Possibilities of Outdoor Play

Lukas: Where did you like to play as a child? I ask this question a lot because childhood memories shape us into the people we become. Welcome to Play It Forward, a Wearthy podcast. I'm your host Lukas Ritson. Thanks so much for joining me.

I talk a lot about play. I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an educator, and I'm a playground designer. So I want to gather some of my favourite people who are advocates of children and nature and create a space to have an honest conversation about getting more kids outside. The power of play is very often underestimated, and I think we all need a little more play in our lives.

Our next guest is known as having a unique approach to education. During a time when people were practicing being cautious, he decided to be brave by implementing outdoor learning and loose parts play. As a leader within his school, he has shown his commitment to children's development by creating an environment that fosters exploration and challenge — not only in his students but in his staff. I'd like to welcome the Principal of Berrinba East State School, Mr Steve Kanowski.

As we ask all guests just to get in the flow of play — where did you like to play as a child?

Steve: Well, I'm a country boy. I grew up on some pretty big acreage on a property just outside of Toowoomba. So I love playing outside. We used to chase the cows, chase the horses. We were lucky enough to have a bit of a rainforest sort of area, so I'd play outside in our dams and those type of things. So yeah, very much an outdoor kid.

Lukas: Sounds utopic. Yeah, I've still got the scars from visiting country friends! And how did that upbringing contribute to you working in education? What inspired you? What's your why — to go from the country kid to education and now being a principal?

Steve: Well, my big why around education is to ensure that all kids have equal opportunity. And I suppose where my why has really strengthened over the years is having children myself and seeing the opportunities and experiences that I'm able to provide for them that the kids at my school don't necessarily get. So we talk about a life of choice rather than a life of circumstance. So I'm driven by that desire to ensure that I'm providing a life of choice for our kids by providing those opportunities for them.

Lukas: And what are some of the unique challenges you've observed in your area and your school?

Steve: So Berrinba East State School is a low socio-economic community, and with that comes a range of different challenges that comes with families who live in poverty. Our biggest issue that we've got to overcome is oral language development in our little people. So what happens is — either through the kids speaking English as a second language or not being exposed to language and opportunities to express language — we find our little people come in with some significant deficits in communication skills. And then what we see that flows on from that is the inability to be able to express need, and that turns out as adverse behaviour.

Lukas: And when you say "for all children" and accessibility — it's not just solely from a physical standpoint, it's an economic and social standpoint as well?

Steve: Absolutely. And that's probably the bigger drive — the economic standpoint. So that regardless of the financial means of their parents, we're able to provide the same amount of opportunity and experience for our kids as any other kid would get in society.

Lukas: And what previous schools and areas have you worked in?

Steve: Prior to coming to Berrinba East State School, I was Deputy Principal of Greenbank State School, which is in Logan as well. And previous to that, I spent my — I started my career in Central Queensland and spent 12 years there. So I had some good opportunities working in rural schools. I was a principal of a one-teacher school. I also had the opportunity to be an acting principal in an Indigenous community as well. So yeah, all those experiences certainly shaped where I am today.

Lukas: Quite diverse in challenges to overcome.

Steve: Absolutely. So my experience at Berrinba is completely different to what I've experienced anywhere else throughout my career. So one of the things that I'm able to have perspective around is that every school and every community has their challenges — it just varies from setting to setting.

Lukas: And coming from a sector that can seem very traditional and steadfast in their approach to education — having guidelines and curriculum and everything like that — how have you managed to step beyond that to best serve the needs of the community?

Steve: What's very evident is that the traditional way of things doesn't work for low SES schools. Because we continually see these schools consistently underperforming over time, and it's because we stick with the tried and true method of traditional education. So being in a low SES community with a school that may not be achieving the results of the "green leafy" school, it's pretty easy to mount a solid argument as to why we need to innovate.

Lukas: And when you say underperforming — give that a breakdown for us, because some people might think physically, some people might think academically?

Steve: And I'm happy you've asked that question because that term "underperforming" certainly isn't me comparing our kids to my benchmark — it's around the benchmark set by the department and the Australian curriculum. So when we say underperforming, we're talking about kids that aren't meeting year-level expectations according to the Australian curriculum from an academic standpoint. And what we also look at is we collect our behaviour and our school disciplinary absence data — so the suspensions, exclusions, those type of things. And again, that data suggests that our kids aren't being as successful at school as their counterparts in other areas.

Lukas: And how do you overcome that perception of success being an academic thing? Because for me, it seems like jumping too far ahead — let's sort these base challenges out first in the wellbeing realm and community before jumping into those things.

Steve: The first thing — my job as principal is to be a gatekeeper for our school and our community around those expectations. So certainly top-down expectations all centre around academic performance. I attempt to absorb that and have our staff and our parents focus on those wellbeing markers. So the first thing is we've got to come up with a way of measuring success. And I suppose that's where a lot of the accolades we've received about what we've done around outdoor learning has come about — it's in my attempt to quantify the impact of that work so that it's seen as distance travelled and improvement. If it's not measured, it's not real.

Lukas: So how did you end up engaging such a rich nature-based play experience for children and finding that way into the curriculum?

Steve: So our journey was pretty interesting. As I said, our big focus is to develop oral language so that our kids are equipped to be able to communicate and develop relationships with peers and adults. So we invested very heavily in providing intervention in that space. But what we found is a lot of the intervention that we were going down the path of was around direct instruction or explicit instruction. So essentially we were trying to teach kids how to talk by talking to them — looking at them — knowing that these kids did not actually understand what we were saying.

