Dr. Megan Zeni: I would say the widest doorway that I have when I’m trying to get reluctant or skeptical teachers to take their classes outside, the biggest doorway I can walk them through is this will 100% improve classroom management
Rusty Keeler: Hi, this is Rusty Keeler, and you’re listening to the Play Nature Podcast where we talk about play, nature, playing in nature and the nature of play. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s have a listen Hi, Megan.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Hi, Rusty.
Rusty Keeler: Hi.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Hi.
Rusty Keeler: Great to see you.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Rusty Keeler: Yes. And I am on the east side of North America in New York State, and you are…?
Dr. Megan Zeni: On the west coast of Canada. Yeah. In Vancouver, British Columbia.
Rusty Keeler: Yes. One of my favorite cities in the world.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah, it’s pretty decent.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Have you lived there a long time?
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah, my whole life. Oh. I’m, multiple generations I have lived on this coast. So yeah, it’s- Beautiful … it’s actually unusual. I have a unproven te- uh, theory, actually.
I can always tell somebody who was born in Vancouver and raised here by whether or not they use an umbrella The only people, when I see people walking around the city with umbrellas, I’m like, “Not from here. Didn’t grow up here.”
Rusty Keeler: Uh-huh.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Transplant from somewhere else, because real Vancouverites, just so you know if you’re listening and you wanna come to the city, the real Vancouverites don’t use umbrellas.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Because it rains all… We’re in a rainforest. It rains all the time. Right. You just get good jackets and good gear and you don’t, yeah.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. You just go out and about.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Go out and about. Just get on with your business.
Rusty Keeler: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I lived in the, uh, you know, we say the Pacific Northwest in the States, ’cause that’s the, the north part of our country.
Um, but yeah, I lived in Seattle and Olympia, and would love to go visit Vancouver because it just felt like it was, uh, it was like those… In, in Washington State, all the mountains and the sea are, you know, there. You can get to them. But Vancouver, it is like right there. Like, you are, there’s a rainforest with the, with the Stanley Park, right?
And, and then the, the harbor comes in, and then you just see the mountains rising right out, you know, right above you, and just incredible, incredible.
Dr. Megan Zeni: It’s a great place to play as an adult- … and for children.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, I’m excited to talk to you about play and learning and schools and your work and your journey, kind of your, your life and career journey through all this stuff.
Um, but so why don’t I read your bio to start, and then we’ll get into it. Dr. Megan Zeni is an outdoor play and learning teacher consultant and researcher in the province of British Columbia, Canada. She brings three decades of professional K through 7 teaching experience in traditional classrooms, outdoor classrooms, school gardens, and systems leadership to her c- her collaborations with early learning professionals and elementary school teachers.
Dr. Zeni earned a PhD in curriculum studies from the University of British Columbia, and offers evidence-based professional learning for educators and system leaders interested in building capacity for effective and sustainable implementation of outdoor play and learning locally, nationally, and internationally.
Learn more and follow her work at meganzeni.com. Yes. Yeah, so you are, you know, it’s like this blend of- Outdoors, gardens, curriculum, uh, but then also like infrastructure to help teachers like to do it. Uh, you know, there’s one thing about doing it yourself, there’s one thing about like cheering people, but you know, your journey has also been creating, you know, writing books and creating tools to, to help people do it.
But I wanna maybe go back and maybe you could start at your teaching of, of, you know, 26 years outside doing outside work with… Yeah, can you walk us through like, uh, doing entirely outdoor teaching?
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, when I’d started, I started in parks and recreation, you know, as many of us do as teenagers.
I’d worked as a lifeguard, worked at summer camps. I’d kinda come through that- Field. So I had a lot of experience working with kids outside. And then when I went through my professional training as a teacher, and then you get employed as a teacher, and you realize very quickly that, you know, the system of schooling that we have, the formal system of schooling, you know, often isn’t a very good match for all children, right?
Rusty Keeler: Yep.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so I leaned into a lot of those skills that I’d acquired working in summer camps and recreation, thinking, “All right. These kids just need to be outside.” You know, sitting in a desk all day listening to me. And this is going back 30 years, so kids were a lot more regulated 30 years ago in classrooms than what we see today.
Mm-hmm. We can have that conversation too if we want. But- Yeah … even back then, kids needed to move, right? It’s their biological necessity that they’re moving, and you know, as a species we’ve evolved outdoors and all of those things. So I just started taking kids outside, and I didn’t even know, like, can you do this?
Am I allowed to do this? I had no idea what the boundaries were, and so I just sort of figured it out as I went along. And I had a few sort of memorable students along the way that really actually made big shifts in the how and why I was doing that kind of teaching, and it really, I mean, the summary of that is it really comes down to what’s good for one student is often good for every student.
There’s very rarely a classroom environment, and it’s a real principle of UDL, right, where we, that’s universal design for learning, when we think about- Sure … what one student would benefit from. I’m making this change for this, for Rusty. Yeah. But the whole class is gonna benefit from what Rusty needs, right?
And so I started doing a lot of my thinking and my planning and my learning environment design and all of that around the kids that really needed this kind of support, but everybody was benefiting from it. And so then decades over decades, and then maybe 15 years ago, my children were young. My kids are all young adults now, but at the time I had young children and I was job sharing and I, my job share, job share is when two teachers share a classroom.
Sure. So you both work part-time in a full-time position. So it’s one position, but two teachers share that classroom because-
Rusty Keeler: Right …
Dr. Megan Zeni: usually because you have young children.
Rusty Keeler: You know, I just learned that term actually watching 9 to 5 with my sons this past weekend, ’cause that was one of the- Okay … that was one of the things the three ladies did.
They set up some job sharing.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. It’s- Yeah … I mean, it’s, it’s a great o- it’s a great option- Yeah … when you have young kids. And at the time, my job share partner, she, her kids, her young … Anyways, I wasn’t ready to go back full time. I had another young child in the, in the works, and she was ready to go back to work full time.
So I was looking for a position where I would have some flexibility. Uh, and job sharing’s like a marriage, you know? It takes a long time to build a, a happy teaching partnership. Mm-hmm. So I ended up proposing to the school. I said, “What if…” Because I was taking kids outside all the time. Yeah. At my classroom environment, we went outside to learn the math, the science, the literacy, all of the social studies, all of the content that we were required to teach, I would do that outside, and I’d sort of refined that over the years.
I said, “What if I could be the prep teacher and just do it in the garden?” Because- That’s what I’m good at doing. And the prep position is, um, I think in the US you call this specials or relief. So it’s- Sure … in the primary years or the elementary school years, teachers, through their collective agreements, get a certain amount of time to prep and to call parents and to do emails or whatever you have to do.
Uh, but you can’t leave the class unattended during that time. Another adult has to be responsible for your class during that time. And so in our jurisdiction, we refer to that as prep time.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So I’d made a proposal and said, “Could prep be done outside?” Like, ’cause at the time it was often happening, this is going back, like way back to the early 2000s, kids were often going into like a computer lab and learning how to use a computer, which seems laughable now, right?
But the computer labs- Yeah … are all gone from schools now. But in those days, you know, often the only computer kids had access to was the one in the library, for example, and we were sort of teaching kids basic coding stuff. Um, but as very quickly, very rapidly, if, you know, we’ve all lived through that, it became very evident the kids didn’t need time to be playing on computers at school.
And so I suggested, how about we flip that and I take the kids outside during prep? Yeah. And so for almost 15 years I taught entirely outdoors. And so for myself, I was outside 100%.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Every blo- like, beginning to end of day. Amazing.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. And,
Dr. Megan Zeni: uh, and then every hour I had a different class of kids that would come out.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so they, the teacher would have their prep time, the kids would be with me. Um, eventually we built the program so there’s two of us teaching out there, so we had two classes at a time and we could co-teach, which is really excellent to have two adults out there at the s- ‘Cause of course our ratios in the public system are much different than early learning spaces.
