A school can genuinely believe in outdoor learning and still make it surprisingly difficult for teachers to get outside. Most educators I know do not need another presentation convincing them that children benefit from opportunities to move, explore, notice, wonder and learn beyond four walls. Many already want to create more of those opportunities. Whether the school around them makes that work possible is a separate question.
If taking a class outside regularly means that an individual teacher has to independently navigate supervision, weather, accessibility, equipment, schedules, curriculum expectations, risk procedures and the needs of thirty different learners, outdoor learning can quickly become something we value in principle but struggle to sustain in practice. At that point, motivation is only part of the picture. The conditions around the teacher are doing a lot of the work too.
Research into outdoor learning in Canadian schools has been pointing in this direction for some time. Educator confidence and experience are part of the picture alongside principal support, school and district policies, funding, resources, curriculum expectations, schedules, school culture and the physical environment.[1]
More recent Canadian research examining how outdoor learning can be expanded across public education continues to identify institutional and process-based barriers and emphasizes the need to involve educators, administrators and policy-makers when thinking about implementation at scale.[2]
We can have teachers who believe deeply in outdoor learning and still place them inside structures that make it difficult to do.
I have seen this pattern with plenty of good ideas in schools. Usually, someone gets excited. They try something, learn through experience, collect supplies, solve problems, figure out what works and become the person everybody else asks. That kind of leadership helps schools move forward because educators are willing to experiment, learn and share what they discover.
The challenge is what happens next. If outdoor learning disappears when that teacher changes grades, moves schools, takes a leave or simply no longer has the capacity to carry it, then outdoor learning was never fully built into the school. We benefited from an enthusiastic educator.
Those educators are still essential. The work becomes more sustainable when the conditions around them make it easier for others to join, adapt and continue. Leadership has work to do here.
Before asking teachers to do more, make the work easier to carry
Teachers are already making hundreds of decisions every day. They are thinking about individual student needs, transitions, supervision, assessment, family communication, behaviour, safety, curriculum and everything unexpected that walks through the classroom door before 9:00 a.m. Then we tell them outdoor learning is valuable and encourage them to do more of it.
That encouragement can be completely sincere while still leaving a teacher thinking, “Okay, but how?” Leadership can help answer that question by looking closely at the conditions around the work instead of adding another initiative or another binder.
Are expectations around taking students outside clear? Do teachers understand which spaces they can use and how they can use them? Does everyone have to create their own weather plan? Is there basic equipment available somewhere, or does outdoor learning depend on what individual teachers have bought, borrowed or collected? Have staff had opportunities to think about accessibility, sensory needs and participation outdoors? When a teacher has a reasonable question about supervision or risk, is there somewhere clear to take it? Are educators given opportunities to learn from colleagues who already have experience teaching outside?
At the board or system level, there is another layer to consider. Are policies helping educators use outdoor spaces thoughtfully, or unintentionally adding enough uncertainty that staying inside becomes the easier choice?
None of these questions are especially glamorous, but they shape whether teachers can actually do the work. In practice, sustainability often comes from ordinary decisions that reduce friction. A shared set of expectations can save twenty teachers from independently trying to interpret the same issue. A small collection of communal equipment can remove another obstacle. Time for an experienced teacher to work alongside a colleague can build confidence far more effectively than another reminder to get outside. A clear answer to a question about risk can turn “I’m not sure we’re allowed to do that” into “Okay, we can make this work.”
Take Me Outside’s strategic plan takes that wider view. Their work includes supporting educators who are curious about outdoor learning, building communities of educators already doing the work, and collaborating with school-system administrators to better understand and remove barriers.[3] That systems-level focus is useful because there is a limit to how far any educational practice can spread when its success depends on individual people repeatedly overcoming the same obstacles.
Teachers will always bring creativity, courage and initiative to schools. Schools benefit from that leadership. Good systems do something with what those educators learn. They make the path clearer for the next person, share resources, clarify expectations, notice unnecessary barriers, create opportunities for people to learn from each other, and make participation possible for more students and more educators.