We're fortunate enough at Berrinba East State School that we employ a full-time speech therapist. And the speech therapist said to me one day, "Steve, kids won't talk unless they have something to talk about."

So that sort of lit a bit of a spark underneath myself and the team around: how can we provide opportunities and experiences that are going to inspire and motivate kids to talk? Everything that we went out and found was pointing back to nature play and outdoor learning. So we looked at a couple of examples at a few different other schools and saw that it didn't need to be polished, it didn't need to be expensive — it just needed to be authentic.

And the one thing we have at Berrinba East State School is we have 450 children but probably the biggest school grounds that I've ever seen. So we had a forest space where kids would run and hide when they're naughty — and teachers were saying we need to knock it down or we need to put a fence up around it. So what we did is instead of doing those things, we turned that into a play space. We had an unused paddock down the back, so we turned that into a mountain bike track.

The whole intent around this was to try and provide opportunities where kids would come back after playtime and want to talk about their experiences, but also provide opportunities where kids would come together and they would talk to each other during that play. And that was the big thing around loose parts — and that's probably the biggest, most successful strategy we've had around developing oral language in our school.

What happens in loose parts is kids work together. They provide instructions to each other, they provide feedback to each other, they problem-solve together. So what we're seeing is kids exposed to a huge amount of language in a lunch break which they wouldn't have been exposed to if they went to the library and sat on laptops.

Lukas: And it feeds into that old research — the 30 million words deficit between more affluent areas in America versus the lower socioeconomic areas, just because it wasn't available.

Steve: And the big shift is around us not providing the 30 million words as adults. It's around the kids contributing to the 30 million words.

Lukas: I like what you said about "talking at" — because as soon as we have an agenda, as soon as we're prescribing something in a community where they're talked at a lot and directed a lot, that rebellion comes from that place. Being a self-proclaimed rebel — rebellion is at my core — I completely get it. I grew up in Browns Plains as well, so I'm familiar with that area and the challenges it has, being in housing commission there and knowing what school is like. But the minute anyone had an agenda, it just shuts down the dialogue completely.

Steve: We have an oral language development strategy at school which is all around what we call "serve and return" — so that's: I speak, you speak, I speak, you speak. And we set the goal for teachers to aim for four, but we say strive for five. So five returns means we've had a rich conversation. If you ever have an opportunity, try and lead a conversation for five returns — it's a really difficult task.

Go up into loose parts and listen to kids interact — those five serve returns just occur naturally. Because again, it's on their agenda, it's not us driving it.

Lukas: And it's intrinsically motivated. "Hey, I want this to happen — you're essentially a tool in making my world come to life, so I'm going to utilise you and language as a part of that."

I like to transfer it to simple terms: we need to create real experiences for real learning to stick — not these abstract things being spoken about or non-tangible learning where we discuss ideas, which is quite big for young children that don't have access to these ideas. You talk about "Oh, let's care for the world, let's care for the environment" — I don't have a relationship with that. So I love how you're making that a tangible exploration adventure.

Lukas: How was it received and what were the hurdles you had to overcome to implement it?

Steve: So the big implementation strategy for us was firstly to get the leadership team on board. Because what we wanted to do was put our money where our mouth was. Unfortunately in education, we are very, very risk-averse. So what we needed to do was demonstrate to our staff and our community that we were prepared to accept that risk.

When we first rolled out these spaces for play, they were completely supervised by leadership. So that meant I was doing, you know, five to ten duties a week just so that I could put my money where my mouth is and say, "Yep, it's safe."

The second big thing that we had to do was we had to really over-emphasise the benefit aspect over the risk. You could do your standard risk-benefit analysis, you can come up with your dot points in each column, and you could give that to the staff and the community — and they'd probably still be a bit funny about it. But what we needed to do was actually provide examples on the ground that people could come and see. It isn't until you step into a loose parts space and see the kids interact and you see the smiles and you see the happiness and you listen to the conversation generated — then you get how much of a benefit that is.

And the second bit was around getting the parents on board. That's where we created the vision of "bringing back childhood." Getting an initial starting point with our parents was: sit interested parents in the room and ask exactly the question you asked me at the start — which is "how did you play as a child?" and "what are your most vivid memories of play?" And it all came about playing outside and going on adventures and those type of things.

Lukas: What about parents' feelings around you starting to talk about risk in a school which is traditionally very risk-averse — and all these stories about taking out monkey bars because of the broken arm factor?

Steve: We had more parents that were outraged by the idea of closing out monkey bars and those type of things than we had parents that were concerned. So it was around giving those people the voice and those people the platform. That was a big part of our consultation process. And we still share testimonials of parents around advocating for the work — the ABC news article that was done on us, particularly around how we reduced the behaviour incidents in our school. We strategically chose the parent who was going to be a community voice around advocating for the work.

Lukas: One of the biggest things threatening childhood and childhood experiences is this habit of basing our practices on the anomaly. And the anomaly can be the loudest voice in the room. And then the reaction instead of the response is, "Oh well, we've got to act on that because that person's really upset." But then go, "Hang on, where's the child in your voice? Where's the child in your annoyance? Is this your own stuff? And then what about the other 50 people in the room?" That's where you're going to have impact.

Steve: And people consider you having to have 100% buy-in — and it's just not the case. It's like that tipping point effect. If you have 20% influence or uptake, it's going to roll on and become a part of the practice. And then you can invest your time in the 20% that need that coercion to get on board.

One of the ways we did that last year is we collected our first aid data. And I presented at a P&C meeting the statistics of the likelihood of you injuring yourself walking on a footpath compared to engaging in our forest space or loose parts space.