So I would have up to 30 or 32 children by myself outside.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so you have to have some pretty strong routines and systems in place to make that work. And yeah, so I just sort of figured it out and then I wrote a book about it, so.
Rusty Keeler: Uh, well, will you paint the picture? What does that, what does that look like?
What do you mean there’s, there’s 30 kids outside? And what, and what ages are they and h- what are they doing? What are you doing with them? Are there, this is, this is play, this is learning, this is, this is garden, this is… What’s, what’s, yeah, what’s happening? And what’s happening in different weather? What’s happening on different days?
But what-
Dr. Megan Zeni: All of the above …
Rusty Keeler: all of the above. Yeah. Wh-
Dr. Megan Zeni: All of that happens …
Rusty Keeler: tell us more.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. So okay, so the formal system of schooling in my jurisdiction starts in kindergarten. Okay. Other provinces in Canada offer what’s called a junior kindergarten year. We don’t offer that in BC, but, uh, other jurisdictions do.
So most of our school-age entry is four or five years old. So they start in September. Okay. They need to be turning five by January of their kindergarten year. So mostly we’re working with five to 12-year-olds in the elementary school space. So that’s kindergarten through to the end of grade seven.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Or seventh grade I think you call it there. Uh, yeah, and so those students when they came out, I would work with the classroom teacher because often what a school teacher is looking for from a prep provider is something to come off of their report card. Because remember what is different, and I think in our emails back and forth I sort of alluded to this, there’s a real different duty of care in the school system than there is in the early learning space or out of school or informal spaces.
Like, teachers in our jurisdiction, the employment contract says you have to plan learning, you have to teach kids, and then you have to assess and report on learning. That’s the job. That’s what you get your paycheck for in exchange for the curriculum that the government asks you to teach. So, you know, I had to work with those teachers, and if you’re the teacher, I’d be like, “Okay, Rusty, what can I support this year?”
So lots of teachers were like, “Help me with science.” So it’d be like, “All right. So do you want me to do a deeper dive into the science concepts that you’re already teaching, and we can just do this in a multisensory, really deep work way? Um, or do you want me to just take it off your plate?” And different teachers would have different responses to that.
Some teachers were like, “You can take the water cycle completely. I am not gonna teach the water cycle.” And other teachers would say, “Yeah, let’s, like, let’s collaborate on this.” Lots. We basically would write, the way it sort of filtered down was we would… Because everything, I don’t have to tell you this, everything can be taught outside, all of it.
There’s nothing, at least in our jurisdiction. I actually got asked to do a presentation once for science from K to 7 outdoors, and I was like, “Oh, I wonder if I have examples or exemplars of every single learning standard in our curriculum document that I can share.” Yeah, yeah. And then when I was prepping it, I was like, “Oh, I do.
I can actually, I have evidence that all of it can be done outside.” So with the literacy piece, um, do you know Rachel Tidd? She’s in Ithaca.
Rusty Keeler: Mm,
Dr. Megan Zeni: oh. She’s, uh- No … she’s, yeah, so she’s, um, Wild Learning is her work. Anyway, so she and I- Cool … are working on a book right now around, like, that structured literacy piece.
Like, how do you do that outside? Because we see this real shift right now towards teachers doing, like, PowerPoints with five-year-olds for literacy, which is not- Yeah … super compelling or developmentally- No, no … appropriate, right?
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So how do we, but you have to do that because that’s part of the job description.
So how do we say yes to these literacy pieces, but actually make it joyful and playful and in- interactive and engaging outside?
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So literacy, numeracy, science, all of it, ADST, art, all of it. So I taught all that outside, and I did that for many, many, many years, and so I became more proficient at it.
And then the risky play piece, it was a funny conversation because I’d met Mariana Bersani, who you would know from her work.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Rockstar.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Um, yeah, amazing. She was speaking somewhere. Somebody sent me a flyer, ’cause she’s from here as well. We live, like very close to each other actually. Yeah. Somebody sent me a flyer, said, “This seems right up your alley.”
I was like, “Oh.” I didn’t even know that r- risky, I didn’t even know risky play was like a term. I was like, “This is a thing? I thought this is how kids play.” Yeah, yeah. Like, I didn’t know there was a whole thing around it, right? Anyways, I met her. It
Rusty Keeler: is, it is just how kids play,
Dr. Megan Zeni: basically. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But there’s, it’s, it’s fascinating now that I’ve done a whole PhD in it- Yeah … to understand the theories and the backgrounds. And anyways, I met her. She said, she came and saw my work and what I was doing, and, uh, she was like, “We need, we need you to come and do a PhD in this because we don’t know how to talk to teachers.”
And teachers is so like- Wow … it ends in the early years, right? How do we get this- Yeah … normalized into the structured formal system of schooling? That
Rusty Keeler: we go outside. That outside is a valid and it can be important, maybe the most important thing that a school could have. It’s not just a bit- And that- Yeah.
Yeah …
Dr. Megan Zeni: play is a form of learning, and how, but then there’s some translation that has to happen there, right? Yeah. Because remember, teachers have to plan-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah …
Dr. Megan Zeni: and facilitate, and they have to report on learning. And so that assessment piece is what trips up a lot of people when they come into the formal system of schooling, because they’ll give advice that’s contrary to the actual description of the job, right?
That teachers have to assess and report on learning. Okay. And so, yeah. So I did a PhD with her and worked with teachers all over BC and, um, I can’t remember if that answers your question or not, but that’s- Well- … kinda where I got where I am.
Rusty Keeler: That is amazing. No, no, no. I’ve, so okay, so I have a million questions.
Uh, but you know, or I wanna just back up more to your, the experience of you outside with, with kids. And, and so- Yeah … as an environment person, I’m very curious like what was the environment? What, what, was this a garden? Did you, was it, did you have it set up an outdoor classroom? Were there chalkboards?
Were there under a tree? What- Yeah … was it something that was, that you were part of a creation, or did you just inhabit a space that was already there? What’s
Dr. Megan Zeni: the- So, I mean, it evolved- Yeah … as many of these things do.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Way back on my Instagram, there’s like the whole story of it. I’ve sort of documented it o- over years, but it- Yeah
you’d have to go back like five years on my Instagram to see it. But-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah …
Dr. Megan Zeni: essentially we had a strip of land across the road that was city-owned. Okay. And so we had a very involved, what’s called a PAC, a parent advisory council. And the PAC at the time was very interested in a garden. So they worked with the city to rezone that stretch of Of just sort of grass.
It was a very sort of long, maybe 250 meters by about 50 meters, uh, along a, a corridor, a road, sort of a main corridor to the school.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: But it was just grass, and there was nothing happening. So they worked with the city to say, “Can we rezone this and build a school garden?” So of course, I was very interested in that, and I represented the school in that conversation.
Yeah. So we built a school. But what was interesting about… Or we built the school garden there. Um- Yeah … what was interesting about that is then the city followed up and actually built community gardens off of that. So over that decade plus that I was- Yeah … doing this class, we started with, like, these 15 garden beds that the school would use, and then over the decade we had…
Oh, there’s probably 500 garden beds- What? … that the community all uses. Oh, man. It’s a massive community garden. Wow. Wow. So it’s sort of we started this community garden.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And then we had built … We got grants. We built sheds. Like, in the early years, Rusty, it was me and, like, my little laundry basket of stuff that we’d cross the road together and go over- Yeah
and work in the garden, right? Yeah, yeah. And then we had sheds, and then it, it kinda got bigger and more formal. Of course, as all gardens do, they b- they, their lifespan is limited, uh, especially if you’re using non-treated wood, right?
