Welcome And Program Overview

Chris Colley 0:14

All right everyone. Welcome back to another Shift Ed episode of Shift Ed podcast. I think we just hit over 80 casts that we've done, which is again crazy, but uh thank you for all you listening out there. Uh today I'm I'm I'm gathering in two amazing educators that are uh Quebec educators from Western Quebec School Board who teach over at Pete's and they have such this great program that I I had the opportunity of of working with them a little bit not too long ago, and I was like, I'd love to talk to you guys about this program. It is a natural immersion in kindergarten. If you're not understanding my French, it's uh get kids are outside uh mostly all the time. I think we're 75%, you guys had said and these are kindergarten, so our preschool program kids. So I have Taya and I have Heather here from PETS who run this program. So thanks so much, guys, for for coming in and talking to us about this. I'm just so excited about meeting you guys and continuing our kind of this conversation we're having about the importance of taking kids outside.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 1:24

Yeah, thank you. We love sharing, we love, you know, talking to like-minded people. So that's great.

Chris Colley 1:31

Excellent. Well, hopefully this is not the last time, but just the first, actually the second, actually the third time, and then so Heather, I I I'm gonna start with you because I think that you started this program kind of on your own when it first started to percolate as something that you were gonna kind of do.

Origins Of Nature Immersion

Chris Colley 1:52

Can you can you bring us back in time a little bit and like how did this seed start to grow?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 1:59

So I would say about seven years ago, give or take, myself and another colleague in our school, we we both really loved being outdoors. We started hearing about different programs that were across Canada. And so we decided that this is something that we wanted to try. So I I definitely started with my homeroom in our program. Tea and I share two classes. So I started with with when the children were in English class with me for the full day. I would take them outside for, you know, just a block here and a block there. I would take them out for circle time. Some days I would take them out for calendar time or outdoor uh center time. So I'd take the centers outside. But it was it was very quick because I teach the same children as Taya. Tea jumped on board really quickly and uh saw the benefits of the outdoor programming with the students, with the children. And it is a lot easier to do when there's two of you as a team, you know, just physically, logistically carrying things outdoors and making sure there's more than one adult with the class, uh, you know, if someone needs to run into the washroom, that sort of thing. But also for the children, having the same kind of routine and expectations in both English class and French class just made it all run so much more smoothly your whole week.

Chris Colley 3:28

Yeah, totally. And and Teo, what was your early interest in like saying, hey, I want to hop on board here with Heather and what she's doing? Like, what was your mindset that really influenced

Partnering Up And Early Wins

Chris Colley 3:39

that choice that you made?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 3:40

I've always been an outdoor kid. I mean, I was always outdoors. I was one of those leave in the morning, come back whenever we were hungry, sort of families. So the outdoors didn't scare me at all. I would say, you know, you just see the benefits. The kids are happy. You're able to do all the same things that you're doing indoors, the same types of lessons, the same subjects, but with a lot more movement, a lot more fun. I would say, as a as a new teacher, that can be intimidating because it at that time was not the norm at all. And the people who took me under their wings when I first started teaching were a lot more traditional. And so I was that's how I was teaching for the beginning of my career. But to see, like, oh wait, that looks a lot more fun. I'd like to do that. You know, I it's and it did. It just worked out really well. We were a good match, right?

Chris Colley 4:33

And and have been doing this together now for like how many years are we talking now?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 4:37

Like uh since 2017? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Colley 4:40

That's amazing. That's amazing. And I know that I've heard of you guys

Play-Based Curriculum Alignment

Chris Colley 4:44

before. There are echoes of because we do a lot with at learn with outdoor learning and preschool, right? Like and preschool, I guess my question is the philosophy of the new preschool program, right? Um, I guess it's maybe four or five years old now at this point. And the real focus on that play, right? To get them out exploring and developing the whole self. How does that feed into Uptur just that philosophy of playing in our program? How does that transfer outside?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 5:16