Lukas: Do you want to share that data? I'm sure people are listening — okay, now you've got to tell me!

Steve: This is — look, it's not broken down, it's not 100% accurate — but what I did share was that we had three broken arms from falls on footpaths in 2020. And we only had two first aid incidents requiring any sort of attention out of the forest in 2020. Which includes saws and hammers and ropes and drills, climbing trees, and one of the big concerns we had was snake sightings and all sorts of things.

So that was a really big selling point. And the other one is we pulled some of the data from our sports and PE lessons. And again, it showed that the rate of injury that occurred while we were playing netball, touch football, those type of things, far exceeded anything that we saw in our outdoor learning spaces like the forest and loose parts.

Lukas: And keeping in mind — trying to keep it in a risk-framing just in the realm of risk alone — what outcomes have you seen in children managing their own risk and being in a more risk-filled environment?

Steve: We've definitely seen — there's a lot of anecdotal examples. One example I'll share with you was in loose parts at the end of last year. We were lucky enough to acquire 30 milk crates. It was a windy day and the kids were trying to build the tallest tower they possibly could, but whenever it got to a certain height, the wind would catch it and blow it over.

We had a group of kids that were trying to problem-solve this. And one Grade 1 child got a big piece of jumbo chalk and drew this big circle. And when I asked, "What are you doing?" he said, "Oh well, the wind's blowing this way and the last time the stack fell, it fell down here. So what I'm telling people is when we go higher than five milk crates, not to stand in the circle — otherwise you might get one that falls and hits you on the head."

Like, that's a Grade 1 boy whose English was his second language. For him to be able to do that was amazing.

But I suppose the big thing that we saw is the acts of physical aggression was the big reduction. Everyone talks about when kids get angry, they need to take the moment to stop and think. But what we don't do is we don't empower the kids with the strategies to do what they need to do in that "stop and think" time.

Exposing kids to risk, coaching them through risk-mitigation strategies — we had kids reflecting on experiences where they normally would have thrown punches or done something wrong. They were weighing up the questions of "What do I have to gain from this? Is it worth the risk?" And they were able to ask themselves those questions internally because that's what they've been exposed to, particularly in our engagement intervention group.

Lukas: And you've had some phenomenal outcomes for your violent incidents in that program as well.

Steve: So what we did is when COVID hit, we were required to — so this is when we went to online learning — we were required to still allow kids deemed to be vulnerable or children of essential workers to come to our school. We had roughly a quarter of our kids come along.

We created a group where if you received three or more suspensions in Term 1, you were eligible for entry into this group. And this is after one term — we had 35 kids in that group. And all 35 were coming during that period of shutdown. So that's where we accelerated that as an intervention.

We put outdoor learning and unstructured play in place for them as their reward time — and when I say "reward time," it wasn't conditional. They could access it regardless. But traditionally what we do with kids who have behaviour issues, we go "If you do this, you get that." We took that out of play and went, "Okay, whenever there was typically reward time, this is when you're going to go to unstructured play." And what we're going to do in the meantime is do some project-based learning outside — so building garden beds, looking after chickens, maintaining bikes, and doing those type of things.

That was the group we tracked through to the end of the year. And that's where we saw the significant drops in suspensions and acts of physical violence. 70% reduction in acts of physical aggression from Term 1 to the end of the year. And then the other thing that's really cool is the attendance — that jumped up almost 8%.

These kids had purpose — the whole idea of project-based learning in an outdoor environment was the fact that there was purpose and meaning in what they were doing. And the kids had an accomplishment at the end. So what we found is a lot of those kids were academically underperforming, so their opportunity to accomplish something in the classroom didn't come about too frequently. Whereas in this environment — and again, this isn't just us going off and doing stuff without thought, this was all bedded down to the Australian curriculum, particularly addressing the Personal Social Learning general capabilities of the Australian curriculum — these kids were highly successful.

Lukas: And that's a common misconception when you look at free play and loose parts — that it's either one or the other. You go, "Okay, well you're disregarding the curriculum to do that stuff." When it's not the case.

Steve: Absolutely. And this is the task for me as a principal — to ensure that we measure it, but not only measure it in ways that we can see. Make it accessible and measure it against the Australian curriculum. And that's where we get into the general capabilities — whether it be Personal Social Learning, whether it be Critical and Creative Thinking — which loose parts is just a brilliant arena for.

Lukas: I had one teacher one time when we delivered an Imagination 20-foot container. He was very cautious initially, being like "Oh, I'm not sure." He walked away. When I opened it, he came back and was like "Don't do that" and "Put that down" and "Take it easy." I said, "Just come over here, take a step back."

Within 15 minutes, he just paused and went, "Oh — this is the stuff I want to do in the classroom and can't!"

We asked one girl, "What are you doing?" She goes, "I don't know yet."

Steve: And that was the experience my music teacher had. I've shared his success with a lot of people. Initially, we didn't anticipate bringing the specialist teachers on board until we had it bedded down. But he was outside looking in — he was seeing the creativity that was happening, he was seeing the risk-taking that was happening, and he also saw kids that were naturally drawn to rhythm and music just through loose parts.

So he made the decision to take every one of his music lessons outside and do that. And what we saw there was — I think the previous year, it was almost 100 behaviour incidents referred out of music lessons. Last year, we saw six.

Lukas: It speaks for itself. To go back to how you link it to the curriculum — could you give us an example of what that would look like?

Steve: The good example that I share is with a Grade 2 class last year. We had a Grade 2 class that just weren't engaging with the curriculum that was being presented, and again, that presented as major behaviour issues. Luckily we've got some very creative Grade 2 teachers and they sat down and thought, "What can we do differently?"

