Taking teaching outside
29th September 2021
Taking learning out of the classroom is second nature for education graduate Emma Green, who launched Wild and Green Outdoor Learning in January 2021.
She now delivers outdoor learning sessions to children in and around Gloucestershire, for groups including pre schools, Brownies and Scouts, and home educated children, as well as delivering training for teachers and curriculum days for schools based around risk, resilience, and skills for life.
Emma started her Education degree in 2011. “During my time at university I learnt so much about teaching and about myself,” she said, “made friends for life, laughed, cried, made both good and bad choices, and finally graduated in 2014. I was then offered a job at the school I was placed at for final placement, and was able to start my dream career!”
In 2017 she was encouraged by her headteacher to pursue Early Childhood Study as Emma had been working in Early Years, despite her degree being the 5 – 11 route, and this helped her find her passion for child led learning.
Emma said: “This brought me to implement a new Early Years curriculum within my school, focussed on skills teaching, through Outdoor Learning (Forest School) and child-led learning. As part of my Early Childhood Study, I had the incredible opportunity to go to Sweden on a research trip. There I discovered the roots beneath Outdoor Learning and was able to link this to what I was doing in Forest School back in the UK.”
Over the next few years, Emma continued studying towards a Masters Degree in Education alongside her full-time teaching role.
“It was the hardest thing I have ever done but it has brought me to where I am now and I am so glad I challenged myself to go for it! I worked with a focus on the importance of Outdoor Learning and its links to resilience in young children. I graduated with my Masters in Education in 2019. My dissertation was based on the impact of Outdoor Learning on resilience in four and five-year-olds. This study help me to quantify the impact of Outdoor Learning.
“There are so many positive testimonies on the impact of Outdoor Learning on children but there is not so much research on how to quantify this. I had found that, in Education, data and quantifying results was very important and felt that to be able to show the impact of Outdoor Learning I needed to present my headteacher with data.
Seeing, and quantifying the impact of Outdoor Learning fuelled my passion even further, and I became set on developing my skills and knowledge.”
During the first lockdown of 2020, Emma sadly lost her Mum to a short and heartbreaking battle with cancer.
“My Mum was an inspiration and the person who gave me the final push to quit my teaching job to pursue my dream of setting up an Outdoor Learning business in Gloucestershire,” she said. “It was a huge leap of faith, and it has certainly been a rollercoaster setting up a business during the coronavirus outbreak. But if anything, Covid-19 has taught us the importance and highlighted the benefits of getting outside for both children and adults.”
And if she was going to give prospective students one piece of advice, it would be the same advice her Mum gave to her: “’Never turn your ideas down, keep following what you believe.’ Sometimes the leap of faith may not pay off, but that will only increase your own resilience and ability to take further leaps in the future, which, with hard work and belief, will eventually lead you to success, and, more importantly, happiness.”