Brief-Form Post #41: Outdoor Alabama Adventure Elementary School Field Trip at Oak Mountain State Park!
I am pleased to add the 41st of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I tend to get a bit wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.
As a member of the Alabama State Parks Foundation, I assisted Chief of Interpretation and Education Renee Raney in envisioning the 2024 Outdoor Alabama Adventure k-12 program to orient school children to the Nature of Alabama. On November 7, 2024, I observed three busloads of Clanton, Alabama first graders participate in an Alabama Outdoor Adventure field workshop at Oak Mountain State Park near Pelham, AL. Conducted by Naturalists with the Alabama State Park System, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of AL’s The Caring Foundation funded this partnership effort that reached 4,000 AL K-12 students by the end of the 2024 calendar year. The buses arrived at 9:00 AM, and dislodged the eager students. State Park Naturalists Lauren Massey and AnnaRuth Davis led them to pavillions for the day’s hands-on instruction.
They could not have selected a day more conducive to learning about the Nature of Alabama.
Richard Louv is an American non-fiction author and journalist. He is best known for his seventh book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (first published in 2005 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), which investigates the relationship of children and the natural world in current and historical contexts. Louv created the term “nature deficit disorder” to describe possible negative consequences to individual health and the social fabric as children move indoors and away from physical contact with the natural world – particularly unstructured, solitary experience. Louv cites research pointing to attention disorders, obesity, a dampening of creativity, and depression as problems associated with a nature-deficient childhood. He amassed information on the subject from practitioners of many disciplines to make his case and is commonly credited with helping to inspire an international movement to reintroduce children to nature.
Louv’s philosophy guided our creating the program:
Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child.
Reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.
Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees.
I recorded this 59-second with AnnaRuth:
Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest thinker of the 20th Century likewise saw the wisdom of connecting to Nature:
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Imagine if all classrooms encouraged such absolute joy in discovery and learning!
Here is my 58-second video as Lauren led her group:
Dr. David Sobel, a renowned American educator and academic, responsible for developing the philosophy of place-based education has written extensively about the broad benifit of children learning in Nature:
You can’t bounce off the walls If there are no walls: outdoor schools make kids happier—and smarter.
We tiptoed the tops of beaver dams, hopped hummocks, went wading, looked at spring flowers, tried to catcha snake, got lost and found. How fine it was to move at a meandery, child’s pace.
Here is my 58-second video of the Oak MSP lakeside setting with the sounds of kids joyfully learning in the background:
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. William Wordsworth captured Nature’s magical embrace of children in a simple beautiful verse:
Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.
