Mental Health and the Outdoors

How would you describe your experiences with nature as a child? Growing up, maybe you had access to a park or a vegetable garden. Maybe you went bike riding with your friends around your neighborhood or explored the woods with your beloved dog. The benefits of having access to nature extends far beyond childhood and impacts a person’s mental wellness for many years after such experiences according to a recent article from the American Journal of Health Education.

Many of the children we serve at the Princeton-Blairstown Center come from historically marginalized communities and do not have the same access to safe natural environments and often pay for it with their mental health. Another factor that has dramatically impacted children’s mental health is COVID-19. Not only has COVID-19 made it more difficult for children to access nature – spending hours in front of screens inside and isolated – but it has resulted in a children’s mental health crisis. COVID-19 has escalated cases of domestic violence and alcohol consumption in the home which can lead to violence and abuse. It is clear that something must be done to support young people - especially those from historically marginalized communities.

After a systematic review of 35 papers, researchers concluded that access to nature made a difference in children’s and teens’ mental health. Outdoor education programs and access to nature have been proven to provide physical, psychological, and academic benefits to children including helping to regulate the body’s stress response, boosting self-esteem and self-expression, and promoting cooperation and communication with others. The authors continue, “Equitable access and opportunities to learn, succeed, and be active in nature for children of marginalized backgrounds, can result in so much more than improved physical fitness and enhanced cognition. Such engagement with natural environments can create an inclusive sense of belonging in outdoor spaces, which can potentially provide access to coping mechanisms with opportunities to prevent and mitigate wellness disparities that could disproportionately affect the mental health of urban youth.”  

Providing equitable access to transformative outdoor experiences is core to what we do every day at the Princeton-Blairstown Center and it is why we developed our Summer Bridge Program which is designed to serve 550-600 children from historically-marginalized communities – free of charge. Money and location can be huge barriers keeping children from experiencing the outdoors – and its mental health benefits.

For our non-Summer Bridge programming, we work with each group to meet them where they are around program costs because we believe that every child deserves to explore nature and reap the long-lasting mental health benefits that result from such experiences. It’s also the reason we are working to develop our Inside - Out program, designed to provide access and equity to middle school students from Trenton free of charge. The program provides six environmental education lessons during an overnight stay at our Blairstown Campus. Students are immersed in hands-on outdoor education that is aligned with state science curriculum standards. The program also includes two sessions designed to help students build their social-emotional skills, deepening their connections to other students, teachers, and the outdoors.

Environmental Education at the Princeton-Blairstown Center

Identification chart

Imagine a beautiful forest setting with clean air, miles of trails, and clear streams. Now imagine you were back in school in such a setting. Your teacher gives you a bucket, a net, maybe some petri dishes and magnifying glasses, and a species identification chart. Would you be excited for your lesson?

Environmental education is taught in classrooms around the world but there is something special about learning about the environment, in the environment that you are learning about. The National Environmental Education Foundation reported that students who participate in programs and activities outdoors show an increase in intrinsic motivation and improvement in student’s learning attitudes. You may not have access to a beautiful 268-acre campus like the Princeton-Blairstown Center every day, but that is ok! Your school yard, playground, or nearby parks and public lands work just as well when implementing an immersive environmental education curriculum.

Two students explore the water at the Center as part of their stream study.

Even if you are unfamiliar with environmental education but are willing and able to take your students on a field trip, the Princeton-Blairstown Center is the place to go! We offer fifteen curriculum-aligned programs for students featuring inquiry-based, hands-on science learning. Each program combines outdoor exploration with STEM- and SEL-reinforcing activities to help participants engage more deeply with science and the scientific method. Our environmental education curriculum is aligned to middle school curriculum standards. However, Center staff can help high school teachers plan the use of our outdoor classroom for higher-level, hands-on biology and environmental/earth science classes

Environmental education not only improves academic achievement according to the National Environmental Education Foundation but it also encourages environmental stewardship, deepens personal development and wellbeing, and strengthens communities.

Courses at the Center include everything from forest ecology, stream science, phenology and climate change to ornithology, nocturnal animals, and amphibian studies. Our Environmental Education page has course descriptions and previews.

Many species call the Princeton-Blairstown Center home and your experience may include canoeing by a busy beaver building a dam, listening to owls at dusk, or turning over rocks in a search for salamanders. Whatever program you choose, your experience will be authentic, engaging, and spark an interest in learning.

Students carefully hold salamanders.

Participants at the Center smile about their hands-on experience with salamanders.