Over time, outdoor learning becomes part of the school rather than something associated with a few particular teachers.
Outdoor learning does not become sustainable because every teacher suddenly becomes an outdoor-learning expert. It becomes more sustainable when teachers no longer have to figure out every part of it alone.
Structure is what makes participation possible outdoors
Sometimes when we talk about outdoor learning, the picture becomes very romantic. Students are exploring, moving, playing, noticing, wondering and learning in a more open environment. Those things can absolutely happen. So can conflict, uncertainty, competing needs and a child yelling from across the field, “He says I can’t go there!” The classroom community comes outside with us.
That tension helps clarify what structure is for. It should protect safety and participation without closing down the possibilities of being outside.
Outside, some of the assumptions of the classroom disappear. Students start asking different questions. Can we run here? Can I climb that? How far can I go? What if I do not want to participate in this activity? What if someone wants rough play and I do not want to be touched? What happens when one person’s exploration affects someone else’s safety?
Adults still hold responsibility for safety. There are decisions in schools that students cannot and should not be expected to carry. But there is a great deal of room between adults deciding everything and students deciding everything, and that space is where meaningful student voice can live.
A class can talk together about what people need to feel safe in a space, where someone might need room, how boundaries will be communicated, what respectful play looks like, which areas are open for exploration and what happens when an agreement stops working. When students help build the agreements that shape their learning community, a boundary can become something that protects another person’s ability to participate rather than simply another instruction from an adult. A conversation about safety can include responsibility. A disagreement can become an opportunity to practise listening, negotiation and repair.
That is still structure. It is simply structure with a purpose.
At the classroom level, that might look like shared agreements. At the school level, it might mean common expectations for outdoor spaces. At the system level, it can mean policies that give educators enough clarity to make thoughtful professional decisions. Across all three levels, the structure should make participation and safety easier without creating so much friction that the easiest option is always to stay inside.
Sustainability is also an equity question
This becomes an equity issue too. When outdoor learning relies on one educator’s confidence, personal collection of supplies, knowledge of risk procedures or ability to solve every logistical problem, access becomes uneven. Some students happen to land in classrooms where outdoor learning is part of the culture. Others may rarely experience it at all.
Recent Canadian research makes this scaling question explicit. Outdoor learning remains far from systematically implemented across public education, and researchers have argued that expanding access requires participation across multiple levels, including students, families, educators, administrators, policy-makers and community organizations.[2] Equitable access cannot be built by asking individual teachers to solve system-level problems one classroom at a time.
Equity will look different from school to school and child to child. Students bring different mobility, sensory, communication and support needs into outdoor spaces just as they do indoors. Schools themselves have different grounds, neighbourhoods, resources and access to green space. Making room for outdoor learning means building enough flexibility and support that educators can respond thoughtfully to those differences instead of treating them as reasons not to begin.
A sustainable system does not standardize the experience. It makes participation possible for more people.
The schoolyard can show us things the classroom sometimes misses
A change in environment can change what becomes visible to us. The student who rarely speaks during a whole-class discussion may suddenly have something to contribute outside. A child who struggles to sit still through a long lesson may become deeply engaged when movement is part of the learning. Students may notice things adults did not anticipate, use a space differently than we imagined or identify a boundary or problem we had not considered.
None of that means every outdoor experience will be peaceful, easy or transformative. Research into school-led nature interventions is encouraging, but it is also a good reminder not to make sweeping promises. A 2024 systematic review of 19 studies found some evidence of benefits in areas including positive affect, physical activity and social relationships or interactions, while also noting that the evidence base is still developing.[4]
That is a useful way for schools to approach this work. Outdoor learning can be worthwhile without being asked to solve every problem in education. We can value the possibilities it creates without turning it into another cure-all.
Those possibilities need to be available often enough for educators and students to learn from them. A practice cannot become part of school culture if every attempt at it feels like starting from zero.
