Louise Licznerski is the co-founder of Little Bugs outdoor nursery, in West Fife. The nursery - still one of relatively few fully outdoor nurseries in Scotland - opened in July 2021, and a second is planned on the Hopetoun Estate near South Queensferry.
Licznerski was previously a recruitment adviser at a department store, then worked for nine years in primary education. She has also written for the Muddy Puddle Teacher blog, providing resources for educators about outdoor learning.
She talks to Tes Scotland about making soap out of conkers like the Vikings did, recalls when snakes came (unexpectedly) to school, and reveals how her life experiences have shaped an outdoorsy career in education.
1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?
My primary 4 teacher, Mrs Kennedy. A lot of the activities we did in class were really practical. She had lived in Japan and brought loads of different things back with her, so she was very cultured and everything she taught us was very practical. I remember doing a project on the Vikings, and we made soap out of conkers - that’s something that has stuck with me my whole life.
One time, we were doing a project on reptiles in the desert and a man brought in a snake in a holdall - I’m pretty sure you would not get away with that these days in school. It was just quite weird, but really engaging and fun and practical. As a teacher, I always wanted to be like Mrs Kennedy - to make things more interactive and engaging and practical for children.
2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?
I would say the practical activities that I did were definitely the positives throughout school, whether making the soap from conkers or, later on, doing things like fashion design. I am rubbish at art but I enjoyed going and seeing the processes of how things are made, and linking it to the wider world and learning - and why it was important to have industries or to carry out a certain task.
The worst times I had at school were during exams. I was a dyslexic young person who was clever, and my teachers all saw the potential in me but their hands were tied. I failed my business management exam. I went in to see my teacher and he said: “I can’t believe you failed that.” It was simply that I ran out of time. We didn’t know I was dyslexic [back then], so I didn’t get that additional time for it.
But for me, I didn’t want a label, and every child and young person should be treated as an individual. However, it gave me the resilience that I needed to say: “Well, actually, I failed X, Y and Z exams, but I’m not going to give up from there.”
I was very lucky to have family, friend and teacher support - I know that a lot of young people aren’t lucky enough to have that.
3. Why do you work in education?
I wanted to get into teaching, and do early years education in particular, because I wanted to make a difference and ensure every child was being given the opportunity to be an individual, and that somebody was there taking into account how they learn.
This is my second career. In retail, I worked quite high up in a department store. We’d watch people coming out of school or coming in to do Saturday jobs and see the sheer dismay on their faces when they had exams, and know that the education system wasn’t getting it right for children and young people. I couldn’t fix that from the outside.
4. What are you proudest of in your career and what’s your biggest regret?
What I’m most proud of is taking the jump from working in a council background to challenging the system that everyone follows, especially in education.
I could have quite easily carried on doing that job but, instead, I decided to go my own way.
So, yeah, I would say that my biggest achievement so far is Little Bugs, and I just hope that I can build on that.
My biggest regret? Probably not doing it earlier. However, if I had, I wouldn’t have the life experiences that I had before I went into teaching.
5. Who would be your colleagues in the perfect staffroom?
It would be great to work with [broadcaster] Ben Fogle. I find his thirst for adventure admirable. He is very open-minded regarding other people’s ways of living and is very open to giving things a go. He’s happy to look deeper into the meaning behind things, which I think all good practitioners should be able to do. He isn’t afraid to share his opinion and give his feedback, too.
Also, [survival expert] Ray Mears has an incredible ability to put everyone at ease. He is a great man to have out in the wilderness. He’s practical and a great problem solver.
Last, I find Sue Palmer’s work incredible [Palmer is chair of the Upstart campaign to raise the school starting age and have a “kindergarten stage” until the age of seven]. She is happy to take a step outside her comfort zone and challenge the norm in order to ensure our children are receiving the best type of education; one that is free from assessment, and full of play and discovery. I would definitely love to have Sue in my staffroom.
6. What are the best aspects of our school system today?
The best aspects are that we have so many enthusiastic teachers, early years practitioners, PSAs [pupil support assistants]; so many people in the profession who have the children’s wellbeing at heart.
They come up with such great ways and invest so much of their own personal time to do things. Teachers work incredibly hard.
The downside to that is that it’s expected of them: they don’t necessarily get the gratitude, or the extra time back or the support that’s needed. They’re met with a lot of budgets and red tape.
Actually, what we should be doing is making our children more resilient. As practitioners, if a glass ceiling is placed upon us, we can’t reach our full potential, so how are we expecting our children to do that?
7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you most?
One of my biggest influences is definitely Juliet Robertson [an education consultant specialising in outdoor learning and play], who does the Creative STAR blog.
She has been such a great support to lots of outdoor practitioners and nurseries, and is the author of a book called Messy Maths. She inspires me so much - I’ve contacted her on many occasions and asked for practical advice about things like handwashing or toileting outside.
Messy Maths is incredible, especially some of the curricular links to maths she makes within nature. She’s definitely one of the people that I’m most inspired by.
8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d do?
Make sure that outdoor learning was compulsory in every school and that every child had a set outdoor time.
To me, that closes the attainment gap and helps with mental health issues we see in our youngsters. It also helps with children who have additional support needs and with physical health - because we’re outside burning energy.
It would tick so many boxes if we just made outdoor education a compulsory factor in daily teaching life.
9. What will our schools be like in 30 years?
I really hope there will be more outdoor nurseries. I’m a big advocate of the Sue Palmer movement: we should be giving children more time and not forcing them into learning.
That’s why I’m so keen on a play-based approach, on taking that Scandinavian approach where children don’t go to school until seven. However, children are immersed in a kindergarten setting, where they are still learning - they’re just learning in a different way.
I think we’re moving in the right direction, especially in early years. I really hope that we’ll have more outdoor learning in our schools, and can give our children a bit more time to be children and learn at their own pace.
10. What one person do you think has made the biggest difference to education more generally in the past 18 months of the Covid pandemic?
For me, it’s not just one person - I would say it’s everybody within a school family. As a parent and as a teacher who didn’t leave teaching until September last year, working with the guys here who have been EYOs [early years officers] at nurseries, speaking to parents and still writing for Muddy Puddle Teacher as well, it was very clear that, actually, parents didn’t want to sit down.
What I mean is they didn’t want to sit down at a dining room table and do their schoolwork with their children - they wanted to find more creative ways of getting outdoors to do that. It made it a lot lighter for them, and a happier experience for everyone, when learning was taken outside.
Hats off to every parent who did any form of teaching or outdoor education with kids, to teachers for putting in the extra graft, and to PSAs who went out and worked in the community, and were a friendly face walking around the street.
Hats off to the whole school community - they’re the ones who have got our children through a pandemic.
Interview by Robyn Barclay
This article originally appeared in the 10 September 2021 issue