Rusty Keeler: Okay,
Dr. Megan Zeni: yeah. So as we got into sort of that 11-year mark, 10, 11-year mark, it became really evident that we needed to rebuild.
So we applied for funding, and then the question was, do we actually wanna continue across the road? Because there was pros and cons. The biggest con, and why we ended up moving it to the school side of the street, was because over the years we had built up all this loose parts, risky play as part of the garden experience, but kids couldn’t access it at recess or lunch because it was on the other side of a road.
Rusty Keeler: Oh, sure. Right, right, right. Right. Right.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So all of that was, like, only available after school or during instructional time with me.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so we thought, “Let’s, let’s just bring this back to the schoolyard,” and we built it adjacent to the playground-
Rusty Keeler: Okay …
Dr. Megan Zeni: uh, so that it was an extension of the, the playground.
And yeah, it took a couple of years, of course, to get the funding and then to work with the kids to design it all, and then, you know, have facilities come in and build it. But no, we don’t, nothing formal like chalkboards, and I’m not a big fan of those, like, built environments for outdoor classrooms. Yeah.
Yeah. I’m… We have a gathering. I think there’s sort of three things that I always tell teachers you really wanna have in place if you’re going to do this. Some kind of gathering structure, so whether those are logs or rocks or with a lot of primary teacher, what, what really resonates is I talk about just putting a tarp out somewhere.
It’s like a defective carpet. You know, lots of teachers like to gather- Sure … the children at the carpet-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah …
Dr. Megan Zeni: in those primary years and talk to them or read. You know, they have them in a circle. They’re all gathered together at the carpet. And the tarp becomes your carpet, and it can be anywhere. You know?
You just take your tarp- … under your arm and you’ve got your carpet. Go. Do carpet time outside, right?
Rusty Keeler: Yep.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So you need some kinda gathering space, and that’s also works for the, you wanna gather them at the end as well to sort of reflect and, and move sort of what, what happened that time outside together, move it forward and sort of start creating, you know, links to where we’re gonna go next.
So having a gathering space is really important. Having, uh, some kind of shed or storage really was game-changing. It really upped what we could do when we had storage on site, that I wasn’t having to pull things back and forth all the time from the school building. So that evolved over time as well.
Somebody had donated a deck box, that we started with that. You know, like a little Little lid on it. Oh, yeah. And we had a proper shed built. And then when we built the new garden on the school side, they forklifted over the old shed and they built us a new shed. I was like, “I will never fill this shed.” Woo.
And of course, it’s, they’re both jam-packed now.
Rusty Keeler: Yep, yep.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So yeah, and so yeah, having a gathering circle, having a shed, and then having some kind of like, um, stations play area where the kids can sort of be on the periphery and like you have some kind of d- like we, we set it up so that we had, for example, schoolyards, if you’ve spent any time in a schoolyard, you know there’s pavement and like basketballs and, you know, hoops and square balls and all the games that happen on pavement in schoolyards.
So we built out some of our infrastructure, mud kitchens and things with backs on them, to kind of keep some of that ball material from coming into the garden.
Rusty Keeler: Sure. That’s good.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yep. ‘Cause we’re trying- Yep … we’re trying to grow something here. That’s right. That’s right. And, you know, young children and balls are kind of prob- They don’t go well together.
And so then again, like the garden beds that backed onto the playground, we put really tall like eight-foot lattices on those because they were south-facing so we could, they were dual purpose. Yeah. They helped us obviously grow vertically in the garden, but also it becomes a visual barrier because children, anybody who knows kids knows that they just never go around anything.
They go over and they go through. And so we had to be really strategic about like those lattices were actually a visual barrier for kids, so they wouldn’t go running from the playground into the garden beds, into the outdoor classroom. Like it created- Yeah … a bit of a barrier so we could use it for vertical growth, but also to remind kids to go around the garden
Rusty Keeler: beds.
Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And we had espalier apple trees. Like there was some really strategic sort of thinking about how children move and how they use spaces, and then responding to that in ways that would sort of help them navigate the space in ways that could continue to help the garden grow.
Rusty Keeler: Love it. Love it.
And, and, and the idea of like, okay, this was, became a committed, you know, the school was committed to it, like in infrastructure- Yeah … infrastructure-wise. I mean, I love the idea of the, the dream big and start small. So the idea of you just like bringing over, you know, laundry baskets filled with the supplies and, and that’s what, you know, s- and a tarp, and here we’re gathering and, and starting that way.
But you know, it, the school must have seen like success and there was positivity. Oh, yeah. And, and then they’re like, “All right, we’re gonna keep building. We’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna invest in this thing that, that seems to be working.” But what was working? Like why, why go outside to, to, you know, the, we got buildings, we got classrooms, we got SMART Boards.
W- why, why would… What’s good about going outside?
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. I mean, you know this and your audience knows this. This is a very, you know, we’re in the echo chamber. But, I mean, this sort of learning environment really transforms a child’s experience of school. And we have so many children that enter the school system whose needs are not being met, and it becomes a very hostile environment for them.
Yeah. And so having outdoor learning spaces where children, you know, they can jump, they can roll, they can bounce, they can … If I’m doing that, that carpet time and they’re rolling around outside of the carpet, no biggie. Yeah. No problem. But inside the classroom, it does become a problem. It’s super distracting.
It’s very- they’re kicking chairs. Yeah. There’s all this other stuff that’s like, it’s really hard for the other kids to maintain focus when you’ve got one little bunny rolling around or jumping outside in the classroom- Yeah. Yeah … outside of the, the, what everybody else is doing. When you take it outside, everybody’s bodies can do what they need to do, and they’re still listening.
Like, it was really- Mm … I do a lot with pre-service teachers as well. I, I do some teaching at the university with, uh, in the pre-service teacher education program. We bring in teachers, we do tours. But anyways, we do a lot of outreach and, and education for teachers around this. And having young and early career teachers see that, yeah, that kid is sitting under that picnic table, ’cause tarps are so multipurpose.
Tarps also create little dens, right? Like- Yeah, yeah … so you’ve got somebody who’s really having a hard time being, like, in a circle. They don’t wanna be looked at. They, they got all these sensory needs. I can create, I can throw a tarp over a picnic table, create a little den for that, that fellow And they’ve got that sort of sense of enclosure and safety, but they’re still listening.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so for those early career teachers to see, okay, I’m giving all these instructions, I’m doing the read-aloud, I’m doing all of this teaching, and I’ve got a ki- I’ve got kids under tables. Like, they’re not even in the circle. And then when it’s time to transition into the play and the consolidation of learning, and, like, a lot of the play that we do in school is practicing the learning, they’re, like, right on it.
Because what was hard for them was the sitting and the listening in that compliance model that we often ask for children in school.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And yeah, they go off and they do, and then they- It’s cute … are so engaged. Yeah. It’s meeting their sensory and developmental needs- Yeah … in ways that we really can’t inside the classroom.
It’s very difficult to replicate that kind of body autonomy inside a classroom.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Gosh, that is so beautiful. Yeah, to think, like, that how many issues, quote unquote, that could solve by- Yeah … going outside, and, and how that affects just being outside the, the nervous system. And then the idea of getting to, you know, we give kids what fidgets, little,
Dr. Megan Zeni: little plastic doodads to touch and click- I know
Rusty Keeler: during the classroom. No. And okay, well, it’s something, you know, whatever, thank God. And they, but the idea of like, wait, they do have to move. They do have to answer the idea of being like outside where you can roll, or you’re on a rock, or you’re on a stump, or you’re in the grass, or there’s trees overhead, and there is, yeah, it’s both calming, but then also, yeah, you can get into the, your own movement groove.