So Much More Than Soil - SEL and Gardening

As an embodiment of our core values, PBC’s facilitators strive to connect environmental experiences not just to academic concepts, but to social emotional learning (SEL) and social justice movements as well. This June, a time of year where our gardens are creating ample amounts of nourishing food for plates in Egner Lodge, we are exploring the additional role of the PBC garden in nourishing skills, meaningful connections, and the relationship between participants and the planet.  

As Todd McPherson, Urban Garden Coordinator at Luther Burbank High School mentions in Students Use Gardening to Develop Social Emotional Learning Skills, “A functioning and productive garden space [is also a] very interactive outdoor classroom…really, we can incorporate just about any discipline into the gardens.” Other interviews in the video make the case for conducting mentorship and other leadership lessons in a garden setting, which is something we have been facilitating with our Summer Bridge, Leader-In-Training, and Wilderness Leadership School participants for several years.

The video also emphasizes the observed increase in empathy among students learning and interacting with the living organisms endemic to gardens. The graduate thesis Growing Citizens: Students’ Social Emotional Learning via School Gardens elaborates on how “In addition to academic learning goals, gardening has the potential to provide students with a sense of empathy related to nature that may [help develop] pro-environmental stances later in life. Gardening may also contribute to the attainment of related citizenship skills such as collaboration and communication.”                               

Garden helpers hold up giant kohlrabi they helped harvest from the PBC garden. Produce harvests go to Chef Bob, who turns them into delicious meals for Egner Lodge.

Ron Franco, Senior Program Manager, shared some of his perspective about working with students in the PBC garden, and how observing and caring for the living things in a garden space are effective catalysts for deeper conversations and connections that reach far beyond the boundary fence.      

 “Over the past four years, [our] garden has proved fruitful in more ways than one can imagine. It provides an interactive, colorful, and lively learning experience for our curious participants, a place where we engage in thought-provoking, hands-on garden curriculum and activities.” As participants work together toward common goals in the space, they practice collaborative skills, and “rejoice in the wonders while soaking in colorful inspiration and novel experiences, such as tasting a vine-ripe cherry tomato or other garden treat for the first time in their lives…Hopefully, these eye-opening moments and stirring experiences will help ignite [participants’] interest in sustainable agriculture, green movements, and food justice. Through the garden, PBC helps plant a small seed of hope and opportunity for our future nature-conscious leaders.”

SEL and the Outdoors

The focus on social-emotional learning (SEL) at the Princeton-Blairstown Center is in everything we do. As an outdoor, adventure, and experiential education-focused organization, it means that SEL is the thread that ties all of our activities and programs together. For this Earth Month edition of Compass Points, we considered the many natural intersections of social-emotional learning and our outdoor and environmental programming.

Research published in the Journal of Adolescence studied an Outward Bound group’s experience with SEL and highlighted the program’s positive impacts on the students’ ability to “successfully endure distress and a process of experimenting with new mindsets that helped them rise above their anxiety and distress…and found that peers provided skillful and responsive on-the-spot support that motivated youth, helped them succeed, and scaffolded students’ learning strategies for dealing with physical, social, and emotional challenges.” The novel situations brought about by adventure education, and the fear and anxiety that accompany almost all situations that involve the new and unknown, can be used as perfect jumping-off points for experienced facilitators to dive into emotions and mindset shifts with outdoor education participants. The coping skills, strategies, and tactics that come out of those discussions can then be translated to classroom learning and beyond.

A research survey compiled by Green Schoolyards America asserts that “fewer, longer sessions of outdoor learning (education outside the classroom) are more beneficial than more frequent, shorter sessions and lead to improved pro-social behaviors among students.” This is another strength of organizations like PBC, which can - and do! - structure most participant activities around the experience of being in the out-of-doors. Sharing experiences in that space, along with thinking and learning in that context with peers, can offer new and different perspectives for any member of modern society, particularly one which seems increasingly expected to spend the majority of its time indoors. 

Also noted in the Green Schoolyards piece is that “blended learning that combines traditional education with forest school or other models of outdoor curricula enhances children’s social interaction skills, builds confidence, promotes problem-solving and independence, builds negotiation skills, and supports creativity.” In this year of extraordinary disruption to all areas of society, we have been fortunate to offer two full semesters of Wilderness Leadership School (WLS) for local students, at a time when our regular partners were unable to attend on-campus programs. WLS offered a weekly all-outdoor, full-day learning format, compounding the social-emotional learning opportunities such curricula can provide to a group of students whose traditional learning and extracurricular activities have been disrupted in unprecedented ways. In providing for public health and safety considerations, we were able to tap into both the healing power of nature and the many opportunities for increased learning, health, and future success that outdoor learning provides.