A simple sustainability test
There is a simple question I would use when thinking about outdoor learning in a school: If the teacher who currently takes students outside most often left tomorrow, what would remain?
Would other staff still know how to use the spaces? Would expectations still be clear? Would people know where the resources were? Would teachers know where to take reasonable questions about supervision or risk? Would students still have opportunities to help shape how outdoor spaces are used? Would learning outside still appear in conversations about teaching and learning?
A string of no answers simply shows where the next work is.
The next move might be clearer guidance, shared equipment, time to learn alongside a colleague who already feels comfortable outside, or a staff conversation that reveals everyone has been operating under a rule that is not actually a rule. Students might need to be part of creating common outdoor agreements. None of those changes is dramatic on its own, but school improvement is often built through exactly these kinds of small structural decisions.
School leaders can help without becoming outdoor-learning experts themselves. They can listen to the educators already doing the work, ask what keeps getting in the way, make expectations clearer, create space for people to learn from one another, involve students in shaping the communities they learn in and remove unnecessary friction when they find it.
There will always be teachers who lead the way, and schools benefit from their experience.
Leadership can help turn what those teachers have learned into something colleagues can use and continue.
Making room is the work
We spend a lot of time asking whether teachers are ready to take learning outside. We could ask the system the same question: Is it ready to support the educators who want to?
Making room for outdoor learning still involves structure and clear expectations. The work is to look honestly at whether our schedules, policies, resources, professional learning and everyday leadership decisions make the practice easier to sustain or harder than it needs to be.
A practice that depends on extraordinary persistence is fragile. It becomes easier to sustain when the system learns from the people already doing the work and removes some of the obstacles around them.
Later this October, I’ll be carrying this question into conversations with school-system leaders at Take Me Outside’s Outdoor Learning Leadership Conference in Banff, where the focus includes embedding outdoor learning into policy, strategic planning, operations, professional learning and system-wide practice.[5] The conversation I want to have is about what can change around educators so that their interest in outdoor learning has somewhere to go.
Outdoor learning becomes more sustainable when getting outside stops requiring exceptional effort from a few people and becomes an ordinary possibility for more teachers and students.
What can we change inside the system that would make going outside easier?
References
[1] Oberle, E., Zeni, M., Munday, F., & Brussoni, M. (2021). Support Factors and Barriers for Outdoor Learning in Elementary Schools: A Systemic Perspective. American Journal of Health Education, 52(5), 251–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/19325037.2021.1955232
[2] Simpson, E., Donison, L., Zeni, M., de Lannoy, L., Matheson, K., Buxton, R., & Halsall, T. (2026). Applying Diverse Participatory Approaches to Co-Produce Research Impacts Within Outdoor Learning. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 25. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069261457199
[3] Take Me Outside. (2025). Strategic Plan 2025–2027. https://takemeoutside.ca/strategic-plan/
[4] Ly, V., & Vella-Brodrick, D. A. (2024). Effects of School-led Greenspace Interventions on Mental, Physical and Social Wellbeing in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review. Educational Psychology Review, 36, 133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09963-1
[5] Take Me Outside. (2026). Outdoor Learning Leadership Conference. https://takemeoutside.ca/leadership-conference/
There are moments in school when the paperwork is done, the policy has been followed, the adult response can be justified, and still, the child in front of us has not really been served.
I think most educators know that feeling. It shows up in small ways at first. A student is struggling, and the conversation turns quickly to behaviour. A teacher is exhausted, and the answer becomes another initiative, another expectation, another system to manage. A parent raises a concern, and suddenly everyone starts speaking carefully, as though the language of school has become more important than the child’s experience of it.
That is the tension the book I'm writing, is trying to name.
I have spent more than two decades inside public education. I have seen extraordinary educators do deeply human work in systems that often make that work harder than it should be. I have seen schools protect students, open doors for students, and give children a place to belong. I have also seen students quietly diminished by routines, assumptions, labels, and policies that were never really built around who they are.