And then you- And that’s
Dr. Megan Zeni: only one.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah,
Dr. Megan Zeni: yeah, yeah. Like, there’s dozens of reasons why we do it, but that’s, you know, that’s the big- Yeah … one for a lot of teachers, right? It’s like improv- Like, I hate the term classroom management because it always sounds so, like, adult crushing. But I mean, it’s a reality.
When we’re talking with public school teachers, classroom management is a top discussion item. And I would say the number one, the widest doorway that I have when I’m trying to get reluctant or skeptical teachers to take their classes outside, the biggest doorway I can walk them through is this will 100% improve classroom management.
And they’re like, “Oh, okay. Well, I’ll try that then.”
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, we wanna, well, I could use that. But it’s funny, funny because they might, I could see that also being a fear or a barrier where they feel like, oh my gosh, classroom management. They’re, I, I can’t handle them in, you know, it’s hard to handle them in the classroom.
I’m gonna go outside and they’re c- they’re gonna just run all away and, you know, how am I gonna manage it in a bigger open space? That, that could seem intimidating.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah, it can. I mean, I can talk about some of the research we’ve done around that. Certainly my research that I did found that mentorship is sort of the key lever that we need to be pulling when we’re trying to get more teachers outdoors.
So having a colleague, somebody who does the job either in your school or your region working beside you, that’s my job now actually. I’m officially employed as a consultant, so I’m like a coach, a mentor.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So I go in and I work with teachers, uh, side by side, and so maybe Rusty I’m working with you, and I might, we might do some co-teaching or I might do what’s called a demonstration lesson or I might do an observation, and then I’m giving you the pivot, right?
Like, “Here’s how we’re gonna take this outside,” or, “Here’s what we wanna switch or think about.” Yeah. And, “Here’s how we’re gonna layer in wherever you are in your scope and sequence in literacy,” or, “Here’s how we’re gonna layer in these science concepts that are happening,” and talking about that sort of continuum of play because there’s lots of entry points for play in, in children’s play that we can then sort of scaffold into the, the learning that needs to happen at school.
Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s complex, but it’s simple. Yeah. It’s really simple. Yeah. Mentorship matters.
Rusty Keeler: That’s, yeah, that’s great. You have a, you have a buddy. You have somebody on your team. You’re not alone and all that. Well, uh, tell me more about your research. Uh, what, uh, what did you, what did you dive into? So you, you were, you were on the ground, you were with kids for all those years in the garden, in the school, and the city.
So with Mariana, did, that’s where it started?
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. Yeah. And then what- So she, uh, I’d met her at that talk she had given about risky play, and then I found out sort of this was a whole field. This is going way, way back. Then- I was like, “Well, do I wanna do a P-” I’d done a master’s degree early in my career, but a PhD seemed a bit daunting, right?
It was-
Rusty Keeler: Sure … like, “
Dr. Megan Zeni: Do I want a PhD?” It seems like a lot of work. Yep. But here, the way that it, my program was structured, it was a job. I got a salary to do it, and, um- Oh, yeah … so it was, you know, it was my job to do that, and it was great, actually. I learned a ton. Obviously, Mariana’s the best of the best, and if you’re gonna work with anybody in the field of risky play, she’s the one to work with.
Um, yeah, so I worked with, I, my study, you have to do a, a, a, add something to the… Part of a PhD is adding to the body of research, so my study looked at, worked with teachers. We developed a community of practice with teachers from all across British Columbia. We have five health authorities, so northern island, like, all the different regions.
Because some of the barriers, as you know, is around weather.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so on coastal BC, our issue is rain, but we have colleagues in the north where it’s winter in northern Canada for, you know, nine and a half months of the year, so that’s a different barrier. So we wanted to make sure we were representing all of the biomes of which our province covers.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah, so I worked with those teachers, and we sort of started this idea of… And the result, I mean, I’ll skip to the, the, the good part, which is the outsideplay.org toolkit for teachers- Yeah … came from that research. So these were all teachers. The inclusion criteria for my study was that they were proficient already at teaching outdoors.
Like, they already knew what they were doing. Okay, okay. This was not something they were looking for support with. They were the people who were helping people. And we do it very well here. Gotcha. There’s a lot. Like, British Columbia, our curriculum is very aligned with taking kids outside. Uh, we have a lot of professional expertise, I would say, in this space in our teaching practice.
So I worked with several, uh, maybe about 16 teachers were in my study.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And we created that tool collaboratively. And so there’s modules there. They’re free to access, that sort of walk people through what teachers wish they’d known from the beginning. Like, how do you actually do this in the formal system of schooling?
So there’s, like, a brief little- Video. Uh, we went across Canada actually to populate that tool, so we have videos and photos from classrooms all across Canadian- Yeah … provinces and territories. Yeah, yeah. It’s not just BC. Uh, from the Maritimes, from northern, you know, Ontario. Like, how are people doing this- Yes
in the Canadian context and doing it well? Yeah, yeah. So then we created videos to show what it looks like. So what does, uh, literacy look like outside? There’s a whole video on literacy, and then I do an interview with… So there’s entry points, right? There’s the quick little video. Somebody can watch the quick video.
Somebody can watch the interview with a teacher who does this well. Or, uh, it’s designed as a lunch and learn, so staff can sit down together and digest it. It’s, I think it’s a useful- It’s amazing … we call it a digital colleague. Yeah. It’s like- Oh, yes … it’s like
Rusty Keeler: your
Dr. Megan Zeni: digital mentor- … if you don’t have-
Rusty Keeler: Yes
somebody
Dr. Megan Zeni: to come work
Rusty Keeler: with you in person. Yes, yes. That’s right. Well, it is incredible. Um, you know, to me, it follows, you know, I don’t know what, when it came up, but I remember seeing Mariana’s, some of her stuff and her, her organizations, some of their toolkits about play, risky play- Mm … and stuff for parents and, and things like that.
Yeah. And even early childho- But then this is, so this is kind of like it’s, it’s tucked in there. It’s, it, it, it- Yeah, it’s the same
Dr. Megan Zeni: suite
Rusty Keeler: of tools …
Dr. Megan Zeni: yeah. Yeah, all
Rusty Keeler: putting them together. It is, it is incredible. It really is. Like, everybody should check this out because it, it does, it, it’s, it walks you through, holds your hand, inspires you.
But as you said when we first reached out, we were going back and forth with emails, like, you’re also v- practical of like how, how could this really actually work? Because you understand, like, curriculum and academics and the pressures of, of schools and what their goals are and what their requirements are, and how this still can work.
I- in fact, it can real- it can, it can help everything excel. It, it can help ease things. It can… But, but it’s a different, it’s like a different way of thinking. So where do you start? You could start with the toolkit. Wow. And how did, how did the toolkit come about? I mean, you, you’ve done books.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Well, the book was actually- Yeah
like a companion to the toolkit because the- Okay … toolkit was designed to be digestible, right? It was meant to be- Yeah … like, “I’m gonna sit down for half an hour- Yeah … and watch a video and try to learn something.” Fun. Yeah. Yeah. See some examples of this.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And then the book is more of the research back end of it.
So the book, the Embracing Risky Play in School, it’s 50% of the book is all the research on why we need to be doing this in schools. Okay. Why risky play is, like, a critical part of every child’s school day, and then the other half of the book is how to do it. And so there’s some nice bridging there. And each one of those modules kind of walks people through, yeah, what it can look like at school, because it doesn’t look the same.
