Ep 211: 'Total Observation' isn't helping childhood

Generous Authority: The Art of Gathering at Forest School This episode, I’ve read a book and Wem’s job is to poke holes in it. The book is Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, and parts of it had me nodding along while other parts felt wildly wrong for forest school. We work through it chapter by chapter, testing each idea against our own sessions and disagreeing where we need to. The first thing that grabbed me was the idea of protecting the opening moment of a gathering instead of spending it on admin. I tried it at a recent CPD day with the Suffolk FSA group, giving out practical information as people arrived so the opening could hold one thing only. Wem rightly points out that for lots of people, knowing where the loos are is part of feeling safe, so the logistics still matter. They just don’t have to come first. We also cover: Asking what’s different after a gathering, instead of why we’re meeting, and the baby shower example from the book Why I’ve felt nervous about asking my home ed group why they come, and what that nervousness says about ego Being honest with young people that this is also a job that pays the bills Excluding with purpose and the risks of over-inclusion, plus Wem’s alternative: not shutting the door, just choosing where you extend the invitation How venues and physical positioning carry hierarchy with them, from boardrooms to standing over two children asking them to “solve it themselves” The chill host, the hosting vacuum it creates, and what happens when a couple of boisterous voices take over a circle Generous and ungenerous authority, and a heated disagreement about a bride enforcing her seating plan Competing needs versus needs that can sit side by side, including the perennial “they just talk about Minecraft in the hammock” debate How differently all of this sits when attendance is optional, mandatory, or somewhere in the awkward middle Hosting starting the moment people hear about an event, priming a CPD group through a WhatsApp challenge, and why a session begins the moment the last one ends Building in multiple endings so people can leave without guilt, and the small closing ritual we’ve started with staff after the children go home Plus, before all that: can robins see magnetic fields, and are sharks really older than trees? Supporting the podcast The Forest School Podcast has been running for years now, and it’s free for everyone. We don’t offer bonus content or extras on Patreon, so supporting us is simply a way of helping the show keep going. Contributions from as little as £2 a month cover our running costs and buy the books we read and share with you all, including this one. We’re genuinely grateful to everyone who chooses to, and is able to, chip in. patreon.com/TheForestSchoolPodcast

Declarative language and empathy sit at the heart of how we support behaviour at Children of the Forest. Rather than issuing commands, we describe what we notice and help people see the effect their actions have on those around them. Most of the time, that’s enough to shift things. There have been a few times, with different groups, where I’ve run into the same wall. The approach works best when someone is visibly affected. What about when a child is talking unkindly about a person who isn’t there? Or when the person being discussed is unaware, or simply unbothered? If they’re happy either way, the drive to change behaviour out of care for them disappears. This is a professional discussion in the truest sense. We take one idea and turn it over, look at it from different angles, throw “what if” scenarios at each other and push back where we disagree. We don’t come away with a tidy solution, and that’s deliberate. The value is in extending our own thinking, and hopefully yours. In this episode we explore: Why empathy-based behaviour support depends on a visible impact, and what happens when there isn’t one Gossip, venting and “isn’t that person annoying” as a normal part of human social life How to make room for frustration without endorsing unkindness Encouraging empathetic conversation without imposing our own will or relying on authority The tension between letting group dynamics unfold naturally and our duty of care for the social and emotional wellbeing of everyone in our sessions What being Ofsted registered and holding safeguarding roles asks of us in these moments Supporting the podcast The Forest School Podcast has been running for years now, and it’s free for everyone. We don’t offer bonus content or extras on Patreon, so supporting us is simply a way of helping the show keep going. Contributions from as little as £2 a month cover our running costs and buy the books we read and share with you all. We’re genuinely grateful to everyone who chooses to, and is able to, chip in. patreon.com/TheForestSchoolPodcast

Wem and I get into a concept neither of us had a name for until this week: inessential weirdness. It comes from a video by organisational psychologist Pippi Kessler, and once you've got the term you start seeing it everywhere. We open with my Ofsted saga (someone reported me to Ofsted over a cropped screenshot of me singing with a puppet, long story, I passed with zero concerns), then get into the real conversation. Pippi's video looks at activist groups and asks what actually alienates working class people from community spaces. The answer isn't posh venues or fancy food, it's things like unsalted vegan potluck dishes and unexplained rituals that have nothing to do with why people showed up. We spend the rest of the episode pulling that idea apart and applying it to forest school and CPD spaces. Where's the line between weird that's essential to what we do and weird that's just unexamined habit? We talk about whimsical go-arounds, breathwork, sit spots, hierarchy, virtue signalling, agency, and why "can you explain why we're doing this" is the best test for whether something belongs. We also get into the class dimension of all this, how much time, money and prior exposure it takes to feel comfortable with certain kinds of "weird," and why that matters if you actually want your sessions to be open to people outside your existing community. Not an argument against weirdness. We love weird. It's an argument for knowing why you're doing it. Watch the video that started this conversation: Pippi Kessler, "Inessential Weirdness" — https://www.instagram.com/p/DbWVC6rPBaL/ More on Pippi's work: https://www.pippikessler.org/

In this episode, Wem and I chatted about feedback from previous episodes, preparing for incoming winter seasons, and whether it's possible to 'procrastinate' at Forest School.

This week Wem and I get into something that's been rumbling through forest school Facebook groups all summer: fires, heatwaves, drought, and where individual choice ends and collective responsibility begins. It started with a post about forest school leaders lighting fires during the current UK drought, and the pile of comments underneath it. Some people were arguing it's down to individual practitioners, their training and their risk benefit assessments. Others were pointing at local fire services actively fighting wildfires and asking whether "I've done my RBA" is really enough justification right now. We try to pull that apart properly rather than picking a side. Along the way we talk about the headline game, a tool I use for weighing up risky decisions, and how it applies just as well to cancelling a session as it does to lighting a fire. We get into whether forest school is a community or a collection of individuals doing their own thing, my ongoing argument against the mycelial network metaphor and my pitch for lichen instead, and where the line sits between influencing someone's practice and controlling it. We finish on training and accrediting bodies, what a climate-literate Forest School Leader Level 3 might actually need to cover, and how we might get better at critiquing each other's practice without it turning into a pile-on. Forest School Association, the UK's professional body for Forest School, which runs the Recognised Provider and Endorsed Trainer schemes we talk about: forestschoolassociation.org