If the pandemic has reinforced anything for those of us in the outdoor and adventure education field, it might be that before, we could agree that these experiences were important – now, we can all loudly assert that they are not merely important, but in fact critical to the development of the social-emotional skills that enhance the grit, resilience, and overall success of all people.

Learning Leadership in the Outdoors

In a year full of unexpected detours, rethinking, and “firsts,” the Center will offer a fall semester of environmental education and outdoor skills instruction for the inaugural iteration of Wilderness Leadership School.

The Center’s natural setting is a perfect outdoor classroom; multiple distinct habitats enable a wide variety of STEAM activities and nature/ecology study.

Conceptualizing the program started when, over the summer months, hopes of students having a “normal” school year were dashed as the country experienced a brisk resurgence of the Covid-19 cases, including in places where schools tried re-opening for in-person instruction. Considering Governor Murphy’s decision to allow school districts to create remote and hybrid school day options for students as an opportunity for programmatic innovation, the PBC Program team put their heads together to create a new curriculum and unique outdoor learning experience for Fall 2020. 

Offered weekly for a full day’s worth of exploration and discovery, Wilderness Leadership School offers students ages 7-18 a chance to experience the Center’s Blairstown Campus as an outdoor classroom. After a full summer of practice with the Center’s Family Camp programs, PBC facilitators are ready to lead socially-distanced explorations of watersheds, forest ecology, or other environmental education topics each morning. After a balanced boxed lunch prepared in-house by Chef Bob, afternoon sessions will include outdoor competency and skill-building such as canoeing and kayaking, shelter- and fire-building, wilderness survival skills, orienteering, water safety, and adventure and climbing course instruction.

Last year’s Homeschool Program participants encourage one another on the ropes course.

“With the many different versions of what students’ school days will look like this fall, there was an opportunity to offer families a way to supplement to traditional instruction, while observing social distancing and providing an opportunity for safer peer-group interactions,” said Pam Gregory, President and CEO of the Center. “Our outdoor spaces have long been used for summer learning, so it seemed only natural they could be an asset at a time when gathering indoors is not advised.”

To learn more, to share this opportunity with students and families in your life, or to register, please visit the Wilderness Leadership School page.

Ready to Climb!

Most of us are familiar with the adage “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” While the origin of this statement is unclear, it is a fine example of the kind of impact even basic experiential education can offer.

The Association for Experiential Education (AEE), of which the Center is a member, defines experiential education as “challenge and experience followed by reflection leading to learning and growth.”  Every day at our Blairstown Campus, our facilitators work with students and their chaperones to provide intentionally designed opportunities for challenge and experience. Facilitators are trained to reflect on the experience afterwards and to help students relate what they learned through the activity to their daily life in the classroom and at home. During an early Girls’ Adventure and Leadership Weekend, Emily, a shy eighth grader, experienced this first-hand when she agreed to climb up the vertical playpen on the climbing tower. When the girls in Emily’s group headed off to the climbing tower to don their equipment and tackle the three-story structure, she dutifully strapped on the required harness and helmet.  And she watched. She watched girl after girl say, “ready to climb!” and make her way up the tower – those who were fearless went all the way to the top, and those who proclaimed themselves to be scared of heights, but climbed further than they thought possible. But, every time a facilitator asked Emily to climb, she said “no thanks.” Chyann was the facilitator with Emily’s group and was kind but persistent in asking. Each time Emily said no, Chyann asked, “are you sure?” and Emily would shrug her shoulders.

Finally, the last girl finished her climb and Chyann announced it was almost time to head back, with one last questioning look at Emily. She gave Chyann a slight nod and the whole group erupted with cheers as they realized their friend was going to climb! Along with a friend as a climbing partner, Emily got about half way up the tower. She turned around with a giant smile and look of accomplishment for her friends on the ground. Once back on the ground, Chyann talked with the group about the experience of climbing up the tower and how it related to their everyday lives. The girls who were originally afraid of heights talked about how having the harnesses and friends belaying on the ground made them feel less afraid to start to climb and how when they are at home, they can take a chance on something that might be a little scary if they have support around them. According to the article, Tapping the Hidden Team-Building Power of Ropes Courses, in addition to providing the opportunity to test physical skill, when well-facilitated, the ropes-course experience also provides other opportunities for growth, such as introspection, confidence building, self-awareness, and team building.

For Emily, throughout the rest of the weekend, she had a spring in her step and was much more vocal during group activities. She was already showing improved self-esteem that weekend by speaking up when one of her cabin mates pushed ahead of her in the line for dinner. Her chaperone reports that when she sees Emily holding back in group settings, she can offer a little nudge by asking, “Ready to climb?” and Emily smiles and steps up to speak her mind.