Forest Educator with Ricardo Sierra | A Podcast for Revolutionary Conversations about Nature-Based Education · Ricardo Sierra

Forest Educator Spotlight: Strategies and Guidelines for Working with Adults in Nature

·1 hr 3 min·3 clips

An adult student disappears during a hide-and-seek exercise, and Sierra has to decide whether to stop the class.

Ricardo Sierra spends the episode on adult learning. He says the jump from children's programming to adult programming is bigger than it first looks. Adults bring experience, but that does not mean they are already oriented to the lesson or the expectations of the program. He returns to one rule again and again: never assume. He treats that as one of the most important habits an educator can have with adults. Assuming too much, he says, is how instructors end up making fatal mistakes. The episode then shifts into a story about a group of girls building a shelter. They were hot, sweaty, and dealing with bugs and deer flies. Sierra uses that scene to show why discomfort matters. The point of the program is not to remove every hard feeling. It is to help people go through an ordeal, get to the other side, and realize that the things they are worrying about are not the point. He describes that as a kind of rite of passage. He pushes back on the impulse to make outdoor learning feel like a movie night. Marshmallows and easy entertainment, in his framing, do not belong in the middle of the lesson. What belongs there is a firm boundary and a clear reason for it. He says some young women are asking for exactly that, even if they sound like they are resisting it. The adult who leads the program is not there to fix anyone. The job is to set the frame well enough that the experience can do its work, and he closes by saying there are more ideas to share later.

As heard by us

Adult learning, framed as a practical lesson in boundaries, discomfort, and not making assumptions.

Ricardo Sierra treats adult learning as its own kind of work, not a watered-down version of teaching younger people. His main point is plain enough: when adults are in the room, assumptions can get in the way fast.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a calm reset after teaching kids and need to work with adults.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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