So this book did not begin from a distance. It began from classrooms, hallways, staff rooms, parent conversations, school meetings, and the quiet knowledge many people in education carry but don’t always feel free to say out loud.
We keep saying public education is here for students. I believe it should be. I still believe public education is one of the few places where children from different families, cultures, languages, identities, abilities, and experiences are meant to learn alongside one another. That is worth protecting. I haven’t written this book because I’ve given up on public education. I’ve written it because I haven’t.
But protecting public education cannot mean protecting every structure public education has inherited.
Some of those structures were built for efficiency. Some were built for sameness. Some were built to make large systems easier to manage. Some were built in another time, for another world, around a much narrower idea of the student. And now, many of those same structures are still shaping children who are growing up in a world that requires creativity, flexibility, collaboration, critical thought, and the ability to live well with difference.
That contradiction shows up everywhere once we start paying attention. It shows up when we call a quiet classroom successful without asking who feels safe enough to speak. It shows up when we treat the same consequence as fairness, even when the students involved are carrying entirely different histories, needs, and circumstances. It shows up when a child’s movement, intensity, sensitivity, or questioning is treated as something to correct before it is understood. It shows up when student voice is invited only after the adult decision has already been made.
This is where I think schools have to become more honest.
A student is not simply a behaviour to manage, a score to report, or a problem to solve. A student is a person with rights. That sounds simple, but in practice, it changes how we understand almost every part of school life.
If students are rights-bearing people, then dignity, safety, voice, and belonging cannot be treated as extras. They cannot be offered when learning is smooth and withdrawn when learning becomes difficult. They have to be built into the structure of school itself.
That does not remove adult authority. It does not mean students get whatever they want. It does not mean classrooms become chaotic or expectations disappear. It means the authority adults hold has to be used in service of students, not simply in service of order.
There is a difference between a school system that manages students and a school system that serves them. A system that manages students is usually asking, “How do we get this child to comply?” A system that serves students is asking, “What conditions does this child need in order to learn, participate, repair, belong, and grow?”
Those questions lead to very different schools.
I think many educators already know this. They feel it on the hard days. They feel it when a student’s behaviour finally makes sense after someone takes the time to learn the story underneath it. They feel it when a conflict that could have become a punishment becomes a conversation, an agreement, or a repair. They feel it when students are given enough structure to use their voice well, and the room becomes more grounded instead of less.
Those moments are small, but they are not minor. They show what school can become when the system is willing to learn.
That is really the heart of School the System. For a long time, we have focused on schooling children into the existing structure. We teach them how to line up, wait, produce, perform, meet the measure, and adapt. Some structure is necessary. Schools need routines. Communities need agreements. Children need limits, guidance, and adults who can hold steady when things become difficult.
But structure should serve students. When structure starts serving the system more than the child, we need to be honest enough to notice.
This book is trying to name the moment when compliance gets mistaken for learning. When sameness gets mistaken for fairness. When silence gets mistaken for respect. When a child is asked to become smaller so the system can remain unchanged.
I don’t think we change public education by pretending educators are not trying hard enough. Most of the educators I know are trying very hard. Many are carrying far more than the public sees. But care inside a strained system is not enough on its own. Good people can still be handed tools that don’t serve students well. Thoughtful leaders can still be pulled into decisions that protect process over people. Caring educators can still participate in patterns they would never have designed themselves.
That is why the system itself has to become part of the lesson.
If schools are truly here for students, then schools have to be willing to learn from students. Learn from the student who withdraws. Learn from the student who keeps getting sent out. Learn from the student who asks why. Learn from the student who does well on paper but feels invisible. Learn from the parent who senses something is wrong but does not yet have the language for it. Learn from the teacher who keeps saying, quietly, “This is not working.”
That is the work this book is trying to begin.
Not a finished answer. Not a perfect framework. Not another promise that schools can be transformed if everyone simply follows the steps. Something more honest than that.
