Outdoor Learning Through the Rainy Season

The season is not an interruption

Most outdoor learning material is written for places with four mild seasons. In the tropics you get months where it rains hard, daily, at a fairly predictable time, and a plan built around avoiding that will collapse.

Build around it instead.

Move the session, do not cancel it

In most of Southeast Asia the heavy rain arrives in the afternoon. Move outdoor sessions to the morning for those months and the problem largely disappears. This sounds obvious and almost nobody does it, because the timetable was set in a meeting in June.

Teach the rain

Some of the strongest sessions we have run were in the rain. Following where water goes across the ground. Marking a puddle edge and coming back. Comparing a taro leaf with a banana leaf under a downpour. Measuring rainfall in a jar.

None of that works in dry season. You have a few months a year where water behaviour is visible everywhere, and it is a waste to spend them indoors.

What makes it possible

One thing, and it is not raincoats. It is a spare set of clothes at school for every child, and a note to families in advance saying this will happen. Without that note, one parent complains in week two and the whole idea stops.

Bare feet are better than wet shoes. A covered outdoor area, even a small one, doubles what you can do.

When to actually stay in

Lightning. That is the list. Not drizzle, not mud, not mildly unpleasant. Lightning, and then everyone is inside immediately.