What they did is they looked at an outdoor concept that they could connect all learning to. What they saw is they had to teach life cycles in Science. So they connected every piece of work they did to the life cycle of a chicken. These kids — the Grade 2 kids — they got eggs, they got incubators, they saw the chickens hatch, they raised the chickens until they go into a chicken coop. And today, even today, they can go down and still see the chickens that they bred.

So that's a really cool experience. However, what the teachers did is they linked every piece of learning they could to that experience. For example, if they were writing a narrative, the chickens in their classroom were key characters in their narrative. If they had to do a procedural recount or write a procedure, they wrote the procedure of how to look after the chickens. I even walked in there one day and they were doing a multiplication lesson — so they're looking at arrays, two rows of three. And here they are with six chickens — two rows of three chickens to examine!

They just connected every single piece to that. So that's an example of what we do at Berrinba around our unit planning — we choose an outdoor learning concept and we anchor every piece of the curriculum to that where possible. There's some aspects where, you know, it's pretty hard to connect long division to loose parts. So you might have to do some things in isolation. But the majority of the work is connected to a theme.

Lukas: And within that — what was the change in that Year 2 room?

Steve: Again, I'll go back to behaviour. There was almost 50 behaviour referrals in Term 1. And then for the remainder of the year — so that's two and a half terms when we include the four weeks we shut down — it was just under 15 for the remainder of the year. So it was just pure engagement. The kids had a purpose in what they were doing. They were motivated to learn. They could see what they were doing. They could connect all those concepts that they were being introduced to, to that work.

Lukas: When you say a behaviour incident — what's the requirement for one of those?

Steve: When I talk about behaviour incidents at our school, this is an incident where a behavioural incident requires intervention of somebody outside the classroom. So that's whether principal's office, deputy principal is called in, or some sort of assistance required.

Lukas: Because you were running a behavioural support program — you've revamped that into a different looking thing as well?

Steve: We've got our outdoor engagement groups, but also one of the things that we do is we look at some classroom interventions. So we might identify a class where we see behaviour incidents starting to increase. And what we found when we had conversations with the teachers — the teachers felt that they were caught up in this cycle of correction. What would happen is kids would play up, the teacher would correct, the kids would get rebellious, they'd play up again, the teacher would correct. And what we saw was a deterioration of relationship.

So what we do is we put in a five-week intervention where outdoor engagement teachers — I've got specialist positions around outdoor learning at my school — they'll go in for five weeks and they'll run lessons every day. And the teacher takes part in that lesson as a participant — they engage in a project outside. An example was we built a frog pond with one of the classes. They had the submission to Bunnings, Bunnings provided all the things, they did the research, they installed the frog pond. But the teacher was an active participant.

And it gave the teacher an opportunity to re-establish those relationships with the kids, but also it gave the teachers the motivation and the inspiration then to connect the other pieces of work in the classroom back to that project. Make it real. And again, what we see is we're really able to put a halt to some escalating behaviours.

Lukas: It's kind of like you reframing as peer-to-peer support. And looking after those base needs of wellbeing first and foremost.

Steve: Absolutely. And what we've done too is we're providing a forum for getting rich oral language to occur between teacher and adults rather than negative corrective oral language. So it builds relationship but also builds understanding of language as well. Re-thinking it, reshuffling it. I love it.

Lukas: Loose parts can be referred to as the junkyard, the mess pile, and have been seen as "Okay, I want this in my school, but it's messy." So how do you get around that? What's been your experience? Because I'm aware of schools inquiring about implementing loose parts but then it's hitting a few roadblocks — a lot being "that's messy."

Steve: Our biggest roadblock was concerns that items from loose parts be used by people on the grounds outside school hours to cause issues. We had a tennis court that was never used, that has a three-metre high fence. So we made the decision: do we want 50-60 kids playing in here using loose parts? Or are we going to keep this open for four kids to play a game of tennis at lunchtime? And it was a bit of a no-brainer.

The first thing was to redesign an existing space in the school. So our loose parts is our old tennis court — we've got that sorted.

The second issue is people say it's messy, it's untidy, and then they make a natural assumption: therefore it must be unsafe. So what we did is we negotiated some rules for loose parts. One of those is around the rule of reset. We talk about a reset — but what we did is we initially reset after every session to meet the needs of the teachers going "Okay, we need everything neat and tidy."

But then the teachers saw that resetting after every session meant that Billy couldn't finish his construction project and all these things would happen. So they gradually extended — it ended up with an emotional response that you're trying to avoid by implementing a practice. "Oh well!" So we let that happen, and then the teachers came and said, "No, we need to extend the reset period."

So it went out to a week, then it went to a fortnight. Now we're finding we're resetting every term. Because what we're finding is the kids naturally reset when they're done — they'll do their trades and those type of things. And then whatever they're working on is naturally resetting the way it goes.

So I think acknowledging that's a legitimate concern and a legitimate fear of staff — listening to it but also again coming back to them seeing the benefits rather than putting the benefits on paper, and allowing that to evolve — has been key for us.

Lukas: I love it. Every time going to loose parts areas and seeing that reaction within teachers and even parents saying, "Oh, this thing happened!" And they just come out with it and they're so inspired and enthusiastic about it.

Steve: And it's pretty easy too with it on the school Facebook page. You see something really cool they've built, you take a photo of that, or you take a photo of the construction process — where it started and where it went. And it's something that easily inspires people.

Lukas: How did you go with people coming in from the community and any damage and vandalism and all of that?