A call to look carefully at what public education has inherited, what it still protects, and what students are asking us to become brave enough to change.
The first draft is finished. The work of refining it is just beginning. And maybe that feels fitting, because the book is asking of the system what writing is asking of me right now: revise what no longer serves, keep what is true, and be willing to learn from what is in front of you.
If this is the kind of school conversation you care about, I’ll be sharing more behind-the-book reflections through The Schooling Signal as School the System takes shape.
A rights-informed look at what happens when schools mistake sameness for fairness.
It is May in Ontario, and in many Grade 6 classrooms, provincial testing is beginning to take up space in the room. Not just physical space. Emotional space. You can feel it in the reminders, the practice questions, the schedule changes, and the quiet pressure that settles over students who are old enough to know the test matters to adults, but not always old enough to understand what it really means.
This is where standardization stops being an abstract education issue and starts becoming a child in front of you.
Imagine a student who arrived at a new school in March. He is fluent in English, but he has not been learning inside Ontario classrooms for very long. His parents care deeply about academics. He cares too. He wants to do well. Then, as testing approaches, his behaviour begins to shift. He has verbal outbursts. He refuses work. He spends more time out of the classroom, taking extended washroom breaks or finding reasons not to stay in the room. From a distance, this could be written up as avoidance, disruption, non-compliance, or a problem to manage.
But his teacher knows him. She recognizes that this is not his usual pattern. She has built enough relationship with him to notice the difference between defiance and distress. So instead of reacting only to the behaviour, she finds the right moment and asks him a quiet question: what’s up? Not the passing-in-the-hall version. Not the casual version that does not really expect an answer. The kind of “what’s up?” a student can hear differently because the relationship is already there.
And he opens up. The issue is not laziness. It is not disrespect. It is anxiety. He is worried about the standardized test, worried about how he will perform, worried about what his parents will think, and worried about what this one moment might say about him. His teacher explains that yes, he needs to write the test, but no, it does not determine his marks. She also tells him she will speak with his parents. Almost immediately, the pressure lifts. The student begins to return to himself.
That moment matters because the teacher did not only see behaviour. She saw a child inside a system. And that is where this conversation has to begin.
Most educators are not against standards. Most parents are not against accountability. Most people who care about public education understand that children deserve access to strong literacy, numeracy, communication, and the knowledge needed to participate in the world around them. A functioning public system needs shared expectations. It needs coherence. It needs some common commitments so a child’s access to learning is not left entirely to postal code, family income, or the luck of the classroom they enter.
The problem begins when standards harden into sameness. There is a difference between saying every child deserves access to meaningful learning and saying every child should prove that learning in the same way, on the same timeline, through the same narrow measure. That distinction matters. A useful standard protects access. Over-standardization protects the appearance of order.
At its best, standardization grows from learning. People observe, test, revise, and notice patterns. Over time, they identify what conditions matter. Those principles become shared expectations so knowledge can be used reliably, safely, and at scale. In other words, good standardization is not supposed to control everything. It is supposed to protect what matters.
Electrical systems are standardized because some designs cause fires. Food safety standards exist because people learned, often through harm, which practices protect health. Measurement systems are standardized so people can build, trade, and cooperate with shared understanding. In those cases, standardization draws boundaries, not blueprints. It identifies what must remain consistent so that variation can exist safely. Within those boundaries, judgment, creativity, and adaptation still matter.
Education has not always remembered this. In schools, standardization may have started from a reasonable place. Shared curricula and common expectations were intended to reduce chance and inequity. A child in one community should not be denied important learning simply because the system around them is weaker, poorer, or less supported. That goal matters. But over time, the focus shifted. Instead of standardizing access to learning conditions, systems began standardizing learning itself. Measures replaced principles. Outputs stood in for understanding. What began as a way to support learning gradually became a way to sort it.
That is where the test can begin to replace the purpose. Scores, percentiles, and performance bands become not just tools for understanding learning, but proof of learning. What was meant to provide insight begins to define reality. And like any shortcut used too often, it starts to warp what it was supposed to show.