It- that’s the other problem that, with a lot of this work, is that you see a lot of, like, everyone should just do X, Y, or Z.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Okay, but we’re all in different lands and territories and different affordances that, that if I’m in a desert area, that’s a very different play experience than if I’m in a coastal forest.
Rusty Keeler: Yep, yep.
Dr. Megan Zeni: The children and the ages and the developmental, like, all of those pieces, um, you know, where I am, we have a lot of English language learners. We get a lot of students in our system that are new to Canada and learning English as well. So we have like, we have complexity. Yeah. And I can’t… That complexity doesn’t always translate to somebody else’s learning environment.
And so there’s, there’s like that’s the professionalism and that’s the artistry of teaching, is being able to, you know, look at the learning environment that you have, how you can add those affordances and add those materials, like the simple tarp as a carpet gathering space, and then working with the kids that you have to then move them forward across those curriculum outcomes or those learning outcomes, depending on what your employer’s asking you to teach, and it can all be done.
That’s the thing is it’s so, it’s so doable. We just have to make it obvious for pre- for teachers, right?
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s like- Just like there’s, every school has a building. Ev- most every school has some outdoor space. And of course it’s, uh, you know, probably m- m- majority, at least out here, un- unutilized for curriculum and regular classrooms, but there it is.
It’s the potential. But I’m, I’m curious also then, okay, you talk about n- then risky play. So we’re talking about, like, learning, and then there’s play, and then there’s … But what do you mean about risky play with curriculum and, and this outdoor? ‘Cause that’s different, you know. I’ve done a lot of work with, like, recess and loose parts and risky play- Hmm
and play, play work principles with recess to like- Hmm. Hmm … okay, let’s, you know, let’s let children have more freedom and choice. But, but then you’re, you’re still looking at it also through a classroom and curriculum time.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah, absolutely.
Rusty Keeler: Tell us about that.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I don’t have the visual here.
I’ll kind of verbally try to describe the visual. Yeah. But there’s this continuum or a spectrum, it’s called multiple things in the research, of children and how they experience play. And so what often happens in play conversations where I’m like, “Oh, okay,” people will be like, “Play is one thing, and there’s this one definition of play.”
No, that’s, that’s not my understanding of play based on the research, based on my experience- … based on the context in which I work. Play, children experience play along a continuum, and how they experience that play and where they enter play on that continuum is really dependent on how the adults around them value play.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So if- Yeah … for example, so we’ll start at the, like, at … So there’s basically three big ideas. There’s the adult-directed play, and sort of the belief system of teachers there is that the purpose of play at school … And remember, I’m talking about in the formal system of schooling. I’m not talking about parks and recreation.
I’m not talking about summer camp. I’m not talking about early learning spaces. I’m talking about in school systems- Yeah … like where we actually have to write a report card. Okay?
Rusty Keeler: Yes.
Dr. Megan Zeni: So when we talk about adult-directed play there, the v- the belief of teachers from the research is generally held that the purpose of play at school is to practice something So, like, it could be musical.
I, I have taught you, um, an instrument and we’re going to have some time to practice it and we’re gonna play with the instrument to get better at it. It could be something in physical health education. I’ve taught you how to dribble a ball and now you’re gonna have some time to practice getting better at dribbling balls.
It could be something to do with science or literacy or math. A- anything where the adult is explicitly teaching something to children, right? And then giving them time to practice it. And often in education we talk about the I do, we do, you do model, which is that gradual release of responsibility. So the teacher-directed play is at the I do.
I show you how to do something.
Rusty Keeler: Okay.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Now, what’s interesting about this and where it gets, like, mind-blowing for people who are at the other end, which is the child-directed play, that-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah …
Dr. Megan Zeni: free, unstructured play, which still has a place during instructional time, right? That’s when the belief of the teachers is generally that the, the learning will emerge, that it’s an unavoidable encounter.
If I let kids play just like they would at recess or just like they would any other time, something is going to be learned. My job as the adult is to notice that and build on it, right? And then kind of guide it, which is the middle of the continuum. So the guided play is that sweet spot. So in all of the research around play at school, that’s where we see academics happen, in guided play.
So when we do lots of really structured teaching, like we’re doing PowerPoint literacy lessons, not so sticky. Yeah. There might be something that kids pick up along the way, but it generally is ticking some boxes.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And at the other end, where we’re letting kids climb trees and jump in puddles, they’re also not learning phonic skills, right?
Yeah. So the guided play is the sweet spot of academic learning, and that’s kind of the balance that we’re always looking for, right? But there’s… Oh, I’m gonna finish this ’cause- Yeah, yeah. Go ahead … you’re gonna get, you’re gonna go, “Okay.” ‘Cause even we talk about the, the, the teacher-directed end, even when I’m talking about risky play and I’m talking about tools- I’m not handing out handsaws to five-year-olds in kindergarten in September and saying, “Go play.”
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: That’s not happening. I’m giving them direct explicit instruction. Here’s how you access the tools. Here’s how you walk with them so that they’re not perceived as weapons. Here’s how we use them appropriately and accurately. This is a tool, it’s not a toy, right? It has a purpose and if you want to dig something, you need a different tool.
There’s a different tool for that job. And then setting all that up because once I’ve done that and done some explicit instruction, now they’re gonna have time to practice. They’re gonna, where that’s the we do. I’m gonna observe and watch them practice and use different tools for different purposes and sometimes they’re gonna get it right and sometimes they’re gonna need some redirection.
And then they’re gonna get all that time, space, and freedom which is the recipe for risky play. But it often always, when I talk about risky play in school, it starts over here. And a lot of the play advocates get super fighty. They’re like, “Ah, don’t contaminate children’s play with your agenda.” I’m like-
“Yeah, but we can’t get to risky play unless we’ve created those instructional routines,” because remember there’s sometimes 30 kids. I have to have some confidence that nobody’s cutting off an arm or else I can’t have tools happening in my classroom, right? And so this is all this dance that we do as professionals where we understand that children experience play along a continuum and some children need more direct explicit support and some children are ready to move to time, space, and freedom and we move them along that depending on our relationship with the child Does
Rusty Keeler: that help?
Y- yes. Yes. Uh, I had a funny experience at chil- Ithaca Children’s Garden years ago. We did, uh, kind of an, an adventure playground-inspired place, a hands-on nature anarchy zone, and it got, you know, the inspired by playwork and playwork principles and children’s freedom and choice. And so we didn’t really do, uh, tool, d- uh, carpentry tools.
You know, we’re inspired by the, the adventure playgrounds in Europe and all that, but we’re like, “Well, let’s just stay with garden tools,” you know, or whatever- Yeah … shovels and stuff. Uh, and then one summer, summer camp, they started introducing some saws and some… And I was kind of… I swept in, you know, a little bit and was doing some playwork and, you know, being with the kids, but I didn’t do what you’re saying, the instruction part.
But I didn’t think about it ’cause I’m like, “Play, you know, just step back and let…” Which, you know, I, that, that’s kind of where my world is, like, let them do their thing. But I did notice that kids, kids were getting cut. You know, they were cutting… And I, and then later I was like, “Yo, dude, man, you gotta teach kids how to use a saw.
You gotta-” Mm-hmm. “… show them what’s safe. You gotta show them the, you know, give them some, like, okay, and then you can feel, you know, you can feel comfortable and then they can go do their thing.” But, like, everybody needs to learn, you know, some of the basics before they can, you know, you’re gonna have
Dr. Megan Zeni: everyone- You can’t be skilled at something-
cut their fingers off … without the foundational skills, right?