Steve: Well, it hasn't happened. Exactly. And a nice little story I'll tell you about vandalism is that we have these safety checklist and safety sweep signs up in all the outdoor learning spaces. And one weekend, one was ripped out. Our outdoor learning kids saw this and they said to the teacher, "Hey, I think I know where this is. I'll get it back to you."

Two days later, one of the kids comes with the sign under their arms. Said, "Here you go." Now, we didn't ask any questions about how they got it back! But again, it was just another example of the pride that the kids had in that space because they had ownership of that space.

And look, over time, what we'll see is these young people will grow up as adults. And if that connection to school and that pride in school maintains, we play a long game. And that vandalism issue is not going to be around.

Lukas: How, in your view, did we get to such a pessimistic view of community and not being supported? The first thing we jump to is, "Well, someone's going to come in here and break it. Someone's going to come in here and set it on fire." But there's all this beautiful evidence that it's quite contrary. How did we get to this place?

Steve: I think it's because we hear the noisy voices. Again, it's very similar to our parents expressing concerns around injury and risk. It's the same thing. For every one or two acts of vandalism we have, we've had probably 100 or 200 parents that have picked up a piece of rubbish while they've walked into the school grounds, or have done something positive to the school grounds. But we don't see those things. But the big adverse things are very visible. So we focus on those.

Lukas: We're programmed to see that negative bias.

Steve: Absolutely.

Lukas: Speaking of negative bias — one thing that stands out for me is the suspension rate. You've been doing this for years now. So you've seen an increase over the years in rate of suspension. What's changed? What is driving this increase of disconnect and therefore behavioural reactions to result in suspension?

Steve: I think that's the big thing we've got to look at too — is it their reactions? So kids are getting suspended for reactions. They're not getting suspended because they're sitting at home overnight plotting about how they can do the next naughty thing. And I think once we get perspective around that, then we've got a chance of being able to address it.

But as I said, I think the biggest contributor has been the pressures that are on teachers to deliver the heavy content that they have to. They see the direct or explicit instruction through word of mouth is the only way to achieve it. And then we've got all these little people in our classrooms who don't understand language.

So it's like me sitting in a cinema watching a movie in French. I might enjoy bits and pieces of it because visually I'll understand, but I'm not going to get it all. And I'm probably going to get frustrated because I don't understand the language. This is what our kids are experiencing every day. And what we're seeing is we're just seeing bubbling frustration. And then we see the acting out.

So again, the absolute key I believe to this is around developing oral language. If I can express my needs, I can express how I'm feeling, and I can understand when I have that interaction with you — I'm not going to hit that point of frustration. And that's where I believe the outdoor learning that we've done has contributed to that. Because one, kids are exposed to more language, their language skills are going up — and we've been measuring this in the lower school. We actually won the Education Queensland Showcase Award for Excellence in Primary Years for the work and the increase we've had in oral language.

So we're doing that. But also, because we're relying on kids to provide the exposure to language for other kids, the side benefit of that is there's relationships being built. So when I'm frustrated and I'm angry, I'm not going to thump you anymore because I've got a relationship with you. So I can empathise with you. As opposed to in the past where I didn't have the skills or the opportunity to interact with you, so I didn't really know you. So I didn't really care.

Lukas: It's just a thing in front of me. Just as those loose parts can be broken. And treating it the same.

Stigma is something I come across time and time again. And linking in with organisations in America and the UK, something I really struggle with is the stigma around using junk essentially for play and learning. Have you come up against any of that?

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. And I must say, it was a stigma I held. So prior to entering into this, I couldn't picture anything that wasn't polished and neat. Everything had its place. I was worried about "How do we disinfect loose parts every time we use it?" All those different types of things.

And that was me having an unrealistic expectation of what school should be doing. But also, it was me not having a deep understanding of what the requirements were from a legislative point of view. So I'd make this assumption that if I don't do this, that, or the other, I'll leave myself exposed. But when you dig into Education Queensland legislation, there's nothing that says that you can't do this. And it is quite broad.

Lukas: It's based on this assumption. Even in the early years from working in the early childhood sector, there was a saying — people calling me up in the early days: "Can I have a log?" Because "I know you can't do that." Where does it say that? "We're putting a fire pit in the playground." "You can't do that." Where does it say that? It says "A child must explore and experience a natural environment." That's it.

Steve: But for me, where I was really enlightened was when I connected with Nature Play Queensland and just got the names of a couple of schools that were doing it well. Because again, I saw early childhood centres as being a different beast to us — for some reason. There's no reason why they are. But I went around to different schools and saw it in action.

And what I saw was — I saw an example at Maruka State School where they had a hole in the fence. So instead of fixing the fence, what they did is they put rope around the edges of this hole, and it was another opportunity or entry point for kids to get down to the oval. And I've gone — it was only then when I saw that and then I saw it in action, I realised that this doesn't have to be polished.

And straight away, seeing that, I made the connections back to my childhood. Nothing was polished. Nothing was structured or manufactured on the farms. Then it made sense to me. So I think that's the big thing — people seeing it in action and realising that what it actually looks like is what's needed. And the data's there to prove it.

Lukas: It's not this superficial — sometimes people dismiss it because it's just seen as, "Oh well, kids need to have rules and kids need to have parameters. And how are they going to learn otherwise?" But come and see it firsthand and then you're like — I've stood in a school implementing loose parts. I've watched the bell go at lunchtime for playtime and the whole primary school empties out, heads straight to the loose parts zone because it was open during lunch. There's this huge area and zero children — for the whole lunchtime — went on this big, brand new steel fort thing. Zero. For the whole lunchtime. And children were trying to hide so they didn't have to go back to class because they were more interested in playing.

