Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP) Cohort 17 student-teachers visited in north London as part of a Teaching and Learning workshop exploring the relationship between nature, reflection, and education. Through observation, discussion, sensory activities, and haiku poetry writing, students considered how natural environments can shape attention, encourage critical reflection, and deepen understandings of teaching and learning.
Learning does not only happen within classrooms. Outdoor learning encourages observation, reflection, and direct engagement with the world around us. These ideas shape STEP’s approach to teacher education at IIS, where student-teachers are encouraged to think carefully about how and where meaningful learning can take place.
As part of Cohort 17’s Teaching and Learning workshop series, Faheem Hussain took students to Queen’s Wood, an ancient woodland in north London, and invited them to pause, observe, and reflect on the natural world around them. The session was not a break from study. Instead, it explored the IIS Secondary Curriculum’s Muslim Devotional and Ethical Literature module through a different learning environment.
Queen’s Wood offered something no classroom can replicate: the immediate, lived experience of interdependence. Trees that have stood for decades, root systems sustaining entire ecosystems, and the quiet evidence of coexistence in every layer of the forest floor. For educators, these are not simply natural phenomena; they prompt deeper thinking about knowledge, community, and the conditions in which people truly flourish.
Reflections from STEP student-teachers
The reflections that follow are written by STEP students who attended the workshop. Each brings a distinct perspective, shaped by their background, culture, and experience. Together, they offer a glimpse of what it means to learn — and to teach — with the natural world.
Farkhandah Jabeen
From Yaseen Valley, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan
Natural spaces can make learning more active, reflective, and meaningful. Although I grew up in the natural environment of Gilgit-Yasin, I had rarely reflected on nature as a space for learning. During the workshop at Queen’s Wood, I observed, felt, and reflected on what was happening around me — and this experience helped me develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between nature and learning.
The chirping of birds, the fresh air among the trees, insects moving around, leaves in different colours, and the old yet strong bark of trees all drew my attention. They helped me understand the significance of coexistence and our interdependence. It also made me realise that the natural environments can be one of the best teaching and learning strategies.
The roots remain unseen, yet they are essential because they help the trees stand and support everything around them. This showed me how every element in nature plays an important role in sustaining others.
Our knowledge is limited when we try to understand the full diversity of nature. Yet nature invites us to reflect more deeply. If I were to seek answers to the most fundamental questions — Who am I? Where is God? — I would not look for them within four walls. I would seek them beneath a tree, while watching the stars at night, or beside the ocean.
For many students, the workshop also became a space for personal reflection, creativity, and emotional connection with nature.
Abidah Nasreen
From Hunza Valley, Pakistan
What I value most about being a STEP student teacher is that learning is never confined to classrooms or books. It extends into spaces that allow us to feel, reflect, and simply be. The outdoor workshop at Queen’s Wood was one of those rare experiences that stayed with me long after it ended.
As someone who finds comfort in nature, the woodland felt like a familiar refuge. Yet sharing that space with my colleagues gave it new meaning. In our first activity, we stood together, holding hands. In that moment, I felt the warmth of human presence — fragile, fleeting, yet deeply connected. It reminded me that we are not separate from nature; we are part of it.
Stepping away from the noise of uncertainty… the workshop offered something quieter: space to think, to feel, and to create.
In that stillness, I found myself writing a poem again, something I had not been able to do for a long time. That moment of reflection felt deeply connected to a teaching from Imam ʿAlī’s Nahj al-BalāghaLit. ‘the way of eloquence’. A well-known collection of letters, sermons and sayings attributed to Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 661 CE), compiled in its present form by al-Sharīf… — a reminder that nature is not only something to observe, but something that reveals meaning.
Brown fallen leaf speaks
From dust I rose, dust I am
Heights were never mine
Wind returns me home
Youth and colour fade
to truth Near You I am whole
The workshop encouraged students to engage with nature in different ways through movement, sensory exploration, reflection, and creative practice.
Nairouz Razouq
From Salamiyah, Syria
At first, I wondered what the point was of travelling so far just to walk once we arrived. I soon realised it was not simply another place — it felt like another world entirely. In the middle of urban London, there existed a forest that seemed untouched by human hands. The only sounds were birds singing, the soft movement of the wind, and the quiet presence of creatures hidden among enormous wild trees.
We moved through a series of activities, each opening a different way of experiencing the world. One group explored the forest blindfolded, guided only by touch and sound, discovering how deeply human sight shapes our understanding of the world. Another explored the woodland through scent — comparing layered smells, noticing the memories they carried. A third moved through the forest with cameras, connecting what they saw to ideas from their course modules.
Experiencing this reflection in nature was completely different from discussing it in a classroom; it felt more like a lived spiritual experience.
Later, sitting in a clearing where light fell through the clouds, we wrote poetry — first alone, then in pairs, weaving each other’s words into something new.
Through the poems, we gained small glimpses into how each person viewed the world. Some wrote about hope, others about love, escape, and longing.
The workshop encouraged students to engage with nature in different ways through movement, sensory exploration, reflection, and creative practice.
Anooshey Abid
From Lahore, Pakistan
The outdoor workshop at Queen’s Wood forms part of our teaching and learning course, which provides a contextual framework for bridging content and pedagogy. Walking through the woods, we explored nature as an entry point towards learning. Some of the activities asked us to take a deep dive into ourselves, wandering through thoughts and emotions in search of the kind of stillness that is difficult to find elsewhere.
What struck me most was how the limitations of the outdoor setting — the unscripted, the unfamiliar — became an invitation to go deeper.
The poetry task connected directly to our MA module on literature in Muslim societies and made something clear: creativity is not an extra. It is how learners make meaning.
Every learner brings their own emotions, perspectives, and experiences into classrooms.
Nature also highlighted the importance of balance and well-being. Outdoor learning can create opportunities for students who may struggle in traditional classroom settings — allowing them to engage through creativity, movement, and discussion. As educators, this experience encouraged me to think about how we can create more inclusive and meaningful opportunities for our students.
The workshop also encouraged students to reflect on spirituality, memory, and the emotional dimensions of learning.
Faten Ghaibour
From Tartus, Syria
The workshop offered a very different learning experience from what we usually associate with education. Through walking in nature, observation, silence, discussion, and poetry writing, the session encouraged us to slow down and experience learning through reflection and presence rather than information alone.
One moment during the walk stayed with me deeply. As I looked through the sunlight passing between the branches, I was reminded of my childhood. I remembered sitting on a swing beneath the trees, speaking to God and imagining His presence around me. During the workshop, I unexpectedly felt that same sense of calmness, closeness, and wonder again after many years.
The experience also reminded me why STEP feels meaningful as a programme. Watching my classmates connect with nature in deeply personal and different ways showed me that learning does not happen in only one form or environment.
As educators, we often focus on developing the mind, but meaningful learning must also create space for reflection, emotion, spirituality, and human connection.
The workshop encouraged me to think about how I can carry these ideas into my own teaching practice and create spaces where students feel able to reflect, connect, and learn more meaningfully.
Learning beyond the classroom
What these reflections share is something that no syllabus can fully capture. Each student arrived at Queen’s Wood with a different story — different landscapes in their memory, different questions in their minds — and each left with a deeper sense of what it means to be both a learner and a teacher. Nature did not give them answers. It gave them better questions.
This is precisely what STEP is designed to do. The Secondary Teacher Education Programme does not simply train teachers — it develops thoughtful, reflective educators who understand that learning is a living process, shaped as much by wonder and observation as by knowledge and instruction.
If you are a member of the Ismaili community with a passion for education and a commitment to the next generation, STEP may be the programme for you.
