorders, Signs of Trauma, Abuse, Grief & Loss
Sexual Harassment, Bullying & Co-Dependence
Culture, Class, Religious, Lingual & Familial Sensitivities
Poverty & Foster Issues, Attitudes of Privilege & Prejudice
Sexual Orientation & Gender Identities
Religious, Ethnic, Lingual & Other Sub-Cultural Identities
Mental Illnesses (Treatable & What You’re Unable To Serve)
Developmental Delays (Physiological), Learning Impairments (Dyslexia, etc)
ADD & ADHD, OCD, Verbal & Nonverbal Learning Disorders

Building Immediate Community – Respect for Teacher & Student

People want to feel safe, and if you are well prepared, you know your audience, and follow through on almost everything you say, your students will feel safe and will go happily along with you. Every teacher knows that we must establish authority first thing, rather than trying to be “liked” by students. The best classroom teachers are often despised on the first day for being “strict” while the “coolest” teachers on the first day end up with a mess later on, teaching very little over the long run. Miraculously, the “strict” teachers magically become “cool” by the second week of school, able to impart challenging and exciting material.

Outdoors, we immediately circle-up, and we don’t start until all students are in that circle – not square, not anything but a real circle – and perfectly quiet. In that very second, inspire the students with a story that gives them a vision of what they are about to experience and learn. Engage them with a voice of inflection described below. Right when you are done, move immediately into agreements for participation (aka kids, youth, adult rules) and after each is spoken, have them repeat in unison (not individually) or if they’ve heard them before, we have them say “aye, aye” afterwards, expanding on any we really want to emphasize.

That trick of the trade is more of a trick when you are teaching a “one-off” class – a short outdoor program, for instance. So, the very first time any student makes a “peep” out-of-turn, or moves an inch from where they are supposed to be, we make a quick but friendly example of them. I like to put my hand on their shoulder, explain at the appropriate distance from their face in a compassionate way, that “what you are about to learn is critical for the safety and success of every person here, so we don’t even have a second to waste on distracting talk; we’re spending this 30 seconds of time now telling eveyone how important it is to follow every single normal school-like rule so we can go as far as humanly possible in learning everything we can possibly cover in this one (hour, day, week).”

The above trick pretty much takes care of any near-term problem, but if not, then here’s how to start dealing with oppositional behavior: -flect it! Remember, either you never created a successful sense of community, i.e. gave clear and consistently-enforced rules, or you and/or your student are not recognizing that one of the above bullet-point problems exists. Always assume you are missing something, and follow these steps to deal with an oppositional challenge to your leadership.

1. Inflect your voice in new ways that help students follow the rules better, and always be totally consistent with appropriate consequences, or your students will never respect your word (see below for age-appropriate consequence ideas). For example, say “I never said she stole my money” out loud 7 times, but inflecting a different one of the words each time (a common training exercise with unknown origin after lengthy internet search). Now try it with the sentence “If you speak before I call on you again today, you will be the last person I allow to speak for the rest of the day.”

2. Failing that, deflect. Deflect the behavior, especially with teenagers, until you recognize what the problem is, but not long because then you’ll never reel them back in. Maybe the teen is just hungry, thirsty, or tired. Express compassion and without letting them know why you are doing it, provide a short break, and feed them if necessary. Don’t wait too long before HALTing: Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Thirsty? or Hurting? Alienated? Loving? or Tired?

3. Finally, reflect! If you can’t figure out what you did wrong, or what is causing your student to be oppositional, then keep going back to #1 and #2 until class is over, and before you see your student again, reflect with your supervisor and colleagues in order to prepare a positive solution for the next time it happens.

Responsibility: The Ability To Respond

In the fall of 1994 my path lead from employment at Sea Mar Community Health Centers as a Level II Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor with youth specialist credential, to the start of my self-employment career. At the time, I was a jack of all trades, master of none, but I was not yet ready for the perfect job among people described like that, which is of course teaching. I had also been doing a lot of volunteer work with homeless people on the streets of Bellingham, so I took a drama therapy training course which brings audience members into improvisational situations having to do with complex issues.

I loved working with kids as well as adults on improvisational drama therapy, so I started my own production called “Responsibility: The Ability To Respond.” Needless to say, it was not a money maker, and it was a challenge to help participants balance between sharing and over-sharing, and even more of a challenge working with youth and parents facing conflict and complex relationship issues.

I tell that story now because as a teacher, you will always face new problems, so there is an endless list of tips and tricks of the trade to put up your sleeve, ready to pull out on the spot, ready to be response-able, but we also have to remember to be age-appropriate and diagnosis-appropriate.