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so even, like, I mean, all the categories of risky play, it, risky play, and this is another sort of nuance of the conversation around how risks are different than hazards, but we’re not, it’s not an abandonment of your duty of care as an adult when you’re supervising risky play, particularly with other people’s children, right?
Yeah. When we’re talking about my s- my decisions that I make as a parent, that’s a different conversation than decisions that I’m making when I am legally responsible for other people’s children. And in the research, and in my research in particular, that’s referred to as professional vulnerability, right?
Yeah. That you actually have of responsibility. You are legally responsible for these kids. So you cannot just say, “Figure it out,” right? Like with my own children, you know, when they’re wanting to jump off a cliff in the water, I’m like, “So this is how, you know, it’s a four-hour boat ride back to the mainland with an ambulance but-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah
Dr. Megan Zeni: figure it out.” Yeah. I’m not doing that with other people’s kids, right?
Rusty Keeler: No, no.
Dr. Megan Zeni: With other people’s children, I’m making more, there’s a lot more safeguards in place because number one, just the volume of children, like the ratio is so different. We have to have different measures in place so that risky play can thrive and exist because where we see it shut down in schools, everyone’s like, “It’s chaos.”
Well, it’s chaos ’cause somebody told you you should just tell the kids to go play. You have to set it up. It’s very intentional. It’s methodol- me- there’s a method to it because that, that freedom comes from some structure and limit so that then they have this freedom to be successful in however they wanna play with it, right?
Fires, for example. I mean, lots of our colleagues, we’re in a, I’m in a metro area so we don’t, there’s a bylaw around open fires in our schools. Yeah. But many, many schools across Canada, particularly in rural and remote communities, will have a fire in their schoolyard, and an elder will come, and they’ll start it, and it’s a space where they can gather during the day, and there’s heat and community and gathering, right?
Yeah.
Rusty Keeler: Wow.
Dr. Megan Zeni: There’s so much teaching happening. Yeah. It’s not like, “Here’s a fire. Go chase each other with burning sticks.” That isn’t, that’s hazards, people. Like high likelihood of serious injury. So I think we kinda conflate risky play with abandonment of supervisory duty of care, and that’s, that’s not risky play, and particularly not risky play in the school context.
Rusty Keeler: Yes, yes. Uh, gosh, a, a couple things swimming around in my head. One is the idea of whether it’s the saw or a fire or, uh, the idea of the starting with the adult structure, the adult’s, uh, lesson, the adult l- leading so that then makes room for children to, on this, on that side, to then have, eventually have the freedom and do the play, a risky play, and experiment and explore on their own.
Now, there could be, you know, the play purists could backlash that, although-
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah …
Rusty Keeler: school d- is a different, you know, it’s-
Dr. Megan Zeni: It’s a whole
Rusty Keeler: different episode … it’s a whole different, yeah, a whole different thing. Yeah. But so much with schools are just the adult top-down, this is it, we’re telling you everything, and then there is no freedom to explore and do th- things and take play and risky play and ex- Yeah
it, it is just that top-down. So you’re talking about this, like, this, the kind of the, you know- Next step … that, that pro- that progression of, like, top- top-down ’cause we- we’re a school and we have, you know, we have all our, you know, stuff. But then the goal is to then also know that learning is, you know, the-
Dr. Megan Zeni: Go climb some trees.
Go- Yeah … slide down some hills. Go do all that. But I have explicitly taught, like, those recall routines, for example, right?
Rusty Keeler: So
Dr. Megan Zeni: we- Recall routines? Recall routines are like a safety routine, like when I call you back. So we’re in Canada. We have bears, we have cougars, we have, like, wildlife. So where I am, we- they’re less, you know, predatory.
We get, we get coyotes where I am or we get skunks. I did have that happen to me once where I was in a kinder- Yeah … I was in the garden with, like, 18 kindergartners, like four and five-year-olds, first, like, two weeks of September, and a skunk comes into the garden Like, this is gonna end so badly, right?
Like, it’s just disaster everywhere But, you know, I had those recall routines and I’d already practiced them, so that’s when we’re gathering the children to transition in or out of a space. And teachers already do all this in classrooms. You transition from the classroom- Sure. Yeah, yeah … to the library.
You transition everybody to outside. So, yeah. All those routines are there. It’s just a new space for it, and so when I recall children, we have recall routines outside so that it’s like it’s time to transition and this is like, “I need you to come right now because there’s an emergent hazard that I need you to be paying attention to.”
Rusty Keeler: Yeah,
Dr. Megan Zeni: yeah. So it could be that there’s a bear in the schoolyard, it could be that, you know, the weather’s changing and there’s a lightning storm. Whatever the issue is, we need to know that when we call children they’re gonna come. And you can play those games so that you can actually give children that opportunity to play with getting lost and playing away from supervision, and that kind of feeling of being in- away from the adult supervisory gaze because I’ve practiced.
Remember- Mm … we’re over here, I’m teaching you some games. Yeah. Explicit, direct instruction. You’re gonna go and then I’m gonna call you, and you’re gonna go and I’m gonna call you, and now I have confidence ’cause we’re building this relationship that when I use this, you know, the whistle is always my emergency recall.
That’s, I only use it for that one. When I use that, you’re gonna come.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: But now I know that we’ve developed that routine, you can go and wander and explore because when I call you, you will come, and I have confidence as the adult that when I tell you to come, you’re gonna come. And so then that gives children this freedom and time and space to go out and explore and have that autonomy at school, but there’s, that’s all, lots of that’s in the book as well, how to set that up and how to do all that.
Rusty Keeler: Amazing. What… Uh-
Dr. Megan Zeni: It’s a lot, I know. I was like- No, there’s
Rusty Keeler: so much. There’s so much … “
Dr. Megan Zeni: Whoa.” I
Rusty Keeler: know. One could get a PhD on this
Dr. Megan Zeni: thing. Mm-hmm. I know.
Rusty Keeler: Uh, well, what, what do you, what… And when you say risky play and when you say risky play in schools or when you say risky play in a setting that is also doing curriculum, what do you, what…
Paint us a picture of that. What are you talking about? You know, ’cause then we know risky, you know, people talk about risky play and I think more like, you know, out in the, you know, in the fields or back lot or, you know, in a park or whatever. Early childhood, balancing on a log, but what are you talking about with risky play and why is that necessary?
Dr. Megan Zeni: So it kind of just changes the planning structure. So when we’re talking about, like, adult-directed play, we’re talking about pre-planning. So, like, traditional teacher planning. You have a day plan. This is the math lesson I’m going to teach. It’s all in your day plan and then you, and you, you follow through with that.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: When we’re at the child, or free or unstructured play, there’s mul- many people call it different things. But basically, kids are in charge of their own decisions. They, they decide who, what, where, when and how they play, right?
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yep.
Dr. Megan Zeni: If we hold space for that at school and we give children time to play like they would at recess or lunch or after school, during instructional hours, we start to get a really great insight into who these kids are.
Rusty Keeler: Yes, yes.
Dr. Megan Zeni: What are the motivational sparks? Because so many kids are, like, flat about learning. They are, like, not interested. But I can start to leverage that play and those interests, because there’s a book for everything. I can be like, “Okay, Rusty’s really into whatever he’s into, and Megan’s really into whatever she’s into, and I’m gonna start weaving together some literacy and some numeracy and some context that’s coming from your play.
Remember yesterday when you had that teeter-totter, Rusty, that you and Megan were playing on? Okay, well now I’m gonna show you what that looks like in math.” Because before we introduce that abstract concept of equal, like in an algorithm, like one plus one equals two, that the two h- what, what’s on either side of that equal sign, right, has to be the same.
