Forest Valley Outdoor Education Center

What is the value of outdoor education in Canada?

We spent the morning learning how Toronto teaches outdoor education with a visit to the Forest Valley Outdoor Center. After a bus ride outside of the city center, we were met at the Forest Valley OC with homemade bread and a choice of Cedar Tea or Coffee made by some of the staff onsite from materials found on the Center’s lands. We met with David Hawker-Budlovesky, the Centrally assigned principal for Outdoor Education who introduced us not only to the center but also discussed with us the importance of Outdoor Education in Toronto.

Starting just like a normal day in Toronto, David opened his presentation with a Land Acknowledgement. This is an important part of any school day in Toronto and is used as a means to not only pay respect to the indigenous community but also a way to introduce which lands they are currently being hosted on. For the Forest Valley Outdoor Centre, the acknowledgment read:

We acknowledge we are hosted on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Wendat. We also recognize the enduring presence of all First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples.

After the recognition, David really got down to business by discussing not only the vision of outdoor education in Toronto, but also some important ideas behind the recovery of outdoor education in our pandemic recovery times. Part of the mission behind outdoor education is the fact that it can transform student learning and they want to provide equitable access to learning opportunities for all students. To do this, the Toronto District School Board recognizes in their Pandemic Recovery Plan that the Use of Play/Outdoor Play is essential in Primary School Education (Grades K-8) and visiting a center like Forest Valley is important for helping to recreate the social community that has been harmed with the pandemic in many schools. So David posted an important question for us, how does going outside support schools and student development?

This is when we found out that not only does the Toronto District School Board understand the importance of outdoor education but that they mandate it for students three times over the course of their elementary careers. A child is meant to participate not only in two one-day experiences but also a one three-day/two-night overnight program before they leave for secondary school. There are extensions available for students in secondary school where space is permitted and even some service opportunities open to them within the limits of the Center. One of the service projects we had seen on the center’s trail was a set of manmade stairs embedded into a hillside that made our walk around the facilities not only easier but also beautiful.

A day center like Forest Valley hosts around 17,000 students per year and uses a variety of staff members such as: teachers, outdoor education specialists, site supervisors, and University interns alongside facility staff. All of these people work together to create learning goals for students and themed programming based on experiential learning, and indigenous perspectives, that discuss topics of ecological and environmental awareness and can even be STEM-based. One of the programming themes that is at all centers is the making of maple syrup and maple products. Students and staff members tap trees, collect the sap, and then in the center sugar shack creates the products. There are also team-building opportunities for students such as participating in ropes courses, and collaborative efforts made with teachers to tie the experience to their classroom, and we were told that some centers within the district even have animals!

Pandemic or not, one of the goals of this team of outdoor education specialists is to see how they can not only connect but also support schools with their desires to head outside, focusing on the issue of: how can we make this learning meaningful? So the team then asks what could learning look like in their own school environment? Thinking about physical spaces within their own communities, teachers worked alongside outdoor education teachers who were deployed out to the school to aid in providing support and professional development to classroom teachers. The teachers within this program wanted to participate and together they were able to create lessons and units of studies for their students in their own schools.

They also host yearly a Get Outside Month in May which hosts a calendar of daily activities and lesson plans that you can explore within your own classroom, check out their Get Outside Month for 2022 here.

We were also lucky enough to be given a tour of the grounds, which I must say while beautiful was also covered in mosquitos! Walking through the forest, we were able to see where the maple trees had been tapped for sap, venture down the nature trail to the stream, and see areas where there were ropes courses, fire pits, and big open fields for plenty of play. David and Sylvia were even kind enough to give us a chance to play some games together, run around, and enjoy the center before our trip back into the city.

Outdoor Education is something that we sometimes teachers can take for granted and not include in their classrooms, but in the empowering words of David, “Doing outdoor learning requires you to use a door. If your classroom has a door and your school has a door, you can take your learning outside.”