And just the stuff that goes on there — the collaboration!

Lukas: To go back to stigma around it — just a bit off topic, but it's something that plays on my mind a bit. Children in these communities — and being one of those children that grew up in those communities — the stigma around being a child and coming from that area. And if you have learning challenges as I did as a child, all of a sudden you're a "bad kid." And so, what strategies have you implemented? Like, you've got a record, he's been suspended three times. But how did you get to that point to go, "No, this is a clean slate. This is start again. That's not a part of their story anymore"?

Steve: The big thing is around being able to measure success. And not only measuring it from an adult perspective, but measuring it from a kid's perspective as well. So what we find works a lot with our kids that need this type of intervention is that collaborative goal setting.

When we go, "Okay, you're going to be part of the group with Mr Such-and-Such, whoever's running the group. What is it you want to achieve?" Kids might say, "I want to make some friends," or "I want to do this or that or the other." Or it could be as simple as, "I just want to plant a tree."

It's around ensuring that the kids are involved in the goal-setting process themselves. It's positively framed — they're not setting goals of "I'm going to try and get through the term and not get suspended." That's not what it's about. And then providing constant and regular feedback to those kids around those goals.

That's the absolute piece of what we need. We need those kids walking away from as many opportunities throughout the course of the day where they've felt success. And whether success is getting 10 out of 10 on a spelling test — which we traditionally see success as — or success might be "I worked with somebody to create this or that" — regardless, it doesn't matter what the measure of success is. As long as the child sees that as a success is what we've got to go for.

Lukas: What I hear time and time again — what I love — is that: celebrate those victories and those satisfactions and create self-fulfilment in children. Give them the skills to create self-fulfilment. Not having to put it on these external feedbacks and saying, "Well, someone needs to tell me I'm a good person." Because sometimes people won't — it doesn't mean you're not.

Steve: And that's the beauty about, particularly our forest area and our loose parts — these kids go in and they have an objective of what they want to achieve. Then they go home, they do it. So therefore, they get that intrinsic motivation.

I think as educators sometimes we lose sight of the fact that kids can be intrinsically motivated. They absolutely can. We sort of beat it out of them. Because sometimes what intrinsically motivates them doesn't motivate us — it conflicts with our views.

Lukas: I hear time and time again — the child's decision and the child's outcome and the child's goal. What are some strategies you have working with your team on capturing that child's voice without "adultifying" that?

Steve: And this is a challenge. And obviously we'll say that we're not there yet. Simply because the challenge for us is — if we invest any sort of time in a school, we feel as though we're accountable for that usage of time. So we've got to justify it through whatever results or anecdotal notes we take.

So when we start giving the agenda to the child, that might deviate from what our agenda is. And then all of a sudden, we're finding it hard to justify time. So it's a really tricky one, and it's dependent on the individual — when I say individual, the individual teacher.

But as much as we can start negotiating with kids, having those conversations and actively listening, and then questioning what we find from that — so for example, if I negotiate with Billy in Grade 2 around, "This is your goal," have a conversation with a peer and go, "This is what Billy told me. Now, do you reckon this is what Billy really is aiming for? What do you reckon? Have I had some sort of influence on this? Or is he saying this to impress me?" So that's where we're going at the moment, particularly with our engagement kids that we're doing this work with.

Lukas: "Engagement kids" being the children in the specific program to support behavioural challenges?

Steve: Yep. Yep.

Lukas: When it comes to community engagement and parents being involved — parents have, it sounds like, grabbed it and run with it because they're seeing the rewards. What other feedback have you got from the community around it?

Steve: The biggest challenge we've had is last year — schools essentially had to shut parents out. So what we haven't been able to do yet is take parents into loose parts at a lunch break and say, "Just sit back and watch." So therefore, the feedback that we've had has been — I suppose has not been specific to what's going on, but the observable outcomes they're seeing as a result of what we're doing.

So the biggest feedback we've had is from our kids that — particularly those kids in that initial engagement group that had a highly unsuccessful Term 1 — the feedback we got around how settled they are and around what they're discussing when they come home.

An example was a couple of our boys took real pride in the gardens that they were making. They made some sensory gardens. And what they did is they propagated some seeds from that, and they took those home, and they started to build their own sensory gardens at home. So we have feedback from the parents going, "Yep, we see that." That's technically homework, but Billy's not seeing that. Billy's coming home every day, he's watering his garden, he's tending to his garden, he's adding to his garden, he's showing an interest. He can tell me what's going on — the life cycle of that plant, those type of things.

So that's the type of feedback we're getting. Kids are coming home and they're talking more about school, and they're talking positively about school and their experiences.

Lukas: And talking to — going outside the community a little bit — talking to other principals, what's the feedback you're getting?

Steve: Again, a couple of principals have thought that I'm a bit crazy taking this on. Because again, it's around the perceived risk. What I was able to do last year is open my doors to anybody who wants to come in and have a look — any schools, any teachers.

But where the schools that have jumped on board are inspired by the work of the teachers, or the principals that have sat in the back of loose parts and just saw it happen, or they've interacted with kids playing in the forest or those type of things. So what I found is that there's already existing a network of schools and a network of principals that are highly invested in this space called the "Playmakers." So that's — I found them.

But then also, opening up my gates — what I found is we've got the school down the road, Kingston State School, jumping on board. And they're having a go at this. And a few other schools are jumping on board because they've seen what we're doing.

And I don't have to present those principals any data at all. It's not the data that's convincing them. What they're doing is they're coming in, they're seeing the kids, and they're seeing the pure enjoyment the kids are having.