This is why the aviation comparison is useful. Aviation depends on standards.
Flight requires serious attention to safety, maintenance, design, and engineering principles. Lift, drag, and thrust cannot be ignored. Standards protect lives. But aviation does not require every aircraft to be the same. A helicopter, a passenger jet, a cargo plane, a hot-air balloon, and a rocket are not judged by one identical design. Each has to honour the principles that allow it to function safely, but each design is understood on its own terms. Standards protect the principles. They do not erase the model.
Education should learn from that, because education is not aviation.
In schools, the “cargo” is human development. It is shaped by language, culture, disability, trauma, confidence, relationship, identity, timing, family pressure, prior schooling, and a hundred other things that do not fit neatly into a performance band. Learning does not follow fixed rules in the way airflow does. Treating it as if it does is not only inaccurate. It is unfair.
When students begin from different places, with different supports, different histories, and different levels of familiarity with the system itself, the same test does not mean the same thing for everyone. The same timeline does not mean the same thing. The same instruction does not mean the same thing. The same response does not mean the same thing. This is where fairness gets misunderstood.
Fairness is not every student receiving the same measure and then pretending the result is neutral. Fairness is asking what each student needs in order to access learning with dignity. That does not mean abandoning expectations. It means refusing to confuse sameness with justice.
A rights-informed approach does not reject structure. It asks structure to justify itself. Who is this helping? Who is this leaving out? What does this measure show us? What might it be missing? What dignity might be at risk? What does the student understand about what is happening and why? Those questions do not weaken standards. They make standards more honest.
They also protect professional judgment. A teacher who knows a student well may see something a test cannot. They may see that a child is shutting down because of anxiety. They may see that language is interfering with performance. They may see that the student understands the concept in conversation but struggles to show it in the required format. They may see that what looks like refusal is actually fear. That knowledge should matter.
But in over-standardized systems, the number often speaks louder than the person closest to the child. That is a problem for students, because they can begin to experience school as a place where being measured matters more than being understood. It is a problem for teachers, because their professional judgment can be pushed aside by external tools that do not know the child. It is a problem for parents, because they may receive scores, levels, and reports without enough context to understand what those numbers do and do not mean. And it is a problem for public education, because a system built too heavily around standardized proof can start protecting its own narrative instead of examining its own impact.
This is not only about provincial testing. Standardization shows up in many ordinary school routines. It shows up when every child is expected to move at the same pace. It shows up when support is treated as unfair because not everyone receives it. It shows up when one behaviour response is applied to every situation because it looks consistent from a distance. It shows up when a child is asked to fit the system before anyone asks whether the system is serving the child.
That is why standards are not the problem. Over-standardization is.
Students deserve access to shared knowledge. They deserve strong teaching. They deserve clear expectations. They deserve adults who can say, “This matters, and I am going to help you get there.” But they also deserve to be seen clearly. They deserve systems that recognize difference without treating difference as deficiency. They deserve adults who can interpret behaviour with context. They deserve assessment that informs learning rather than defining the learner.
The goal is not to remove structure. The goal is to build structures that serve students well. A school system that truly valued learning would use data carefully, but it would not worship it. It would protect standards, but not sameness. It would trust educators to bring evidence, observation, relationship, and judgment together. It would include students in understanding what is being asked of them and why.
And when a child begins to disappear under the pressure of a measure, the system would not simply ask, “How did they score?” It would ask a better question: what did this moment reveal about what the child needs, and what did the system fail to see?
That is the work. Not abandoning standards. Not lowering expectations. Not pretending accountability does not matter. But refusing to let a standardized system flatten the human beings it was meant to serve.
If you are an educator trying to notice what standardized systems often miss, start with the free Web of Rights Starter Guide or the Classroom Dignity Check. Both are designed to help you look beyond compliance and begin naming the conditions students need for safety, dignity, voice, and meaningful learning.
)-2.png)