So I yeah, I mean, as we said, we we started before the new curriculum was written, but it definitely we started growing our nature immersion program by using, you know, some of our developed our professional development budgets and classroom budgets for outdoor materials and tools, right? So that was something that we had to do over the years to build up our program. And then when the new curriculum was presented to the teachers, we saw that with the it had a mandatory two 45-minute play blocks, one of which should be outdoors, all of that with the homeroom teacher. So it's not sending them out with a supervisor. And we saw that a lot of the observables listed under the competencies, the cognitive one in particular, were to us sounded like they were directly related to being outdoors. There's examples directly from the preschool section of the QEP, like discovering the elements around them, manipulating sand and water and mud, being curious about natural phenomena, seeing things change over time. So through the seasons or plants growing, the list goes on. During the training, we had to sit and be trained on how to teach the new curriculum. And for us, we just kept looking at each other and going, okay, check, check, we've done, we're doing all this. This is great. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. The new program, it really validated what we had been practicing over like for the few years already. I think it really helped, though, change the perspective of learning outdoors as a like as a fringe or a niche teaching style. I think it helped for the philosophy to spread through the schools. I feel it gave the permission for educators and administration to allow time to schedule time and maybe even designate resources in ways that that can support this style of learning, which maybe

Misconceptions And Mindset Shifts

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 7:14

wasn't happening before. We definitely still have a long way to go before we can call it mainstream, you know, here in Quebec. But, you know, awareness and interest is definitely growing. We're, you know, we're always getting people who who have questions for us and want to visit us. And we're always like, yes, for sure. Come on over. Yeah.

Chris Colley 7:32

That's it. That's it. I guess seeing is is believing as well, right? Like until you experience it, it's hard to be like, I'm gonna go outside and we're gonna do what? Like, is it gonna be a recess again? Is it like lunch? When it's totally not that at all, right? It's like you are using the outdoors as your classroom rather than let's go sit on stumps and do some worksheets, right? Or, you know, whatever it might be. What do you guys feel the most misconception is about doing this? Or the biggest hesitation that a teacher might be like, I just I don't like it seems like outdoors has kind of started to seem as this wilderness, you know, like this unknown, scary, like we have to be a weary about it. What are some of those m mentalities that kind of feed into that are are that are that are not accurate based on what you guys have experienced?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 8:25

Yeah, it's it's funny. There are different perspectives. You know, some people will say, well, why would I why bring learning outdoors? You know, it's cleaner, it's more controlled, it's all my materials are in the classroom. It seems really intimidating to bring it outside. Other people have the perspective of, well, it's just play time and I can't waste my teaching time on bringing them outdoors just to play, or that it's easy and only possible in kindergarten and preschool because it's play-based. I would say, you know, you're saying works worksheets at stumps. Sometimes that is what we're doing. Sometimes it is just our regular worksheets and evaluations that we're doing on our stumps outdoors. And in those types of activities that any grade level could do, we've done the exact same type of activity indoors and outdoors. And the children almost always just do better outdoors with the exact same activity. And we've tried to, you know, voice that, but you know, we re have the mindset of you can't convince anybody who's not ready. And they'll all come around at their own time if if that's their journey, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I do find, you know, the we definitely, when we're teaching outdoors, it allows us to add more movement and allows us to add more, you know, big voices or being silly. You don't have to worry about the teacher that's teaching next to you. Um well, I do because Taya, Tay is still, you know, we still have two classrooms outside, but it allows for us and the children to just get totally engrossed in the play, in the teaching, and be silly with each other. And that allows us to make connections with the children right from the get-go. And I just, you know, it's so beneficial for the children and for us that it's yeah, I yeah, we love it.

Chris Colley 10:25

Yeah, totally. And like I know that a lot of our program is based on this observation, right? We have to observe our kids in play to see where they kind of are at. Does it change?