Lukas: 100%. Anyone that's working with children has a heart for children. And I find loose parts and genuine adventurous play experiences just switches that switch back on in people. And they go, "Oh yeah!" Kind of takes them back to their why.

Steve: Every time.

Lukas: We did a pop-up with a container at the Childhood Summit in the piazza there. And one principal was standing upstairs inside on the mezzanine, watching. I saw him up there watching. And I was like, "I'm going to go up and chat." Went up there. I said, "Oh, let's come down and have a look." And he goes, "Oh gee, it's messy! It's like, full on, isn't it?"

And he came down, and within two minutes, he's like, "I had no idea from up there!" Like, it wasn't until he saw the interactions, saw the level of engagement, the level of intricacy. Also a certain level of destruction!

Lukas: Speaking of destruction — that's what I wanted to ask earlier. When it comes to breaking stuff down and wanting to break stuff in loose parts zones — because once again, it's stigma. It's like, "Hey, don't vandalise that! Hey, don't break it!" So what's your approach?

Steve: We ask the question "Why?" and "What will you gain from this?" And we try and coach the kids through that. So we don't say no. We know pallets — our pallets are probably disposable items the way that they're going. So we ask, "What were you — what are you hoping to gain from this? And do you think it's worth it?" If the kid goes, "Yep," away they go.

What we don't see though is — because there's a collective ownership by the kids and the kids actually enjoy the space — we don't see wilful destruction. What we see is we might see a paling taken off a pallet because "I need to use — I need a plank of wood and I can't find anything else."

Lukas: And then do you find the leadership within it for any malicious destruction being dictated by the children?

Steve: No. No, no, no. Look, I'll be honest — I've not seen any malicious destruction of any of our spaces.

Lukas: Absolutely. I've done a bunch of pop-ups and it doesn't happen. Because it's a valuable resource to them.

Steve: That's right.

Lukas: If you could summarise this experience on your journey of implementing nature play and loose parts — in a journey of a child — do you have a child that stands out? A great example of that?

Steve: The little girl that stands out for me is a little girl who's in care and also has some pretty significant speech issues. So she communicates via a PODD book. A PODD book is basically a series of little pictures with words underneath, and she points to the pictures to be able to create a sentence. And when she talks, she only speaks in vowels. So it's very hard to understand. So therefore, she doesn't take the risk to have that conversation with her peers, let alone an adult.

I remember very clearly her on the outside of the fence — so we were in the tennis court area — she's just watching. And she watched probably for about two to three weeks, just watching what was going on in loose parts.

And then she ventured in there eventually. She sat — we have a bench in there — she just sat on the bench and she watched. Again, for another couple of weeks.

And it probably wasn't until after a term that she decided to jump in and start engaging and playing. And the big thing for her was she has a fascination around cars. So the kids were building cars out of pallets and tyres and those type of things. Kids welcomed her in. There was no dramas at all. And I suppose that was her first toe in the water.

We fast forward a term, and what we've got is we've got this little girl who, despite her language issues, is bringing her PODD into loose parts. She's barking orders! And when kids couldn't understand, she'd go to the PODD and start pointing to the words and pointing to the pictures. And she was engaging.

And we talk about those serve and returns — she was exceeding five in interactions with peers. And I don't think that has ever happened in her life. Ever.

So if I was to look at that journey through our eyes, certainly I think it's the same journey as a lot of adults take. There's the caution at first. We need to see the benefits and what we gain from it. We took a gradual step in. And now we're all in — and it's our space.

So it's a place where this little girl belongs. She's not tucked away in a room in the special education unit. She's not receiving one-on-one with a teacher aide or anything. She's engaging in authentic interactions with her peers.

Lukas: And that's you giving that child a voice. Although she's essentially non-verbal. You're giving her that affordance and honouring her as an individual and making her feel as though she is a part of the school community.

Steve: And one of my big "whys" around — I spoke about equal opportunity, but specifically for kids with disabilities — I'm very, very passionate around providing opportunities for kids with disabilities. And to see that this was a universal design strategy that was able to provide a voice and an opportunity for a little girl with a significant disability to feel as though she was part — that's true inclusion.

And it was done with very low cost. It wasn't an elaborate strategy that people think we need to step into to achieve inclusion in our schools.

Lukas: And that's what I love about it. It doesn't matter where you are, what you're doing, budget-wise — it's such an easy point of entry. And the community ownership of it. Because all you need to do is send out the list, and you'll find — we ended up with over 120 tyres! So much so, we had to use them in other areas of the school. We got the 30 milk crates. We've got a constant supply of pallets. Everything — it was all donated by community. Not one bit was bought. We just put it out there. The community gathered it and brought it in.

Like, in Logan they have the kerbside pickup. So when the kerbside pickup was on, parents actively got in their cars and drove around to find stuff for loose parts. I don't know of any other program or strategy in a school where the parents have that level of ownership and buy-in and contribution. I can't think of another one.

Lukas: What role does community play in education for you?

Steve: Oh, it's huge. We have kids for five to six hours a day. So our impact on these little people is only minimal. But where we've gone wrong as a system in the past is that we feel as though as a school, we dictate what the community will bring to education — not that the community identifies what they can bring in.

In Logan particularly, given that we've got such a diverse cultural representation in our community, one of the things that our community brings in is that cultural perspective. So they play a huge part on that. And if we're not acknowledging culture and cultural perspectives, we're headbutting a brick wall because that door's closed and the kid — yeah.

So community plays a massive part. Anything that we do in schools, we need to engage the community, we need to consult the community for the community to have the buy-in.

