This week second graders joined us on their field trips in the St Mark Gardens and they helped to plant the broccoli patch. Our team started out the morning with a warning from one of the teachers that their class had many ‘problem kids’ or ‘bad kids’. We braced ourselves but as we moved through the field trip it was extremely clear that none of the kids were ‘problems’. I kept looking to find who the kids were that needed extra care but only saw a lively and engaged class of second graders who were overjoyed to be in the garden and learning outside. The whole experience made me think a lot about the PBIS, or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, the definition being:
Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a set of ideas and tools that schools use to improve the behavior of students. PBIS uses evidence and data-based programs, practices, and strategies to frame behavioral improvement in terms of student growth in academic performance, safety, behavior, and establishing and maintaining positive school culture. PBIS addresses the needs of at-risk students as well as the multi-leveled needs of all students in regards to behavior, which creates an environment for both teachings and learning to occur in schools. The approach is believed by researchers such as Robert H. Horner to enhance the school staff’s time for delivering effective instructions and lessons to all students.[1]
Basically, PBIS is a reframing of how educators and those in the public school system view ‘problem’ kids or kids that need extra care. The general idea guiding it is that if you label a kid as ‘bad’ in their learning environment and perpetuate the stigma around them it will only exacerbate the situation and that label will follow the student throughout the rest of their lives. PBIS offers a different approach to treating these problem kids and offers positive reinforcement for positive choices and behaviors.
I see the value in PBIS and support the impact it has had on public education. My heart still goes out to the children who don’t fit into the molds that seem to be required in order to succeed in public education. I think that as a whole the system has been failing for years and has failed many many students. I personally feel that I was failed by the public education system in ways that still follow me to this day. I want to make clear that I do not believe that individual teachers or principals or counselors are the ones who are at fault. I believe that there has been an extreme disconnect between the mission to serve and support our youth in learning and growing and the actual resources and money and intent that go into public education. Standardized testing and moving from a place of numbering children’s worth has set the system up to only serve those who fit into the boxes.
This week at Lydia Hawk I started to create a faerie village in our garden. I started out with the younger kinder and introduced how to construct a mound and decorate it with sticks and rocks and things living on the garden ground. I explained to them that by building the faeries houses we were inviting them into the garden to help care for the plants. I grew up playing with fairies and communing with the spirits of nature and have always made sure to introduce the concept of fairies to any group of students I am working with. To me, I view ‘working the faeries’ as a way to connect to nature and the magic that is in the natural world in a playful and silly way that allows imagination and creativity and breaks down the walls of the structured world. Every kid believes in fairies at some level and every kid has a wild imaginative and powerful mind that is capable of connecting to the magic and power of nature. It felt really sweet to start a faerie village in a public school garden. I have spent two summers working at an outdoor survival camp with the four and five-year-olds specifically in faerie camp. I led nature excursions in the woods and we worked with fairies and gnomes and elves and all of the magical mythical creatures that nourish childhood. It felt really sweet to be able to take some of that somewhat exclusive and inaccessible day camp world for more financially privileged children and bring it to public school students in their day-to-day world.
It was interesting to see how the older kids reacted to the faerie village and how it took them a little more time to accept and fall into play. It feels really important and powerful for me to be able to be that adult to encourage them to hold onto their childhood selves in a world that is pressuring them to grow up so rapidly. We also had mud contests to see who could get their hands the muddiest before it was time to clean up and go back to class. I really enjoy facilitating free play and think it is extremely important in Outdoor Education to loosen the ropes and allow the students to guide their own learning and exploration. The demand for garden recess is increasing and the students seem overjoyed to be able to spend time in the garden.