Tips & Tricks of the Teaching Trade

Preventative Medicine:

Go over rules/agreements before starting;
Never promise anything you have any chance of not delivering;
“It’s all in the prep” so “prep, prep, prep”
Use directive language. Don’t ask students to do things, don’t ask what they think about doing something you want them to do: just tell them if they circled up or transitioned quickly/efficiently;
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Group Facilitation:

Go in order of the circle, left to right, or right to left;
Call on people who aren’t talking;
Call on people who are talking/distracting;
Talk to people who are paying attention, and the rest usually follow;
Pass around “talking stick” or stuffed animal;
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Transitions:

Count down from 10;
Count up from 1 and challenge students to transition in less and less time;
Have an assistant get the kids to play a game during transitions so that the Lead Instructor can set things up;
Get students to help carry stuff and give incentives for doing things fast;
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Rewards:

Acknowledge good behavior, in private or sometimes in front of group if it doesn’t cause envy;
Give them dark chocolate if allowed in their nutritional desciption;
Let them play a game;
Next time you get to go first!
Tell a story;
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Consequences:

Push ups for fun!
Tree pose;
Carry my stuff;
Run somewhere and back;
Sit out (be sure to bring back way before they ask to be brought back)
Make them stand next to you;
Extra Work (such as collecting lost and found for the day)
Have them go last;
Ask students to remind you of the agreements/rules;
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Motivation Issues:

Electrolyte Blast! (Give mouthful of gatoraid, which gives kids “special powers” of strength, speed, and endurance)
Joyfully scare/surprise kids who fall behind to make them walk faster;
Barter for resources (ex. trade three cleaned thistle stalks for first water refill, bundle of pencil lead for second bottle, make a trap/or cordage trade for salami slice) promise story time or other activities in exchange for hard work (piles of X height of debris, working hard for X amount of time, etc)
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Heat Related Issues:

5 minute power nap!
Meditation with story!
Do not run;
Mandatory water drinking circle;
Spritz with spray bottle;
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Community Building vs Friends Talking / Cliquiness:

Separate cliquey friends into different groups;
Stand between fridnds who are talking;
Have students pick a partner they don’t already know;
line up by shoe size then buddy up;
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Shyness:

Not forcing them to be extroverted;
Give them opportunites to be social with other kind of shy children;
Give space to share during questions (count to 10 before moving on)
Be quiet with them–if just sitting at lunch or for a break, stand or be near them without asking questions or trying to make them talk;
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Impulse Control Issues:

Hold their hand;
Challenge them to see how long they can stay within 5 feet of you;
Use a timer;
Initiate hand signals;
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Advanced Teaching Tips for Special Situations

Phobias:

Show them how their fear can be overcome;
Allow for phobias and distract them;
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD):

Learn their routines, and be respectful of them;
Distraction from compulsive behavior;
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Aspergers and Autism:

By all means, stick with the plan;
Reminding them about their contribution to the group;
Giving only two choices, rather than many options;
Don’t argue with them, but be authoritative if you knowledgeable about which you speak, otherwise be absolutely sure to admit you don’t know something;
Constant contact with them to gently remind them what project they need to continue working on;
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ADHD & ADD:

Limit the number of questions with set counts and consequence;
Keep to a good sleep and eating schedule; begin the morning with an English Breakfast (fats and proteins) not a continental breakfast (simple carbs)
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Chronic Depression & Acute Grief:

Distractions showing life must go on;
Healthy expression at appropriate length of time following loss;
Counseling with trained staff member or the director;
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Other Mental Illnesses:

Monitor medications closely and follow family directives on teaching the student. In the case of untreated mental illnesses including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, for example, or any antisocial personality disorders such as psychopathy, sociopathy, or lack of sexual impulse control especially attraction to children: do not allow them to participate, or if discovered during program, remove and send home.

Continue to Teaching Nature Part II of II – Learning Styles, Age Considerations: Preparing & Leading Classes, Camps, Lessons & Programs which will be published this Thursday, 2025-01-16. To learn how to teach in the outdoors, spend a summer training in one of our hallmark programs: the Wolf Camp Earth Skills Teaching Apprenticeship and the Blue Skye Farm Natural Science Education Internship.

Chris Chisholm founded Wolf Camp & School of Natural Science in 1996, and he is author of the Wolf Journey Earth Conservation Courses. He grew up in the north woods of Minnesota, spent his high school years in Germany and tromping around the Alps, studied in the Ecuadoran Andes for his college junior year abroad, and moved to the west coast after earning a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1991. From 1992-95, Chris worked as a Level II Certified Youth Counselor at Sea Mar Community Health Centers. He taught Spanish from 1995-97 at the Whatcom Hills Waldorf School, and was an active member of the Whatcom County Chapter, Washington State Music Teachers Association from 1996-2003. In addition to running Wolf Camp, he has taught for the The Mountaineers, North Cascades Institute, Sierra Club and various other organizations up and down the west coast. Chris is considered an inspirational storyteller, musician, teacher, counselor, outdoorsman, conservationist, cooperative businessman, and friend to all who have shared time with him at Wolf Camp.