Supporting mental health & wellbeing with Outdoor Education: a toolkit from Outdoors Victoria

In this podcast, A/Prof Sue Whatman interviews Luke Parker from Outdoors Victoria about their toolkit for outdoor education. A new element of the toolkit assists teachers to make use of the outdoors to support better mental health and wellbeing. Outdoors Victoria partnered with ACHPER's Victorian branch in developing the toolkit to help not only HPE teachers to see the opportunities of teaching outdoors, but teachers across the curriculum.

Luke  is a former teacher and is the current Education advisor for Outdoors Victoria for over 4 years where he works with numerous stakeholders including teaching organisations, Schools, and the Department of Education to encourage outdoor learning across the curriculum. Furthermore, he is a University Lecturer at Australian Catholic University in Outdoor Education, PE, Health and ICT. Luke is the founder of one of Western Victoria’s first Aerial (drones) & VR imaging companies with clients including Universal Studios Hollywood, Warner Brothers Hollywood and the AFL to name a few.

You can find the toolkit here: https://www.outdoorsvictoria.org.au/outdoor-learning/ 

Transcript

 0:06 

 Hi and welcome to Atlas Health Coding Schools podcast. And today I'm talking with Luke Parker from Outdoors Victoria about a new outdoor education toolkit for teachers. Thanks for talking to us today, Luke. No worries. Thank you for having me. I guess, um, we'd really just like to know a little bit more about these toolkits. What can you tell us about them? 

Yeah. So over the last six or so years, um, Outdoors Victoria has partnered with a range of different organisations throughout the through sort of throughout Victoria and throughout Australia, um, including HPR. Um, and then also um different organisations such as GTV, geography, history, um literacy, English, a whole bunch of different areas. Um, to create these toolkits on looking at how we can reimagine the use of the outdoors within everyday teaching. So it may be that you're a science teacher or an English teacher and looking at, okay, I can teach these different elements that I traditionally teach in a textbook. How can I reimagine this and teach this outside and, um, then get a range of benefits, uh, from these activities of being in the outdoors? 

That's great. I see that you've developed one on mental health and well-being with the other page. Okay. Can you tell us a little bit more how you came to work on that and, and how you worked with aspera on that? 

Yeah. So HP has been one of the, um, great partners over many years with Outdoors Victoria. And, um, as a part of these toolkits, we find it's really important to um, partner with different experts within the space. And I know that HP have a range of expertise, especially sort of within PE and also, um, within within different elements of mental health and wellbeing. So when we were looking at creating a toolkit, um, this toolkit was mainly aimed at secondary school teachers to look at how they can utilize the outdoors more. One of the areas that we thought would be really important is to look at the concept of mental health and wellbeing, so being outside generally has a range of benefits. Um, in terms of mental health and wellbeing, um, it also engages students in a completely different way than traditional sort of inside activity. So we made it a focus to partner with algebra and look at, well, how can we talk about the use of the outdoors for mental health and wellbeing? It's a very important, um, topic, and I think it's becoming more and more prevalent within our schools that we need to look at mental health and wellbeing. So we partnered with HBO and we come up with a range of different activities that we think PE teachers can really use to introduce mental health and wellbeing and, and also integrate that within sort of the outdoor environment. Um, so some examples of some of these activities. So looking at different elements of sensory walks. So um having students outside, um, having them sort of go into the outdoor environment, um, and then do things that they would traditionally normally be doing, but you sort of get them to think about it from a slightly different perspective. If you get them to look at what's occurring around you, what can you see that maybe you normally skip over? What can you feel? What can you touch? Get them thinking in a slightly different mindset. Um, and we find that it often grounds these students back a little bit and gets them thinking in a whole different way. And, um, when I've done these activities with students before, I found that, um, it almost calms them down a little bit when they're sort of just physically feeling different elements of leaves and bushes and trees and, um, it's just something so different that I think a lot of our students no longer have the opportunity to do, um, in comparison to previous generations who were outside a lot, taking these students outside for that mental health and wellbeing has a range of different positive benefits. Um, yeah, that's one of all. I guess I wanted to say. 

What now? Is that so what do you hope the toolkit would, um, inspire teachers to do? Or what else would you like to say to teachers about using a toolkit like this to teach outdoors? 

Yeah. So with when looking at the outdoors, I think it's one of those things that traditionally us teachers were inside all the time because that's that's what typically school is where we're inside, um, sort of outside of certain classes of maybe PE when we need to be outside for, um, a particular focus like cross-country running that maybe you can't do inside typically where you can't do you can't do it inside. Typically we're inside people. So looking at how you can use the outdoors, um, in sort of that different way. And, and that's really why we created the toolkit is to help teachers seeing that there are opportunities within the outdoors to teach whatever it is that they're teaching. So if they're that PE teacher, the science teacher, the English teacher, there's always ways for you to embed the outdoors and get a whole range of benefits, be that mental health and wellbeing benefits, or also benefits such as increased engagement, increased grades, a whole range of different elements and these elements also that are also outlined within the toolkits. If you sort of want to know a little bit more, but just making teachers aware that it is possible to do, um, you don't have to dedicate a whole lesson, um, to going outside. Maybe it's just five minutes here and there. Maybe it's a little debrief activity, um, or a little walk at the start of class. But just embedding these little activities here and there has a range of benefits for not only students, but importantly, it also has benefits for teachers as well of getting outside. Yep, 100% agree. 

There's a lot of research now talking about just the the benefits of being outdoors or being in nature. So how can teachers find this toolkit? Where can they find it. 

Yeah. So if you go on the Outdoors Victoria website, you'll um and click Outdoor Learning. You'll find a range of toolkits as well. Um, and then also if you go on Akbar's uh, attribute, Victoria's website, you should also find a copy of that. Um, but if you just type in outdoor Victoria, um, outdoor learning toolkits in Google, it will direct you to one of the various websites that they're hosted on. 

Fantastic. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. 

Thank you so much. Thank you.