The other thing that the community played a huge role in around nature play and loose parts was that they were the voice that were advocating for it. And that influenced the teachers. So rather than the teachers implementing first, we bought — we intentionally brought community on board first. So that there was a bit of subtle pressure, I suppose, on the teachers to pick it up and run with this.

So yeah, I think our community — they don't know the power of their voice. And any opportunity we have to empower that voice.

Lukas: Also generationally, in those areas, the kids haven't had the opportunity or affordance to have a voice to start with. Their parents didn't. And now they don't. So why would they assume that they have one without being actively sought?

Steve: And it's that negative stereotype. Whenever someone talks about — like, straight away people make assumptions. They see our parents and those assumptions are there as well. So our parents are quite — our community are written off pretty quickly. So it takes a lot of work to be able to bring that voice in. But again, if you do little things where there's collective ownership and pride in the school, then we've got a fighting chance of bringing them in.

Lukas: 100%. And big overview — where do you hope the nature play, loose parts program heads? What's that look like in a few years down the track for you?

Steve: The big view for nature play and outdoor learning in our school is that it's embedded in all aspects of learning. At the moment, the way we present curriculum is we represent it so that the children can connect to it and they see it from their perspective and their perspective only.

Where I see the role of outdoor learning and nature play is enabling kids to be able to see or connect to the content not only from their perspective, but the perspective of others — through those social interactions that we're developing — but also the perception from their place or the environment.

So being able to listen to a concept such as, say for example, global warming, and not only — at the moment I think the way that we present our curriculum, we get kids to think about that and they think about the impact on them and them only. Building a relationship with peers and building a relationship with the environment — it's anticipated that they will be able to connect that concept to the impact it has on others and place around them.

So that's where I want to go.

Lukas: The intrinsic motivation I see is the primary one is the reflex is: I'll look after the thing that looks after me. And that comes down to relationship with peers. It comes down to relationship with environment. And it just comes out — well, you're supported in it. It fulfils you. It creates these memorable experiences. It gives you independence. The reflex — why I care about that.

Steve: And it comes down to relationship. And I spoke before about playing the long game and having the school as a point of pride in the community. Again, it's that connection to place. And if we do this stuff well, there's going to be positive memories of school — which doesn't exist at the moment.

So many of our parents have had a negative experience with school, and that impacts on any sort of relationship we try and form with them. So if we can ensure that all their kids have a positive experience with school, they've contributed to the school, and there's a collective ownership around that as the centrepiece of the community — then what we're talking about is in 10, 15, 20 years' time, what we've got is we've got that community buy-in that we're aiming for that we're struggling so much to get at the moment.

Lukas: That's phenomenal. And that's generational impact.

Steve: And that's where we need to be thinking as educators. I think too often we get caught up on short cycle data grabs. We think NAPLAN cycle. We really need to forecast and think around: what impact is this going to have in 10, 15 years' time? Particularly in a place like Logan that has such a high proportion of its community that are entrenched in generational poverty.

That's not going to change unless we start thinking around: how can we get this generation to influence the next generation?

Lukas: And you are sending that learning home and those values home. Just your example of that boy going home and doing the garden — it's like, he's teaching his family and showing and leading by example in that field.

Steve: Absolutely. And that's the next piece of work for us at Berrinba East State School — connecting with Logan Together around: how can we — yeah, we're doing some really good stuff here inside our fence. How can we contribute to the work that's going on in that community? And how can we expand upon this work beyond our gates and include everybody in our community?

Lukas: And act as that hub. It'd be brilliant to see as a standard — schools being known as that refuge and using these functional spaces that represent community, not just in school hours. Using it outside of school hours to support all facets. Reaching more people.

Steve: Absolutely. And if I put the pessimist hat on — the one that's concerned around vandalism and unauthorised entry on the school grounds — if we've got people using our grounds for these type of purposes at all hours of the day, over the weekend, over the school holidays, and there's a collective ownership of this space, those sort of issues aren't going to present as often as they do at the moment.

Lukas: Going to care for the thing that cares for you.

Steve: Absolutely.

Lukas: Brilliant. There's parents, there's people listening who want to implement this in their schools. What's your tip on their first step they should take?

Steve: I think the first step is to get a picture of what it looks like. See it in action. Get it very, very clear in your head so that you can either connect other people you're trying to influence into that space, or you can create that picture in their mind of what it will look like.

Because as we've discussed, if we just simply go risk-benefit analysis, people aren't going to see the benefit. And they're not going to connect the benefit back to what their moral purpose is behind being involved in education.

So certainly get out there, have a look at as many examples as you can, and look at the kids in action. And even if you get the opportunity — a couple of principals have done this — they've actually asked the kids what they think of it. And that's when they've walked away inspired.

Lukas: What were the answers?

Steve: They just said, "It's fun. We've got something to do. I get to play with my friends here." One little girl mentioned that she found it hard to initiate play in the playground, but it was a lot easier to initiate play in loose parts. So they're the type of responses that were given.

Lukas: That's brilliant. Thank you so much for coming in today and sharing your story and your journey. It inspires me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart — not only you but also the actions in which your amazing team are taking to support the children of Logan and your area. And it just makes me very emotional to think about the impact that you're having generationally and for such a great community as well. So thank you so much.

Steve: Thanks, Lukas.

Lukas: Thanks for joining us on another episode of Play It Forward, the Wearthy podcast. That was an inspirational Steve Kanowski from Berrinba East State School. As we referenced in the podcast, you'll find the links below. So if you've enjoyed it, subscribe, leave a review, and we look forward to you joining us again on the next Play It Forward, Wearthy podcast.