Observation And Learning Outdoors

Chris Colley 10:38

Does that shift a little bit compared to like, you know, indoors versus outdoors? Like, do you see more of a kid developing than you would inside or outside? Is there any kind of connection you can make there?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 10:52

Yeah. Well, you know, honestly, everything is easier to observe outdoors, and it requires less prep from us to artificially create the opportunities. You know, we bring them to the forest and you know, they're they're climbing and they're balancing and they're jumping from rock to rock, and we get to observe their gross motor skills. You know, they're aware of their space when we say sticks need space, so they're not hurting anybody or themselves. Moving between, you know, a high energy to low energy activities. We do sit spots or magic spots every day, a full 10 minutes where they're just using their senses to experience. We very clearly can see who's able to sit, who's able to kind of relax in that moment or who still is very busy. You know, the safety awareness, neighborhood safety, knowing what to do if an animal or a stranger walks through the forest, like somebody walking their dog sort of thing, crossing the street when there's lights or no lights. These are all things from the curriculum. And as we said before, you know, the socially, well, the socially emotional development can easily be observed when you're out outside anywhere. It could be it's the outdoor classroom or the forest, which we do both. We have an outdoor classroom and we take our children to the forest every day. You know, one example of socio-emotional is we do a sharing circle at the end of our forest time, where the children can talk about challenges, they can talk about successes, they can we help them with language if they need it to be able to recognize and communicate how they feel. For example, you know, one of the things we do is at closing circle, they're allowed to bring a rock, a leaf, or a stick back to the circle. And so if they brought a rock, they tell us something that rocked in the forest. If they bring a stick, they something that that will stick with them from the forest. And if they bring a leaf, then they have to tell us something that they want to leave behind in the forest. Maybe something that didn't go quite as well. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, being outside allows for open-ended and uh it allows for the open-ended environment so the children can make choices that are based on their own interests, right? They're they can explore their strengths, their challenges, and they do that naturally. There's, you know, easily differentiation happens easily outdoors. You know, we see them resolving conflict. We see how they can adapt or not adapt their behaviors to so many different situations. They ask questions. They're always, you know, their language, they're always talking about something new or unexpected that they just saw. Or stretching sentences. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, stretching sentences, right? So maybe, you know, I saw a flower, right? Or, you know, then we stretch it. Oh, what color was the flower? What shape, you know, you know, so we just, and it and it's physical for them. It's something that they can put their hands on. So, you know, especially like second language. Yeah, yeah. We've I, you know, I've I've always had children say, I don't, I don't speak French. I don't know what you're saying. I don't do that. But since we've been going to the forest, I see it a lot less. Or even those children that do start with that, you know, mindset, they they'll still say, Oh, I need cuvets. Like they'll they're still spontaneously remembering and using the words. And I just get so excited about that. And and we bring, we bring writing outdoors as well. So we have nature journals that we take to the forest, and that allows the children to just spontaneously, they're allowed to get their nature journals anytime they want when they're in the forest. And so we see spontaneous writing. They we see them trying to, you know, do beginning sounds, do uh, you know, they're listening for the sounds because they're going off and they're doing their own nature journals with their own interests. So it's not, we're not directing that, but they are learning on their own. And it's, you know, they they notice the environmental texts around them. So if we're walking to the forest, we point out signs, we point out the letter of the day, we point out sounds, yeah, the numbers on the houses.

Language, Literacy, And Tools In Nature

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 15:10

Yeah. So I mean, this is all part, you know, everything we do is part of our teaching. Yeah. Even the luck.

Chris Colley 15:17

Right, right, right.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 15:18

Yeah. And then of course the problem solving and using the tools like magnifying glasses and and all those. Those are those are all things directly from the curriculum. And yeah, you know, it's just constantly happening around us without that much prep. We just need to catch them doing it and record it.

Chris Colley 15:34

Right, right. Which is which is a job in itself, right? Because you're you're you're navigating a lot out there, I imagine, just because of the space that you have that the kids have available to them. But I mean, it sounds so like what nature intended kids to be like when this whole world started of ours, that yeah, nature will make your kids grow up and and they'll learn about themselves and and you don't have to do anything. And we've kind of like interjected ourselves in there and said, no, no, no, no. We have to tell them everything. We gotta show it. And like, I don't think that was nature's master plan, but no, no, we have to have teachers that tell us everything because we don't know anything. How do you how do you have that mindset or or that this is how kids grow? And then you go and see what happens after kindergarten, and then in grade one, in grade two, and grade three. I guess my question is is there a better transition that we can do so that kids can still keep playing after preschool?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 16:40

