Each year, outdoor schools collectively touch the lives of roughly two million youth across the United States who spend multiple days with sleeping away from home, sharing meals with classmates, and learning in outdoor settings. In addition to their many other functions, outdoor schools serve as ideal settings for supporting student growth in social and emotional learning (SEL). This toolkit offers strategies for adopting a more intentional approach to incorporating SEL within outdoor schools program settings, with applications for program improvement across the environmental education field at large.
To you, our colleagues and friends, we offer an invitation to join us in strengthening our programs. As providers, we must do better—for young people, for the planet, for our future.
Toolkit Chapters
Each of the toolkit chapters listed below contain opportunities to reflect on your organization’s practices in relevant areas, offer resources to share with your staff, and provide examples of what this looks like in practice.
Overview
Why this work matters, what SEL has to do with outdoor schools, how this toolkit was created, and the relationship between SEL and equity and inclusion.
Organizational Context
Ways that your organization can support SEL within its staff, systems, and structures.
Field Practice
What field instructors can do during the field day in order to support SEL when working with students.
Outdoor Setting
Opportunities for student SEL outside of the field day, such as during mealtimes and in shared sleeping accommodations.
Engaging Stakeholders
Ways to message your organization’s efforts to support SEL to external audiences.
Who is this toolkit for?
This toolkit is intended primarily for program managers and directors, along with organizational leaders who hold decision-making power and responsibility for at least some of the following at their sites:
Establishing
community culture
Setting organizational priorities
Making hiring decisions
Developing curriculum
Designing and conducting professional learning and staff training
How to use this toolkit
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to effectively implementing SEL, this toolkit represents our best attempt to demonstrate intentional incorporation of SEL practices in an outdoor school program setting. The resources included throughout are designed to prompt individual and group reflection within your site, and possibly even lead toward program refinement or organizational improvement. While these materials have been intentionally sequenced, feel free to utilize whichever components are most useful to your site and staff.
Much like efforts toward increasing your environmental literacy or deepening your ability to be an equitable organization, the work to embed SEL in your organization is all about the journey. We hope that these resources help you along your path.
