A Powell River education project may have a larger impact as the province reviews how students are taught outdoor education.
The project is designed to expand the four walls of a classroom to include outdoor learning environments. Powell River is widely regarded throughout the province as being a leader in environmental education.
For the past year WildBC, a program of the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, and School District 47 have been working together to build a scoped and sequenced approach to teaching students outdoor curriculum. Karin Westland, Ryan Barfoot and Janet May have been working together on the project to create the resources for the initiative.
“It is an empowerment model that aims to build capacity, providing all district teachers with the curricular tools and know-how to take their classroom learning outside,” Westland wrote in her report on the initiative.
May presented the group’s work to the Powell River Board of Education trustees at their public meeting on April 21 on the outdoor curricular support initiative.
Central to outdoor learning in Powell River is the district’s Outdoor Learning Centre at Powell Lake’s Haywire Bay. May outlined the stages of the work they have been doing including creating grade-appropriate activities which are connected with learning aids. The group then started creating bins with the activities and aids at the Outdoor Learning Centre. Once the grade bins were created then the group gathered same-grade teachers together from around the district to walk them through what they had developed. The group also employed mentored field experiences which included both students and teachers. May said that although she knew the activities well and what the learning centre offers, it was important to engage the teachers. “They know their students, so we worked together to come up with a series of activities.”
May explained to the board of eduction that the project could have an impact on the approach the province takes as it reworks curriculum in the British Columbia Education Plan.
Currently there is a provincial review of outdoor education curriculum in the province and the feedback from teachers of School District 47 is being included in that.
“It’s a nice loop,” said May. “Karin was using old and new curriculum to design this and the responses we’ve been getting from teachers are feeding back into the review and will be a part of the new outdoor curriculum.”
