The Outdoor Tribe

Its been so long I wrote and let my creative thoughts flow to tell the world stories from my travel and experiences. Its been almost 2 years now since I wrote my last blog, and I was away creating beautiful memories, but sometimes trying to figure out the direction of life, dreaming about the future, and sometimes experiencing the dark moments of life trying to come out stronger.

The best time for me to write a blog is when I have a collection of moments and experiences that I can reflect upon and when I can let my thoughts flow without the fear of my own judgement. So, my blogs are not like the weekly or fortnight piece, it is more like the collection of stories published when it is ready. 

Here we go down the memory lane and it is time for SWEDEN!!

Let me tell you I have so many memories from Sweden, and putting them across in a structured way is a hell of a task. But I am sure it is going to be worth it. This blog will introduce you to what I experienced at my course and  how it has made a strong impression on me.

My Outdoor Tribe

As you might know by now, I had studied Masters in Outdoor Environmental Education and Outdoor Life from Linköping University. And trust me when you are surrounded by a bunch of outdoor people your life just gets better. The discussions we had, the moments we shared became one of the most cherished experiences of my life. It was like 'I found my TRIBE'. I knew I belonged here and till today I have not found a group that I call my tribe. 

Our favorite thing to do as a group was hang out in the forest, light a fire, sit around cosily, and have deep conversations that gives you so much inspiration and you end up gaining so many fresh perspectives. There was no room for shallow discussions, and I always went home not feeling tired but fired up with energy from good thoughts and good food around the fire! 

Now we are all in different parts of the world, but we are one TRIBE - the OUTDOOR TRIBE, making a difference in our own ways wherever we are, trying to make this world a better place.

The Outdoor Tribe

One of the things, I will forever be grateful to my course, is the opportunity it provided me to read  through several wonderful books on education, and study the amazing research work and findings on teaching-learning processes. One day as I sat in my room reading through a book called 'Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head' by Carla Hannaford, I had a revelation of my past. Well, this book was a part of our course reading materials and is about our body and how it plays a role in learning.

Before I explain any further about my revelation, let me introduce you to 'Deepti', what she was like when she was 6 to 10 year old. Off course like every child I loved to play outside. I always liked to be around plants, touch them, and I even remember talking to them sometimes. I loved playing hide-and-seek, just run around and all I wanted to do was keep playing the entire day. I hated it when I had to sit at home and read/write. Whenever I had to read/write, I would look outside the window and just imagine playing in those beautiful lawns in front of my house. My mother tells me that whenever she would sit with me for reading/writing, I would ask for frequent bathroom breaks, I would complain of a headache or look out of the window. And at school, I was a kid who did not do well in academics. I remember that in 5th grade, my teachers would dictate the sentences that we had to write in our notebooks, and I still remember how I used to get stuck with a word that had a 'b or d' because by the time my head would resolve whether to write 'b' or 'd' my teacher would have gone to the next sentence. This annoyed my teachers, made them think that I was too lazy to write or not paying enough attention. And when the exam results were out, I would be ranked 20th or beyond, in the class of 25-30 students.

Well during my 5th grade, my parents had enrolled me to a Bharatnatyam class outside of the school because they saw that I was very interested in dance. I would often look at the songs on the TV and start dancing and often just dance whenever music played. Even the neighbors were suggesting that I should learn a dance form and in south India Bharatanatyam is a traditional dance form that has highly coordinated hand, eye, leg, neck, and finger movements. I knew I loved it. I enjoyed dancing though my dance teacher was a little strict and would have a stick that was meant for giving the beat for us to dance but it also doubled as a stick for an occasional thrashing on our legs whenever we made too many mistakes. Nonetheless, an year of dancing in 5th grade, and then comes the new academic year and guess what I get 6th rank in the class, and my problems with 'd' and 'b' and 'p' and '9' were gone. My mom saw a child who would sit down to read/write. Well, we all attributed this academic success to my maturity in thinking and parents thought may be finally I realized its better if I put in efforts on my academics.

As usual years rolled by, I did well in academics except for some hitches here and there, and finished my high school. Then got a bachelors degree, got a job and finally got into this masters course and right now reading this amazing book and having all these flashbacks playing in my head. I suddenly have a revelation and my head yells, 'It is Bharatanatyam that helped you in your academics. You have not given it the due credit it deserves. No, its not the maturity in your thinking, its not the realization to put in efforts. Actually its an year of learning Bharatanatyam that opened those areas of my brain that otherwise would have been untouched, and unexplored. I wondered whether I would be here reading this book and taking this course in Sweden if not for that dance class I took in the 5th grade.' I will always be grateful to Sweden and this course to having been able to find the answer to an event in my life that has impacted me in a huge way.

Experiencing the Swedish Education

At the Masters course, I realized how serious the University considered our feedback on the course and made efforts to take feedback from each student and make necessary modifications. This was something I did not experience before myself as a student. I was thrilled and it is definitely an important part of good education system. I personally loved the fact that you could call your teacher/professor by their name, which I felt created a very friendly atmosphere of learning. 

Also, my grades were not decided by this 3 hours of examination inside a hall packed with other students and all of us thinking about the right answer. Instead, I was assessed by:

1. Team assignments where I was provided with an opportunity to work in different teams, had sufficient time (almost a week) to discuss, think and write our reports, and

2. Individual assignments where I had almost two weeks to prepare, read, think, brainstorm, and write. It was not always about going to the library to write the reports, I could go outdoors, I could observe, think, and reflect through the assignments.

I feel this kind of assessment is what we need for students. It is practical, and real-time, not limited to 3-hours in a room on a specific day at a specific time to answer the specific set of questions to assess all the knowledge that I have gained! Oh yes, students are much beyond that and if you really need to assess the students then expand the horizon. 

Through this course I also got an opportunity to observe outdoor pre-school at Linköping. What struck me the most is the accessibility of the pre-school to a forest and how children effortlessly climb and play on a huge tree that had fallen down, and on a rock that was big for the little ones. I see kids helping each other nurturing empathy from the tender age. I observed that in the pre-schools as well kids could approach teachers by calling out their name (no Miss, or Mrs. or Mr.) and that again contributes to the friendly atmosphere at the pre-school in my opinion. That particular day during my outing with the pre-school kids and teachers, something happened that would stay with me forever. As the group of kids and teachers finished their morning group activity, they let the kids play. Kids soon spread out in the huge open green area. I was with a teacher along with some kids observing snow and discussing about it. Meanwhile we hear a kid far away calling out this teacher's name loud and almost crying. He seem to complain about another kid with him. I thought she would go and resolve. But instead she stood right where she was and told me confidently, 'I am not going to solve their problem. They will be soon going out of the pre-school to join the primary school, and they need to learn to resolve their problems.' Off course there are different possibilities to this situation that may lead to different outcomes. But personally it was a moment where I realized sometimes teachers need not interfere, and trust kids and give them an opportunity to resolve their issues. 

Experiencing the Swedish Education through my course at the University and observation of pre-schools has been an eye-opening and 'experiential education' in itself. The joy of learning about 'learning' as I observed the classes, spent time with my outdoor folks during our lectures (outdoor and indoor), and as I read through the books, and research papers set me on a quest to seek more. I have set my compass to take me towards the path that leads to more learning and I am assured that this journey is going to be filled with interesting experiences, a lot of revelations, setbacks, excitements and mainly the curiosity to learn about learning! :)