Harry Reynolds - Outdoor Educator

Yesterday I had the incredible privilege of facilitating a training workshop, aimed at demonstrating the power of team building activities and how they can be implemented as a part of physical education in schools. This was a welcome opportunity for me, giving me a platform to impart my passion, knowledge, and practice my facilitation skills outside of a summer camp setting. 

In my experience, there is a distinct contrast between how these workshops are delivered in the UK vs. the US, and (I’m sorry to say) we are lagging miles behind. In the UK, the emphasis is on the ‘doing’ of the activities as a way to bond a team together, with little regard to any follow up discussion or reflection. I believe that this approach completely neglects crucial parts of the Experiential Learning Cycle: reflection, conceptualisation, and testing. Without facilitating and allocating space to explore the whole cycle, participants (especially young children who may lack critical thinking skills) will struggle to evaluate the experience they have had, making any lessons learned superficial and sort-lived, leaving me thinking: “What is the point?”. This heavily informs my facilitation style and is an ethos that I tried to impress upon the third year sports students in the short two-hour workshop yesterday, providing a bit of background information on experiential learning theory and its importance in stimulating meaningful personal and collective growth in participants.

Guiding participants through the cycle doesn’t have to be complicated and must be engaging, empowering, and accessible; it can be as simple as exploring this series of questions with the group: 1) What happened? 2) What does this mean for us/me? 3) So, what are we going to do now? A facilitator that successfully draws attention to these ideas and guides participants through will find that they have played an integral part in encouraging the personal and collective growth of the group, which, for me, is the most rewarding part!

I couldn’t have asked for a better group to work with, they were fully engaged in the workshop, getting stuck in and willing to be silly from the start all the way to the end! They were receptive to ideas and inquisitive, asking lots of thoughtful questions, leading to insightful group discussion about adaptations and delivery for different abilities and outcomes, and (most importantly) willing to have a good laugh - I can’t wait to work with these folks again!

If you’re interested in the session plan, please click here.

We were invited by the MMU Cheshire Primary Science Technician, Antony Tibbetts, to see his work with the university to establish a new forest school on campus, which is open to local primary schools. He gave us some background on the origins and ethos of the forest school movement and the Level 3 Forest School Leader certification he is currently working towards.

The bulk of the session centred around the safe use of tools and fire, which took me by surprise - having worked extensively with young children, I can see the many, many risks involved in letting them use potentially dangerous tools, which (I’m ashamed to say) often makes me feel nervous during outdoor cooking classes etc. This sparked thought-provoking discussion about the idea of risk/reward analysis in favour of traditional risk assessments. 

Risk/reward analysis is rooted in the idea that, while everything comes with its own set of potential risks, they also provide the opportunity for participants to gain something from the experience, and by seeking to remove all risk, we can also eradicate the possibility of reaping the benefits, whether that is learning from success or ‘failure’. As an outdoor educator who believes in the power of experiential learning, this is right up my street!

These sessions are a part of a full package of forest school immersion and in November Antony has arranged for us to assist him in delivering activities to reception-aged children at a local primary school, which will provide us with valuable first-hand experience of the forest school ethos, risk/reward analysis, and intentional programming for young people. I’m excited to continue to engage with the forest school and learn more about safely exposing young people to risk through outdoor play and seeing how they grow as a result!

A very proud Harry gazing upon prusik perfection during a quick session on shelter building.

It seems that this summer bought a record-breaking heatwave to the UK, rivalling even that of 1976, which was so serious that the government appointed a Minister for Drought, whose sole job was to encourage the public to use less water! Whilst the situation didn’t quite hit crisis levels in terms of drought, the combined heat and lack of rainfall did create the perfect storm of conditions for the UK’s own wildfires, which affected large areas of the Northern moors.

Today, myself and two others visited a local area in the Peak District, The Roaches, where approximately 195 acres has been reduced to scorched peat as a result of a foolish August campfire gone rogue. As we wandered through the blackened, bare earth and mangled, charred trees that had once been vibrant heathland and forest, we discussed the effect of the fire on local wildlife, the outdoor industry, and the environment as a whole. The area is a very popular area for climbing (being one of the UK’s most iconic crags), walking, and is a good venue to bring school groups for all types of outdoor education sessions, so the impact of being off-limits to visitors and groups for weeks whilst the fires raged and the underground peat smouldered has been great. 

The Roaches is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of its geology and many species of interest, such as Peregrine Falcons and even a few escaped wallabies, so it will be interesting to watch as nature does its thing to reclaim the scorched earth and see what the effects of the fire will be over the next few months. 

As run-away global warming continues and summers like this past one become the norm, it is of utmost importance that we do more to educate the public and casual users of our most precious wild spaces on fire safety so events like this do not become a regular occurrence like they are in the US.