in the classroom
Learning from experience at Tihoi Venture School, New Zealand. Photo: St Paul’ s Collegiate School.
Growing confidence
How learning outdoors helps children build resilience and problem-solving skills.
David Gregory interviewed by Loren Smith
We’ ve all heard of cotton wool kids and helicopter parents. Instead of merely complaining about these modern phenomena, David Gregory is addressing them. An outdoor educator, he thinks that students should‘ learn by doing’, particularly outdoors, as this teaches them to tackle and overcome challenges.
Failing, too, is alright, Gregory says, as this propels personal growth.
“ If everything’ s going well and life is peachy and comfortable … this leads to feelings of entitlement, laziness and ultimately a poor ability to cope when anything hard comes our way.”
Especially in this era of economic and societal uncertainty, Gregory believes it is crucial that students learn adaptability and resilience.
“ Having worked in education and run a couple of businesses, I started to notice a shift in many students’ ability to make that transition from school to future studies and employment,” he says.
“ This disconnect really concerns me, as many schools, despite what they say, aren’ t really addressing the issue of how to prepare kids for this uncertain future.
“ As teachers, parents and employers, it is important that we enable those for whom we’ re responsible to have the right skills and attitude to be able to take that leap and be able to pick themselves up if they fall down.”
To further his own understanding of experiential learning, he has started a weekly podcast on the subject. Xperiential
Education traverses the curriculum – from outdoor education, to art and drama, to history and STEM.
Education Review spoke with Gregory about what the great outdoors can offer kids that classrooms can’ t, and how to make those lessons last.
ER: You’ ve said that many schools aren’ t preparing children for the uncertain future. Can you describe what you mean by this? DG: Well, in the last 10 – 15 years, we’ ve seen a significant shift. I’ ve noticed that students are lacking the resilience that some of life’ s experience brought to [ previous generations ]. They get out of school and they’ re uncertain of what they want to do, which is typical for any sort of teenager, but they’ re also not necessarily able to cope with rapid change and without an instant answer. You can find anything on Google, which is great, but what do you do with that information? What do you do if you can’ t find a simple solution to a problem? Do you give up because it’ s too hard, or do you grit your teeth and go,“ Okay, I know there’ s a wider problem here. This might take me more time to be able to solve it”?
An example in how we transfer this learning is I’ ve been running mountain bike expeditions, which are a lot of fun, but mountain biking tends to be great when you’ re riding along on the flats and the kids are all loving it. It’ s like,“ Oh, yeah, we’ re out for a bike ride.” As soon as you start to increase the gradient of the hill – and we take students down to Mount Stromlo in Canberra, and it would be a 40-minute climb up a hill – things would just go to pieces because " it’ s too hard – I can’ t do this”. But once you get to the top, you get to ride down all the really fast, steep descents. You can translate that into teaching delayed gratification.
You could probably cite the ' millennial problem ' as well, which is that a lot of students have been told,“ Oh, you are wonderful, you are perfect.” And telling kids that all the time – and the idea that everybody gets a prize – is also adding to the problem of students being unable to cope when faced with adversity or failure.
Failure can be a good thing. I’ ve had many failures in life, and I’ ve learnt the most I’ ve ever learnt from those failures. I think it ' s
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