Nature Based Education at CCS: The Middle Years

 

At Cumberland Community School (CCS) we have been working over the last 3 years to focus on outdoor, experiential, nature based education. From 2013-2015 the school engaged our partner groups including students, teachers, parents and community members to develop a vision for Cumberland Community School. CCS Visioning Document 2015.pdf  Through the process we identified a demand for nature based education that echoed through our visioning themes.

Nature based education was already embedded at CCS in many classrooms with teachers like Pam Twin, Jim Curtin and Ellen Klassen having incorporated the local environment into their teachings for years. Our efforts focussed on taking this focus to a greater level by creating specific programming that held the natural environment and connections to nature as the guiding principles. We also worked to build a risk management framework that would follow industry best practice to ensure student safety. This post will focus on the development of our middle years or grade 6-9 programming. If you are curious about our early years nature based education programming check out the blog post Playing (and Learning) In Nature and our Cumberland Community School Primary Nature-Based Education Guiding Principles.

 

The CCS Middle Years: Grade 6-9 Outdoor Education Elective

We started with a grade 6-9 Outdoor Education Program that has been taught for the last three years by Rachael Black. Rachael has worked tirelessly to create a program that works to connect students with nature and go beyond the traditional outdoor experience type of course offering. Her experience working for the Strathcona Wilderness Lodge, Tribune Bay Outdoor Education Centre, and the Sierra Club of Canada, combined with her Wilderness First Aid training and Kayaking/Canoe guide certifications helped prepare her for this role.

This course has evolved over the past three years as we worked to find the best fit for our learning objectives, and worked within the Outdoor Education guidelines for best practice to guarantee the safety of all students. This includes undertaking activities to a guide level standard. We started with a grade 4/5 pullout option for students during the 2014-2015 school year. Interested parents signed their children up for a hands on, nature based experience that included knot tying and collaborative outdoor games one afternoon per week. This created the momentum for the development of the program over the subsequent years.

For the 2015-2016 school year we incorporated the Outdoor Ed programming into our elective offerings for both grade 6/7 and grade 8/9 students. We experimented with incorporating the ocean environment through sailing instruction from Compass Adventures in Comox. While this program gave students a great ocean experience it was too cost prohibitive to be sustainable and we sought a more immersive nature experience for students.

A partnership with the newly formed Cumberland Lake Wilderness Society emerged that has worked to give students a local, place-based experience that focuses on outdoor survival skills and connections to nature. Beginning last January, every Thursday morning for eight weeks, our grade 6/7 and grade 8/9 Outdoor Education Classes started travelling to Comox Lake to take part in an Explorer Wilderness Pilot program with CLWS. Students produced a journal of their learning of: wilderness awareness, knife skills including safe knife use, tarpology, fire starting, outdoor cooking and connections with place. At the end of each session students came together as a group to reflect on and share their learning.

 

 

This pilot program culminated with an overnight camping trip for students. The overnight camp had students building tarp shelters, starting a fire in the rain and preparing a meal before settling in for the night. This program was such a success that it was repeated for the spring. In the spring, Rachael Black was also successful in applying for a grant through Mountain Equipment Co-op and the Alpine Guides of Canada. Using this grant, she partnered with local guide Jan Neuspiel of Island Alpine Guides to offer an outdoor climbing experience during Thursday classes at the Comox Lake Bluffs.

 

She also created a school garden exploratory that helped create connections to nature and hand on experiences with students by building raised garden beds.

This fall the partnership with CLWS has continued with the support and financial assistance of the Village of Cumberland. This year we have placed our grade 6/7 students into a rotation of electives which includes Outdoor Education, ensuring that every grade 6/7 gets a nature experience.

We have also recently partnered with the Cumberland Fly Shop which will result in our grade 8/9 students working with the local club to learn fly fishing skills that will hopefully help them catch some fish during their outing this spring.

We are working again this year with Jan Neuspiel of Island Alpine Guides, not only to offer outdoor climbing to students, but to offer an Avalanche Awareness Course during our winter exploratories session. We hope to include working with the Vancouver Island Mountain Sports Society‘s Mountain Centre to offer an overnight experience during the final field experience portion of the course.

We are excited to see this program continue to evolve, and are working to align our primary level nature education programming with our middle years nature education programming.

We see room for more nature based programming in the school district at the senior levels and hope to be part of developing a grade K-12 program that can build upon the skill base our students have and take them further down the lines of certification and coursework in the outdoor field. There is great potential for a School District 71 partnership with the Cumberland Lake Wilderness Society, Tribune Bay Outdoor Education Centre and the Vancouver Island Mountain Sports Society. This access to a combination of lake, mountain and ocean based natural environments in the valley will open the doors to a large range of programming, and the existing partnership between SD71 and Thompson Rivers University will help students build towards employment in the outdoors through dual credit agreements. This will potentially supplement the respected and established Georges P Vanier Secondary’s Explore Program and allow a greater range of students to reap the benefits of a nature based education right here in our own backyard.

We seem to be on the verge of something exciting and special in outdoor, experiential education in the Comox Valley and it is great to be a part of it!