With the influx of Forest Schools and Forest School Ways (FSW) in urban Singapore over the past 2 years, we have seen a wide range of FSW embedded into many international schools, preschools and other education establishments outside of mainstream schools. I would like to share with everyone the WHYs and the HOWs of incepting the FSW into your form of education, no matter what kind of establishment or community you are in.
It is important to firstly reflect on WHY you are incepting FSW into your education paradigm. You have to ask yourself and your team, what is the identity of your current education establishment? What are the good things about the practice that you have been on, and explore the strengths of what you have there.
Then ask yourself, what is missing? Are there some things that you and your team feel that could be done better? Are there individuals in the establishment that are not well included in your practice?
After going through an in depth reflection about your own education practices, you can then quite easily map out the reality of education within your community.
With this knowledge and awareness, understanding your WHYs will be pretty easy.
Forest School Ways have a wide range of effects that are rooted in the natural ways of Mother Earth. It encourages educators to be themselves, and shine authentically, with sincere intention and an absence of artificial/meaningless agendas. It is a reflective journey that values the evolution of all the individuals in the community, instead of a one-size fits all industrial model. FSW builds the resilience of the community that adopts it, giving them the confidence and pedagogical skills to navigate challenging situations. FSW naturally develops an infinite curriculum due to its child-led, nature-led and context-led personalities (link). Its infinite resources of learning and growth is representative of Nature, as she provides them. This range also allows for a truly inclusive space, where everyone is welcome to be part of it.
After finding your WHYs, and having a better understanding of the FSW, we can then explore the HOWs to incepting and embedding the FSW into your Education. The journey of HOWs is also integral to deepen one’s understanding of FSW. It is a magical cycle of the deep development of the practice and purpose of FSW.
The first HOW, will be to go outside and take a walk around the neighbourhood of your education space. Pay attention to all its Nature, Culture and Context. Find the space that connects with YOU the most. As you will probably be the leader of the process of embedding FSW into your education group, your preference takes precedence.
From there, devise what you want to do in the space. It can be a long term programme, a one-time camp or anything in between. Write a simple proposition with some detail, but try not to delve too much into the fine details here, as the paralysis-by-analysis effect tends to inhibit the creation and openness of the idea.
Then run the proposition through your team, friends or mentors. Never scrutinise your first idea, but let others give feedback and adjust it for you. At this juncture, it is important to keep an open mind and welcome the robust discussion that you will be experiencing. This process helps to crystallise your practice and programme further, deepening your understanding of the FSW.
This is probably one of the toughest phases of the HOW, as it is the first actual physical step you will be taking. You will usually face some resistance from your urban-living friends and colleagues here. Ride with it, prepare to suck at it, fail and go back to the drawing board. You will start to see how your WHYs and HOWs relate in this journey through the tough phase of scrutinisation.
Once you are confident and feel ready, prototype your proposition boldly. Do not try to reach out to the wider public in this run. Instead, reach out to your friends and immediate work or living community. Always, always start SMALL. From there on in, keep adjusting your practice and your programme to contextualise it to your education. Always remember to be patient with the process.
Once you get into a consistent rhythm of practice-reflection-adjustment-practice, you will be in the flow. From there on in, let Nature & your instinct lead you along all the way through.
This process of incepting or embedding FSW into other education communities is actually quite simple, and has been successfully practised by many people in Singapore (there are 60 of them now) and around the world. The stumbling block is usually not the organisations, but the people themselves. To be more accurately put, it is our own selves who we must most clearly convince and make sense of. Our Insecurity, Our Trauma, Our Burdens will be very evidently shown in this journey of authenticity. It is this that will be the greatest challenge for you in incepting FSW into your education space.
I am now 7 years into my practice of the FSW. And I still have a long way to go. I wouldn’t trade this journey for any wealth or other opportunities in the world. For FSW has not only affected my journey as an educator, it has influenced the way I live, my relationships with others, my perspective of the world, my openness to the challenges of life, and my understanding of my depressive episodes. And it is this evolving state of mind that I bring to the FSS community to continue my support and growth of the FS movement in the world.
The journey initially can be quite overwhelming for us city-living, modern, industrialised educated folks. There was so much tension for me at the beginning, but I was lucky to have well meaning friends and mentors to bounce ideas off and robustly discuss the FSW. It helped to focus my practice and clarify my understanding.
I share these secrets to incepting FSW, with the hope that more individuals will be inspired and find purpose in embarking on embedding FSW to their space.
I take cue from Nature herself, in not possessing what I learnt from this journey. She doesn’t hold them and is always open to sharing, as long as we are ready to receive. We are all after all Nature as well…
So here I am hoping that you who have read till this point are ready to receive what this journey back to Nature will give to you and your community.
Written by: Darren Quek
Edited by: Natasha Saw
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