That is where we run into a challenge. And I think it's a tricky question, right? I mean, everyone is, you know, we say, we like to say, uh, everyone is on their own journey. Yeah. So and has their own comfort level. Yeah, like it's it's hard to put our journey on, say, a teacher next door, a teacher, you know. I mean, our journey started seven years ago, right? So this is where we are, is not necessarily where other people are going to be. So we really do try not to put ourselves or our journey onto others. We try to help others see the benefits of our journey. And it really does depend on the teachers. There are teachers of all grade levels that'll come ask if they can join us in the forest or ask for an idea because they know we've probably tried something before that they're interested in. We do have, you know, staff in the school that are willing to facilitate these things with different classes if they're interested. Our admittant, our principal is is, you know, really interested in it also. So whenever somebody else shows even like a little opening, they'll really try to get in there, you know, support them too and offer whatever they need. It's, you know, it is tricky. We we take it where we can. I think field trips, you know, maybe not the day-to-day, but special activities. We have, you know, a teacher in our school right now that's doing worms, worm composting, which is, you know, one step that way.

Chris Colley 18:09

So I guess your little finding worms, no diff for all kind of worms. Don't worry, we're out there, we got them, we know where they are. Right, exactly.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 18:17

Yeah. Although I think I think anybody who's interested tries to find how they can work it into their own class and their own teaching style. A scheduling is a challenge too. If if you have four different teachers, you know, an English teacher, a French teacher, a math teacher, we have the privilege of being with our littles all day, every day, between the two of us. So our schedule can be really flexible. If we're rushing back to get to a phys ed class or rushing to get to the French class, or, you know, as other grades do, I can see how that would be more challenging. Not impossible, but more challenging.

Chris Colley 18:49

Totally. I like that that phrasing for sure. And

Transition Challenges Beyond Kindergarten

Chris Colley 18:54

how do you guys what are parents' reactions? I know that there's two kind of hurdles that you gotta get over to get going with this. First, your Min has to believe in you and what what you what you're offering. Does that also transfer over to parents? Or are parents pretty well convinced at this point that they see the benefit and they encourage it? Or do you ever have any like, oh, well, what if my kid wanders off, or what if, you know, like all those stranger danger and you know, the this regression we kind of have with our relationship with nature? How do you guys navigate those?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 19:34

We do get those questions. The one thing about our program is that the parents tell us their preference when they register for kindergarten. They say they can choose, they will not choose the program, but they can let us know what they prefer, and then classes get built kind of based on that. So anybody who's in our class, or most of them, already knew what they were getting into. Yeah, we do have, we also, you know, we do have other classrooms that do have other classrooms that are less outdoors. Yeah. But our classrooms, you know, we often get the families, right? So we've been teaching kindergarten for many, many, many, many years between us. So we've had, you know, the joy of having families come through us, right? So, you know, maybe five years ago we started with one of their children and then now we're on to child number three for some of them, right? So they specifically know our program already. They choose our program. I mean, you know, we haven't had to worry about selling our, you know, saying, oh, this is, you know, saying our benefits are of our program. Because I feel that, you know, word of mouth has really helped with our program. Parents, uh, from what I can gather, parents are quite happy with us. We've had wait, we always have waiting lists for our program. You know, when it when, you know, a couple of years ago we had parents line up for our program before registration even, you know, was open.