I can go back to the concepts of balance and unbalanced and even and uneven, and I’ve had that conversation with you when you were playing on that little teeter-totter you made out of big loose parts, right? I’ve started to inject some vocabulary into that play, and then I can circle back to it when I’m doing the math lesson, and I am creating this repertoire of motivation and engagement.
And what we call that in the academic space is emergent learning And so there’s, there’s m- multiple theorists who have talked about this. Aoki talks about curriculum, um, as plans, which is like that’s what the teacher planned to do, and there’s curriculum as lived. And so the children’s play- Ah, I like that.
I like that … they are living the learning. Yes. It’s just an unavoidable encounter. Yes. I love that. And all I have to do as the teacher is be skilled enough to see it. And so when I do a lot of the mentoring with teachers around this, that’s what I’m doing. I’m like, “Let’s send them out to play and we’re gonna see where the learning is in this.”
And then once you start training teachers- Yeah … they’re like, “Oh, we could do this around, this is, connects to this science outcome, and this connects to that social studies outcome, and this and this and this and this.” And now we’re cooking because we can take that play and continue to let it happen, and we’re gathering at our little tarp circle or whatever.
We’re gathering and I’m like, “Rusty, tell us about what you did today. What was that play about?” And you might just talk about, “Oh, we built a teeter-totter and we were playing on it.”
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Great. Now everybody has heard about that play- Yeah … and I might get you to actually do it. We’ll watch it, and then as you’re doing it, I might be narrating.
You know, that’s even, that’s uneven, that’s balanced, that’s unbalanced. And then I’m gonna circle back to it- Yes … in the math lesson and be like, “Here’s an algorithm, friends.” Because when we teach kids math, they’re like, “This is so abstract.” They have no- Yeah … experience, no concrete understanding of it. Yeah.
So it’s the magic, the alchemy of teaching comes from this play, right? Yeah. And so we have to get teachers there, but most teachers don’t start there, Rusty. And when we get a lot of blowback and we get a lot of pushback and we get a lot of skepticism from teachers in the system, it’s because they’re missing that component of how to guide the learning.
Rusty Keeler: Golly. Gosh. Man, I have two images. I’ve s- a few images here, and one is a traditional public school classroom.
Dr. Megan Zeni: That’s where
Rusty Keeler: I am. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so you could say in, in the classroom of, I don’t know, third graders, fourth graders. Yep. And there, there it is. It’s, uh, tight. Uh, there’s all the desks, there’s chairs, there’s po- posters, things on the walls.
There’s fluorescent light. Mm-hmm. And then there’s a lesson on the giant smart board, and it’s a PowerPoint, and they had a PowerPoint on reading earlier. They’re gonna have a PowerPoint on social studies. Mm-hmm. But this is a PowerPoint of math- Mm-hmm … and, and everyone’s sitting there. Like, there’s drool, you know- Mm-hmm
coming out of their mouths, or they’re looking out the window, or they’re bumping their friend because they need to move and, you know- Yeah … that be- they still have the energy of, of what it is like to be a child and what it- Mm-hmm … what it’s like in their bodies and their minds that are, like, alive and ready and, and they’re, you know, they’re primed for curiosity.
They’re primed to, like, explore, like, touch and, and feel and dig and, and be, like, be in the whole body environment. And then here we are. They, we’re sticking them in those, you know, b- I can hear the buzz of the fluorescent- Mm-hmm … the fluorescent lights and like, oh, you know, it, it hurts to think about that But then it feels really good to think about children outside and teachers that are watching them and, and the children are playing, the free play or risky play w- and they’re doing their thing, and they don’t even know the teachers are like, “Oh, look at that.
They’re making a fulcrum. Okay.” Yeah. “Oh, look at the conversations as they are using-”
Dr. Megan Zeni: Simple machines.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah. We’re gonna
Dr. Megan Zeni: go into simple machines. Yeah.
Rusty Keeler: Sh- boom. And so it’s, and you know, that’s, uh, it’s like there’s play for play’s sake, but then, uh, within the school system, because you still have, like you said- Mm-hmm
we still have to grade and assess and- Mm … and, and it, have learning. But the idea of like that play is a part of it, that it isn’t a separate, it’s, it’s not recess. It’s
Dr. Megan Zeni: and-
Rusty Keeler: It’s, it’s, it- …
Dr. Megan Zeni: play and learning.
Rusty Keeler: Yes. A- and it’s like the play, it’s enmeshed. It’s like this, uh, it’s, I don’t know, I see it as like a, it’s like a mesh because here it’s like the play is part of the
Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: With,
Rusty Keeler: with-
Dr. Megan Zeni: It’s, it’s the genesis of the learning, right? Right. How do you learn something unless you are engaged or care about it or- Yeah … have some experience with it? And so it’s so critical that we’re giving children opportunities to just play with ideas. And so for a lot of teachers, what I’ll say is, “You know, what about this lesson has to be done inside?
Like, what about this is like, this, this math lesson- Yeah … this science lesson, this… How can we just take this idea, this concept, and go outside?” And for a lot of teachers, that’s like, “We’re just gonna go for a walk and look for it.” So Gillian Judson does a g- she has a great book called The Walking Curriculum.
Okay. You know, there’s all these ideas. And so you can, you can do these walks with children as a very low barrier start to sort of help the teacher be like, “Oh, there’s some learning out here. I can learn with and from the land,” right? And it just, it’s a positionality and it’s a pedagogical approach that is so restorative, not only for the kids, but we have so much evidence now that it’s really good for teachers.
Rusty Keeler: Ah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Like, we’re getting a lot of evidence coming through from multiple studies now saying that it improves teacher job satisfaction, it’s reducing burnout. Like, it’s improving relationships with students, ’cause of course happy kids, happy teacher- Yeah … right?
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: It’s compelling.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Gosh, yeah, this feels like the future.
What, what, what the future should be or what the, you know, it’s happening in the present, which is amazing. It’s also, like, this idea of that’s how we as humans have learned.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Always. Since time- Right? … immemorial.
Rusty Keeler: Right?
Dr. Megan Zeni: That’s how- It’s just let’s do that more. Yeah.
Rusty Keeler: Yes, yes. Oh my God. Incredible. Well, Megan, thank you so much for, you know, again, we- you just gave us, you know, we’re just still getting a, a tiny slice of all the incredible work and research and, you know, outreach, you know, that you’ve done, the, what you’ve learned from all the people that are doing incredible stuff out there.
And the, the, the toolkit, you know, thank you so much for making something that, that is compelling and fun and that can really help shift, you know, move the needle to rethinking, you know, in, in what could be, like, one of the hardest environments, the school, the public school setting- Mm-hmm … to even think about this kind of thing.
But to show, like, not only is it, like- It’s a good idea, idea, but you’re showing like and yeah, it’s-
Dr. Megan Zeni: And it improves student achievement. Yes. And it improves wellness.
Rusty Keeler: Hello.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And it improves teacher wellness. Like it’s a- Uh-huh … win-win-win-win-win.
Rusty Keeler: Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, uh, are you taking this to the highest levels of, you know, departments of ministry of educations?
Dr. Megan Zeni: Yeah, so I do actually work as a consultant for the ministry now, so I travel around the province. Yeah. Yeah. And so my job is working with teachers provincially now. Yeah, I mean, I would say we have a lot of support for it in our jurisdiction. I’m doing the Australian tour. I’m leaving, um, in early October to go spend many, many weeks traveling around Australia talking about this and- Awesome
yeah, I mean, some spaces and places are more receptive to this- Yeah … idea. Yeah. Uh, and some are still figuring it out, but, you know, the book is a great place. The book is written for systems leaders to help systems leaders understand how to support teachers in this. We have really good evidence right now that the most important person in this conversation is the school principal.
