• While outdoor education is institutionalized in the Nordic countries, it remains marginalized in France.

  • While National Education encourages teachers to use it, the city of Lyon has decided to jump on the bandwagon.

  • 300 teachers and professors were trained this year in the Lyon metropolitan area, including around forty for the city of Lyon.

    A start to trigger a dynamic.

Abandon classrooms, offices, platforms and paintings hung on the wall to learn mathematics or biology in the middle of nature, sitting on the lawns of a park or on the benches of a square.

And that, whatever the weather.

If schools outside are legion in the Nordic countries, they are still relatively marginal in the four corners of France.

In France, the city of Lyon intends to become a benchmark by gradually developing the approach.

For this new school year, 300 teachers from the Lyon metropolitan area have been specifically trained in “outdoor pedagogy”, including around forty for the city of Lyon alone.

A first.

These volunteers will teach in the Duchère district but also in Croix-Rousse and in the 7th arrondissement.

"It's not a whim of the municipality"

“We are not talking about a school outing where we would go to La Tête d'Or park to observe the birds, but of lessons given regularly outside.

Even if the weather does not lend itself to it, the children go out with their notebooks, their books, ”says Stéphanie Léger, deputy of the city of Lyon in charge of education.

Far from the academic knowledge taught in textbooks, the practice favors learning through contact with nature.

For example, mathematics is applied to measure the size of a tree or to build a cabin.

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“It is not a whim of the municipality but a practice encouraged by National Education”, supports the elected ecologist, wishing to gradually infuse this teaching throughout the education system.

"It's a real added value for the children," she says.

The atmosphere is calmer, quieter.

In addition, it can help those who do not necessarily hang on with school by soliciting their attention in another way.

And thus increase the motivation of the troops.

Engage the dynamic

“The ideal would be to be able to set up a course a week outside in the establishments concerned”, adds the elected official, aware that “not everything will be ready on September 1”.

It is still necessary to establish maps to identify the places suitable for outdoor teaching, to develop signage to indicate that the groups of pupils are in full course so as not to disturb the class, to establish the list of materials to be provided according to needs.

The main thing, first of all, is to “trigger a dynamic”.

“If the teachers see that the city is participating alongside them, they may want to go more easily towards this practice,” emphasizes Stéphanie Léger.

But it is also necessary to accompany the parents, to prepare them and to reassure them.

Not always enthusiastic about the idea of ​​seeing their darlings spend an hour outside in the middle of winter, for fear that they will fall ill, they may well be the most reluctant to convince...

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