Celebrating the wins

Here at The Outdoors Group, we’re no stranger to growth and change. Our company has transformed over the last 12 (eek!) years from a humble Forest School in the woods at Shillingford to a major player in the outdoor education industry, at the forefront of what Forest School and education should look like. However, what we’re not always so good at is celebrating our achievements as they happen. We’re usually quite good at shouting about the big things (like The Outdoors School getting ‘Good’ at Ofsted, the numerous awards we’ve won over the last few years, and receiving our ‘Gold’ accreditation from Learning Outside the Classroom) but it’s easy for the smaller things to go overlooked.

We were thinking about this today as we recorded a podcast with two of our tutors from The Outdoors School in which they talked about their difference experiences of teaching in a mainstream setting and then with us. I asked for some memorable success stories from their time with us and one of them shared a story of a learner who arrived in our woods with an intense aversion to reading. Initially, any attempts to work with him on this were met very unfavourably but roll on a few years and last week he was found nestled in the corner of one our shelters, engrossed in a Harry Potter book. What an awesome accomplishment for this learner and one that we should be shouting about!

Yet, these things happen every day across all areas of our business and they often go overlooked or unsung outside of the immediate moment. Whether it’s a small child at one of our Toddler Clubs learning to use a fire striker for the first and successfully lighting the group fire, one of our TLP learners sticking with a project for weeks on end to produce a fantastic bird box, or even our amazing Estates team finishing a particularly complex project.

This year, we’re determined to shout about our wins a bit more, no matter how large or small. We’re so proud of the work we’re doing and the incredible achievements from the young people we work with every day that we’re going to try and make an effort to record and celebrate them! Just before Christmas we created a (rather large!) canvas of our wins from 2023 to hang in our main office and we thought we’d share it here!

We’d also take this opportunity to encourage you to do the same in your own life! People love to share in the successes of those that they care about so start talking about what you’re accomplishing – managed your first ever 5k? Tell someone! Cooked an amazing, complicated recipe? Tell someone! Successfully changed a tyre for the first time? Tell someone! Positivity breeds positivity so let’s all start sharing the great things that are happening for us, no matter how small…and see what happens!

Author: Hannah Durdin, Content Officer & Forest School Leader

Date: Monday 4th March 2024