Rusty Keeler: For buy-in and commit and-
Dr. Megan Zeni: Teachers can have everything, Rusty. They can have a beautiful outdoor space. They can have very good weather. They can have all the kids ready and dressed for the weather. They can have professional learning and mentorship from someone like me, and if their principal is actively discouraging it, like they’re- Yeah
saying no, the only way these kids are gonna learn this phonics is from a PowerPoint-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah …
Dr. Megan Zeni: they won’t take them out.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so the school principal is the most important person in the school ecosystem in terms of compelling people to go outside, and teachers will go out if they feel like they have, the principal has their back.
Yeah. Yeah. Because inevitably kids fall down, they get scrapes, they get bumps, like all the stuff that happens. Kids get dirty. There’s all of that messiness that comes from being outside when you play and learn outside. And so having school system support is, it’s really important.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, you need the leader saying, “Well, this is what we do.
This is how we do it.”
Dr. Megan Zeni: This
Rusty Keeler: is what we do. We’re, we’re, we’re committed to
Dr. Megan Zeni: it. This is how we do it. Yeah.
Rusty Keeler: Well, okay, how do you convince, two, I have two last questions. One is how do, how do you convince principals who may have, that are immersed, enmeshed, entangled in the traditional way of doing things with the indoors?
How do you, how do you change their mind? How do you, how do you show them the light?
Dr. Megan Zeni: Or- Well, data is compelling, right? Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the movement right now, especially in the structured literacy conversation, is around using data to inform instruction. So if we are using data to inform- Yeah
instruction, we cannot be selective about which data we are using to inform our instruction. So let’s look at all the data. Okay. And what does that data tell us? So what is your school attendance for st- for students? If we have low attendance, that means we have a motivation and an engagement problem, right?
High teacher absenteeism, that means we have a wellness problem. Like, what is the data telling us? And then we have so much evidence in the research to show how outdoor play and learning, and risky play is a piece of outdoor play and learning at that continuum. In the book, we go into great detail about this continuum of play.
You know, all of that improves, and we have lots of data and evidence now to show that we can improve student outcomes, student wellness, and teacher satisfaction in their work. Like, that’s compelling- Yeah … for management. Boom. So yeah. Great catch. It’s not… Yeah. It’s not rocket science, but there’s nuance to it, and there’s, it requires professionalism- Yep
and it requires some of the artistry of teaching, which, you know-
Rusty Keeler: Which is why a lot of pe- It’s the fun part … yeah, well, why people go into teaching. Yeah, yeah. You know? A lot, because they, they love it and they wanna be creative. They wanna be able to be creative and, and all that. So I mean, it’s so inspiring in how, you know, detailed and the idea of you, to scale it up to, you know, research, do it in a very measured way.
I think this is like, to me, it’s like the smart Canadian way of doing things. Of like, we have research and we have the, the methods that are proven to show, you know, that have been proven to show- … that they work, and we have, we, our outcomes are, you know- Yeah … a- and but that’s how, that’s what the administration needs, that’s what board of education needs, to see that, and you’ve shown that.
You have that stuff. And, and, and the book toolkit walks you through it. So that stuff is, it can, it can make change on a large level, uh, a continent level, Australia, North America. How about people, how about listeners that are like- Uh, I don’t know if I can change my school system, but I wanna start going outside.
What- if for our last little thought, how can people start doing this in the, i- in the elementary school level stuff? What would, what would your advice be? We, we talked about, you talked about the tarp and the, and the clothes basket. Yeah. But get your book. That’s what, you can slap that down on the principal’s desk, I suppose.
Dr. Megan Zeni: I think a lot of it for teachers, like that first step, is what are you already doing and how- Yeah … could you just locate it outside? So most teachers, I hope, I mean, I do occasionally encounter teachers that don’t read aloud to their children every day, but I’m hoping most teachers all the way through the system are at some point, whether it’s a chapter book or a read-aloud, they’re reading to children every day and modeling that fluency and that connection to text.
So that is such an easy, repeatable routine outside. You know, the kids can be sitting under a tree while you read that book, and then you send them off to recess, right? You just go out 10 minutes early and you say, “Okay, we’re gonna do this read-aloud. We’re gonna get ready for recess. Everyone’s gonna have their stuff, and I’m just gonna read it to you outside.”
And you start to build those routines, those entry routines- Yeah … are really key. And so, like my website has a lot of information on this, on the like micro sort of routines and little bite-sized pieces- Yeah … are on my website. The big tool is outsideplay.org. The book talks a lot about the research.
There’s also, and I’ll do a shout-out to Take Me Outside, which is a Canadian national organization. They do a massive conference for, um, practitioners, so teachers in May. It’s tough to get a ticket. It’s so popular. It’s- Yeah … it’s kinda crazy. But anyways, it’s very, very well done. Uh, but they’ve also got a leadership conference, so if somebody listening is a leader in a system and like how are other systems managing this?
The leadership conference happens in October every year, and that’s where like school superintendents and directors of instruction, people who are making policy decisions around how learning happens in schools, they come to this conference to learn about the evidence and the research and how you can make those, those small shifts and what levers you can pull to get more kids outside more often because every system leader cares about their data They wanna see growth.
Rusty Keeler: Yes.
Dr. Megan Zeni: And so if we care about the data, the overwhelming evidence is that kids need to be outside more often. So that’s what we do.
Rusty Keeler: Yes.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Just go. Just do it. Just do it. Yeah. You know? It’s, it’s not, it doesn’t have to be complicated to start. It just has to be- Yeah … a simple routine. What do you already
Rusty Keeler: do?
Dr. Megan Zeni: That’s right. That’s right. You have a Lego station? Put it outside your classroom door on a tarp. Let them play with Lego on a tarp outside your classroom door. Whatever it is- Yeah … just start trying to think about how could this just move outside for a little bit. And then you build their, their tolerance, children’s tolerance to being outside.
You start building your confidence. You start building- Yeah … all of those relationship pieces that are so essential for risky play to happen. That’s another big piece of that risky play conversation is you cannot facilitate risky play with children you don’t have a relationship with. It’s really, really challenging.
So you wanna know these kids so that you have this relationship of trust and reciprocity. And then there’s all this freedom that children can have resting in the environment that you’ve, you know, cultivated as a professional, so.
Rusty Keeler: Love it. Love it. All right, Megan, thank you so much. A lot to digest, but a lot to be inspired by and a lot of ideas to try.
And yeah, I love it, the scale from the, the smallest thing to just go outside with, you know, with a tarp, to making systems change in government and ministries and education and everything. And that’s feels like a, the direction we need to go in. I am glad you’re doing what you’re doing. Thank you. Thank you.
Dr. Megan Zeni: Thank you.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll keep the conversation going. Uh, look forward to, uh, our paths crossing again. And I’m excited for the listeners to hear this, all this stuff.
Dr. Megan Zeni: All right. Well, thank you.
Rusty Keeler: All right. Thanks.
All right. Thanks for listening Do you have a comment or a question? Email me at playnaturepodcast@gmail.com. You know I like talking about this stuff, and maybe we could use your question on a future podcast episode. As always, I have some free goodies for you in the show notes, including my outdoor loose parts guide.
Fun stuff in there. And so I wish you the best in your outdoor play adventures. And when it comes to adding nature to your yard, or loose parts, or saying yes to risky play, my favorite motto is, “Dream big, start small, and never stop.” Oh, yeah. Woo, woo, woo, woo. Let’s do it. All right, have fun out there