Parent Trust, Safety, And Risk Planning

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 21:00

So we definitely I feel that that the parents are definitely on board. Yeah. They trust us. We're very new, yeah. Yeah, oh yeah. We're very transparent with everything we do. For new families, though, I mean, risk assessment and safety is is definitely important to us. Yes. It's it's our, you know, it's our number one priority out there. We definitely, you know, I can give you examples of what we do to help ourselves, but also the parents, you know, get trust in us and our program. We definitely, you know, in our forest and in our schoolyard, we've gone through it. We know all the name, we've Googled, we've, you know, learned, we researched all the names of the different plants, the the trees, the mushrooms, the berries, the insects, all of the bugs, all of those things that we might find in those two areas. We have researched them. We know what will happen, what if a child eats. Berry. What if a child touches this mushroom? We don't want it to happen and we have we have rules in place. But what if, right? So we do have all of that. We we know all of that. We we have taken wilderness first aid, which is just a step beyond the the basic first aid. Yeah, it's more like we have the hypothermia and you know injuries that are falling from a tree. Yeah. Right. So we have that on top. You know, we we are very, like I said, safety first. So one of our main safety protocols is the children have to react right away to our when we when we want them back. When we so what we do is we use a wolf call. We don't whistle, we don't, uh you know, we we've chosen a wolf call. So we do howl, and the children know that they are to return to us right away. And we work on this from day one, like August, the end of August, we are taking our children to the forest. It's we don't do it gradually, we do it right off the bat. And we build trust in, they build trust in us, and we build trust in them through all of these practices. So they know if you know that they have to return to us quickly when that wolf call happens for their safety and our safety, you know. They know the boundaries are very, very clear. Yeah. The the the the rules. So the, you know, like if you're climbing a tree, how many body parts? We always say three or more body parts on a tree to listen to your tummy, listen to your tummy. And listen to my tummy. Yes. Because you might be okay there, but I might be feeling nervous about it. Yeah. And you know, there is we take walkie-talkies with us that keep us connected to our school. We have our cell phones, which, you know, our administration can always reach us on, and we can reach them if anything were to happen. We bring our first aid bags with us every day. Any epipins or that kind of thing that we need is always on us. We have tags on our bags, our first aid bags, to tell us, even though we know it, the address of our school and the address of our forest. Or the closest cross section. Yeah. You know, so that just in case we had to make an emergency call in the panic of the situation, it's all very clearly listed. All it makes us feel more comfortable. We feel safe out there. We're very familiar with the space. And we have somebody do a safety walkthrough before we release the children into the forest. And that's every day, right? Yeah. So we check the forest, we do a risk assessment every day, every single day. And we do a risk assessment not only of the area, but of the tools that we're going to use. So if we have our loose parts out, we are doing a risk assessment on those loose parts every day. Make sure there's no nails sticking out, you know, anything should be entered. And I think just like being really consistent with all of those things creates a sense of safety for the children, for us. It's predictable. And then we work really hard also with families to create connection with them. We do, you know, homeschool communication regularly, of course. We send them photos so they see what they're up to. We invite families in about once a month or every other month for a kindergarten family activity, like a game night sort of thing. And so we're not just people on the other end of an email. We're like actual human beings that they trust to take care of their children. And we're always very open. We tell them, you know, reach out to us. If it doesn't matter how big or how small, yeah, reach out to us. We're here for you. We're here. We we want and we we try. We work really hard at trying to, and I, you know, we like to think that we do build a community within our two classrooms, families with the families that they can talk to. They they get to know each other and they get to help each other. And we love to see that. We love our our two classrooms with all the parents in them and getting to know each other and play dates, like the other thing. Yeah.

Chris Colley 25:54

Right. Yeah. A real culture creating a culture around taking your kids

Building Family Culture Outdoors

Chris Colley 26:00

out and letting them play and and yeah.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 26:02

Yeah. I was gonna say, sorry, one more thing. Something else I that I do is I I try to do monthly or every other month I do family projects with them. So so it's like their homework. They go out, I I send a monthly project home with them. And it it my monthly projects are family-based. So it it allows them, and it's always got an outdoor theme to it. So one of them is a scavenger hunt. And then they have to they bring it back to class and they present it. One is a walking stick, so they go have to go on a walk with their moms and dads or whoever it is. And they create a walking stick and then they tell us about the whole walk. I do, you know, create a snowman outside with your family, take a picture of it, create one on paper together, you know, bring it in. What do you like to do on the holidays? What's your favorite outdoor activity during the holidays? So we really build the outdoors into the family. We try to build it into their family life as well. Yeah. And we've heard feedback from families saying how that's shifted their family life too. You know, they'll tell us, you know, usually we would sit and watch a TV show after dinner, and now they're asking us to go for a little walk instead because they want to show us something. Or, you know, I expected them to ask for this toy or this video game for their birthday, but they asked for a bug catching kit. You know, yeah. So it's, I think it really is creating a culture and shifting.

