Killarney

By Sean Moriarty
<h3>A Killarney student was one of a group of trainee teachers at Mary Immaculate College to set up the very first outdoor education classroom in a third level college.</h3>
Jane McGillicuddy, from Kilcummin, is in her fourth and final year at the Limerick College.
Her speciality subject is geography and she and her fellow students, with support from the teaching staff at the college, founded An Choill Bheag (The Small Forest) on the grounds of the college.
The new project will serve as an outdoor classroom for future students at the college and prepare them to teach all aspects of geography, nature and environmental studies.
It was supported by Learning About Forests (LEAF) which is an international programme operated in Ireland by the outdoor Education Unit of An Taisce.
Earlier this week, LEAF Ireland planted almost one hundred native trees with students and staff from Mary Immaculate College and this woodland habitat will provide an on-site educational and recreational resource for the whole college community.
“This will be there for years to come,” Jane, a former student at both Holy Cross Mercy National School and St Brigid’s Secondary School, told the Killarney Advertiser.
“It will promote outdoor learning. Our teachers managed the whole project but we did all the physical work like preparing the ground, marking out the area and planting the trees.”
As part of the Choill Bheag project student teachers have attended forest-based workshops in Coillte Curraghchase Forest Park, where they were shown a variety of different ways that the outdoors can be used to educate children in all curricular areas.

Jane part of Ireland’s first third-level outdoor classroom

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