Jönköping, Sweden

January 20

Environmental Stewardship and the Intersection of Technology and Nature

By Maddie Reitz

Our morning began by meeting up with Dr. Robert Lecusay for breakfast, where some of us were able to chat with him about his work and passion for the topic. Among other things, he touched on the need to bridge environmental education with social issues and organizing youth movements. We then traveled to Jonkoping University to meet with Dr. Maria Hammarsten and watch presentations detailing some of her and Robert’s work. Maria’s research focuses on forest gardens, a way to bring trees and plants into urban/suburban areas where green areas rapidly decreasing. The use of permaculture (regenerative, self-sustaining agriculture) makes these spaces more sustainable and provides students with an excellent opportunity to learn about the interconnectedness of natural cycles and resource usage. The program Maria’s research focused on targetted 20 low-income Swedish communities with a distinct lack of green spaces and worked to expose kids to the forest garden in all seasons. The 28 nine-year-old children that she worked with were allowed to lead, so they can not see what she (the teacher) was thinking and were forced to form their own opinions about what interested them.

In evaluating what areas of the forest garden were most significant to the children at the conclusion of the year, she found that the students loved most of all to interact with the plants, especially the edible ones, making the garden spaces the most important, followed by the pond and then social places, such as the fire pit where meals were shared. Unfortunately, educators don’t often talk to children about their wants and needs, but Maria’s work was able to center the opinions and likes of her young students and keep them involved in their own education.

The forest garden model also teaches the students how to be better environmental stewards, as Maria explained that children learned how to compost, not to be loud in nature so they would not “wake up the worms,” that spiders play an important role in the ecosystem and are not that scary, that animals don’t like “order” and development, etc. Collaborative, physical activities taught in the forest garden setting activate different parts of the brain that traditional classroom learning, and can also make gender divides disappear, as children remain comfortable working together. Another positive is that since the special needs of students with disabilities must be met, forest gardens are a good, accessible option for students who cannot climb forest slopes.

Some other takeaways of Maria and Robert’s presentations included the idea that there’s no need to spend a lot of money on a “beautiful” playground by adult standards when kids may just want some sticks or a small pond to play with, and that we shouldn’t eliminate all risk for students- falling into a pond or scraping yourself climbing a tree can be valuable learning experiences. And importantly, on the teachers’ side, there must be constant reflection on the teaching model: what did we do, what could be better, what should we try next week.

Maria also touched upon some issues surrounding immigration and cultural clashes when it comes to outdoor education in Scandinavia. Immigrant families from warmer countries may not have the proper gear for their children to be warm outside all day, and lower-income families in general struggle to supply their own clothes for outdoor learning in all weather patterns. While this can be helped with fundraising within the school, Maria also mentioned that it is important to involve parents (i.e. having meetings with them outside) so they will truly understand that their kids need warm shoes and jackets to thrive outdoors. Additionally, they can see first hand the benefits of getting out into fresh air and green spaces to learn.

In the afternoon, we headed to UppTech, a small children’s science museum on the campus of the university. There, after trying out as many of the games as we could, we met with Sabine Lind and Ulrika Franke, two outdoor educators who lead lessons for children in the municipality. Their team, like Mats at the Naturskolan, taught lessons on topics from energy use to wild animals to classes from schools all over the municipality, for just one day at a time. Age groups from preschool to high school are all served by their programming. Sabine and Ulrika had also found ways to incorporate technology into their outdoor lessons, such as iPads, digital microscopes, and cameras. After some hands-on experimentation with more of Sabine and Ulrika’s tools and games, we headed back to the hostel and had some time to explore the city before the next train ride. The day concluded with a trip down to Helsingborg, where we would spend our last night in Sweden.

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