Think back to your own childhood. How much time did you spend outside? Now consider this: today’s children average just 10 minutes a day outdoors. That number should stop us in our tracks — because nature never intended kids to spend their days sitting still inside four walls.
Lauren McLean, educator, outdoor learning advocate, and founder of Teach Outdoors, has built her career around changing that reality. And her message is both urgent and practical.
It Starts With Who We Are
Lauren’s passion didn’t come from a textbook. Growing up with ADHD in a time when kids roamed freely, the outdoors was her reset button — a place to move, breathe, and just be. That freedom carried her to the Canadian national field hockey team, and eventually into the classroom, where she quickly realized the aliveness she felt outside was exactly what her students needed too.
“Outside was where I felt more relaxed,” she reflects. “I didn’t feel claustrophobic. I felt that I was able to run around.”
That personal history became her professional mission.
More Than Just Science Class
One of the biggest misconceptions about outdoor learning is that it belongs solely in the science curriculum. Lauren pushes back firmly. The outdoors, she argues, is the perfect place to teach everything.
Students can build vocabulary by learning the names of plants and insects, use nature journals for poetry and nonfiction writing, map school grounds in social studies, estimate tree heights and graph real data in math. A single bird flying overhead can spark conversation touching science, math, social studies, and social-emotional learning all at once.
“The outdoors really does become less about taking science outside,” Lauren explains. “It’s more just about expanding the curriculum through the environment.”
This is well aligned with Quebec’s competency-based curriculum framework. The Quebec Education Program is designed to develop competencies through the effective use of knowledge in real-life activities (Eastern Municipalities School Board, n.d.) — and there are few more authentic real-life contexts than the natural world outside a school’s front door. While Quebec’s curriculum does not yet explicitly mandate outdoor learning experiences, there is growing momentum for outdoor education across the province, supported in part by the MEQ’s own review of the literature on outdoor benefits, policies, and practices (Ayotte-Beaudet et al., 2022).
The Research Is Clear
This momentum is backed by strong evidence, including from right here in Quebec. Dr. Jean-Philippe Ayotte-Beaudet, professor in the Department of Preschool and Primary Education at the Université de Sherbrooke and holder of the university’s Research Chair in Outdoor Education, has been among the most prominent voices documenting these benefits. At the cognitive level, outdoor education improves how children retain learning and increases their ability to transfer that learning to everyday situations, and even brief contact with nature can have positive effects on cognitive performance. On the physical level, it reduces sedentary behaviour, and contact with nature has been linked to lower blood pressure and reduced risk of myopia (Ayotte-Beaudet & Berrigan, 2022).
From a psychological perspective, learning in nature reduces anxiety and increases overall well-being, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Socially, it strengthens relationships between students and creates new opportunities for collaboration (Ayotte-Beaudet & Berrigan, 2022).
And it’s not only students who benefit. Teachers who practise outdoor education report higher subjective well-being (Deschamps et al., 2022) — a meaningful finding at a time when teacher burnout and attrition are serious concerns across Quebec and beyond.
Structure Doesn’t Stay Indoors
For many teachers, hesitation around outdoor learning comes down to control. Lauren’s answer is straightforward: outdoor learning doesn’t mean abandoning structure. It means bringing your structure outside.
Circle time, shared expectations, nature journals — they all travel with you. The key shift is thinking of the outdoor space not as a starting point, but as a place to deepen learning already introduced indoors.
“Teach the math lesson indoors, then revisit it outside,” she suggests. “It’s an opportunity for students to show their understanding in a new context.”
That reframe — from free-for-all to elevated learning environment — is often all it takes for a hesitant teacher to take that first step through the door. A survey of over 1,000 Quebec teachers found that more than half were already practising outdoor education, with their top motivations being connecting children to nature, using real-life contexts for learning, and benefiting from a larger learning space (Ayotte-Beaudet et al., 2022).
Start With Your Toes
You don’t have to overhaul your entire practice overnight. Start small. Find one lesson that could be enriched outside. Bring your nature journals. Let the environment do some of the teaching.
The outdoors has always been one of the richest classrooms available to us — patient, endlessly surprising, and completely free. Our students are spending just 10 minutes a day in it. They deserve so much more.
References
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P., & Berrigan, F. (2022). Outdoor education has psychological, cognitive and physical health benefits for children. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/outdoor-education-has-psychological-cognitive-and-physical-health-benefits-for-children-183763
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P., Vinuesa, V., Turcotte, S., & Berrigan, F. (2022). Pratiques enseignantes en plein air en contexte scolaire au Québec : au-delà de la pandémie de COVID-19. Université de Sherbrooke. https://www.usherbrooke.ca/crepa
Deschamps, A., Scrutton, R., & Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P. (2022). School-based outdoor education and teacher subjective well-being: An exploratory study. Frontiers in Education, 7, 961054. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.961054
English Montreal School Board. (n.d.). The Quebec school system. https://www.emsb.qc.ca/emsb/about/school-board/school-system
McLean, L. (2024, March). Outdoor learning and the case for taking education outside [Audio podcast episode]. In ShiftEd Podcast#88
Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec. (2017). Revue de littérature sur les bienfaits, politiques et pratiques en matière d’activités en plein air (Lefebvre et al.). Gouvernement du Québec.
