Lapping the Field of Dreams, 'makes happier people'

Vivienne Carty and international colleagues.

Increasing access to nature while teaching can help to mitigate the kind of anxiety that is a common and growing feature of student life, writes Brian Byrne. That’s according to Cross and Passion College Kilcullen teacher Vivienne Carty, recently returned from a special Erasmus programme workshop on the subject with fellow teachers from 17 countries.

Those rising anxiety levels were a common point of discussion between the course participants over the 5-day event held in Sicily. "It's always interesting to see how other people are doing things, but what was really interesting was that all of the other schools represented were seeing the same challenges that students are facing, and the high levels of anxiety. Every country is having the same experience, that the levels of anxiety among young people is unprecedented, really."

Reasons range from pressures of transitioning from school to the wider world, to young people being always 'switched on' through their engagement with technology and social media. That last is also associated with a disconnection from nature, which previous non-tech generations would have been able to experience through normal play and social interaction activities. "I think we now have to try to help them allow their brains to switch off, and nature can aid in doing this if we can only get them out there."

During the course, Vivienne Carty and her co-participants did things like mindfulness walks, meditation in forests, and outdoor games that engaged the senses. "We also worked on a range of indoor activities, including chair yoga, dance, and discussions on biophilic design where you try and bring nature into buildings," she says. "In very simple terms, that could be creating a vegetation wall in a building, bringing plants inside. All that kind of thing has been shown to have a powerful effect on everybody's well-being." She says that the course in general equipped her with new elements to her wellbeing 'toolbox', adaptable to the Irish climate. 

As a teacher with particular responsibilities for Social, Personal Health Education (SPHE) and Behaviour for Learning, Vivienne Carty has for many years been incorporating several such ideas at CPC. An example is a Mindfulness Room established in the college in 2010, which is still working for different generations of students. "It brought mindfulness to the forefront of their activities and made them more aware of their own well-being. That they also decorated it themselves with murals, making it their own space, was important. Successive groups of students have always respected it as their 'drop-in' space."

With the support of the school management, CPC students are taken outside as often as is practical within the requirements of the curriculum, and disconnected from their devices by the use of a phone bag. "Initially, when we started that, they were not happy, but they got into it. Being outside and being physical without a phone, and being in nature, is a very powerful antidote to all the pressures and the challenges — it's quite simple, really." She especially references the advantage of the recent addition to Kilcullen of the walking circuit around the GAA club's Field of Dreams. "Just a couple of laps around that, it changes the students. At the end of it, they're just happier people, so I bring my own students out there as often as possible."

Looking back on the course, she reflects on the advantages of connecting with others who are interested in similar things, sharing stories and perhaps helping each other to reignite passion for what they do. "My passion is the well-being of my students, and meeting with others you don't feel so isolated. It kind of fires you up again, and that was wonderful."

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