Chris Colley 27:31

And do we not need that more than ever right now? I mean, it's kids have never been outside less than ever in the history of humanity. So kudos, kudos. Guys, I I guess my last question, and and again, thanks so much for taking some time. You're you're so inspiring, and I just love your energy and and how this is was a uh uh, you know, uh you built this, you know, it's not something that just happens. You got to create a culture, you gotta create a routine where you know all of these things come into play. What kinds of things do you tell teachers that are kind of like, you know, have that little seed, but

Practical Steps To Start Small

Chris Colley 28:09

it needs a little watering, a little caring to get it to start sprouting about it? Seems like I want to try to do this. Like, what are some of those little uh things that you tell teachers of how to kind of get started? You know, what should we be aware of? What do I have to do? Like I mean, without describing, you know, your whole your whole journey, which is amazing, but like what are some of those little salient things that kind of start to get that seed to sprout?

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 28:40

Yeah. So, you know, I think first of all, we want to say that it's not all or nothing. You know, you you can start small, and that's how we did it. We started small. We didn't say, oh, let's do three-quarters of our day for uh seven years ago. We built up to that, right? It's start small. It's not, you know, don't think it's a bad thing that, oh, I only got out once this week. No, that's awesome. You got outside once this week. You know, change that attitude of, no, that's wonderful. That's amazing. You got them outside once for, you know, measurement, maybe, or you know, whatever it is that you took them out for. You know, it can be it can be a math lesson, it can be a story, it can be anything. Just get that one lesson outside and just just to start, just to get your feet wet. Yeah. And then it takes the scary part away, right? And you don't need a forest. I mean, our forest is really just an overgrown piece of of land. But we call it our magical forest, and the children believe it. You know, it can be, it can be a part of your schoolyard, it can be a soccer field down the street, it can be kind of any little green space that you have in your community. Yeah. If you, if you make learning magical, if you're theatrical with your delivery, if you make it exciting, the children believe all of that, right? And they're they want to, they want, they'll they they want to learn, they want to believe in that magic. If you tell them that you're going on an expedition through the hundred-acre woods, that they believe that, right? If they if you tell them that there's fairies in this

Closing Reflections And Resources

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 30:10

forest and that it's magical, they believe that. And it's just the joy and the magic that we really, really, really like. Yeah. And for anybody who's nervous too, the children have no idea what your plan was. Yeah. So if it goes totally awry, just roll with it and they don't know any difference, right?

Chris Colley 30:29

Right. That's right. I love that. I love that. Well, guys, this has been really so amazing. I I was really looking forward to chatting, and you guys have kind of like opened up some doors again in my own thinking about outdoor, and so I really appreciate your your thoughtfulness and exuberance about doing this, you know, this style of teaching where the kids are out engaging with nature. I wish you all the best continuing with this program. I will definitely spread as many words as I can about you guys, because I think that it's it's really, really important. And that if we keep talking about it, that more and more might be like, Yeah, I'll give it a try. Because it's not all that scary, right? It's much more scary when you're thinking about it and like never done it before. And then when you're in it, it's like, yeah, all right.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 31:21

Let's go. Yeah. It actually gets a lot easier. Yeah.

Chris Colley 31:25

Yeah. Totally, totally. Well, thanks so much.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 31:28

Very passionate about what we thank you for sending us, Todd. We're very passionate. We love what we do. And we're sure there's lots of people out there who are just thinking about it that'll find seven years from now that they love what they're doing too.

Chris Colley 31:39

Absolutely. And I'll share more information with the listeners so you can have uh you get a little bit more of a deep dive about what they do because they have tons of great ideas and resources that we'll share and uh some other little treats we'll put on uh the blog post as well with for this episode. So again, thanks so much, guys.

Heather Riosa & Teah Sarrazin 31:58

Thank you, thank you, thank you, bye.