Nature’s Remedy:
Reducing Student Stress with Nature
Stress in adolescence is an ever-growing issue that plagues millions of children every single day. A study conducted by professor Jean M. Twenge of San Diego State University, and published by the American Psychological Association has found that children today experience significantly higher levels of stress than previous generations, specifically compared to post-World War II era children in the 1950s and Cold War era children in the 1980s. This trend of increased stress in school-aged children is only becoming more exponential as time goes on. In order to help combat this growing concern, one must look to the past to the idea of connecting with nature as outlined by Henry David Thoreau in Walden. The basis of this idea, if applied, can become a great method of reducing stress and helping countless children in schools across the United States.
The greatest stressor that school-aged children faced in the 1950s and 1980s was the threat of nuclear war. Today, the biggest stressor is an overwhelming workload and an inability to get away from school work. When comparing these two stressors, it may seem as if the children of today are simply lazy and are victimizing themselves as a way to cover for this; however, this is not the case. Unlike the children of the 1950s and 1980s, children today are unable to escape school work regardless of where they are.
This is, in part, caused by the transition to online homework and classes through applications such as Google Classroom and Canvas. Most schools across the United States adopted a form of online learning as a way to roll with the punches during the Covid-19 school closures, whether it be zoom classes or pre-recorded lectures. Once the school closures were over; however, some of these methods remained in place. Teachers could now assign homework to be due the same day that it was assigned at 11:59 p.m. or take away a student’s weekend by making a project due Sunday night.
The weekend was once a two-day span where students could unwind and relax and not have to worry about having assignments due, or would simply rush to get those assignments done during homeroom on Monday morning. With the introduction to online assignments, this is no longer the case. Each week, students have homework or essays or projects that are expected to be done and turned in by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday night, taking away the ability to enjoy their weekend until they get this assignment with the dreaded deadline looming over their head.
This leaves many students feeling helpless and as if they are drowning in schoolwork, unable to escape it. There is, however, a way to help ease these feelings and to combat this feeling of helplessness. It is found in the memoir, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by Henry David Thoreau.
The memoir Walden; or, Life in the Woods is a memoir that details the time that Henry David Thoreau spent in the woods alone at Walden Pond, relying on only himself for his survival. For essentially every student, leaving their lives to go live in the woods alone is all but impossible, or at the very least improbable. So, the key lies within the teachings and lessons presented by Thoreau throughout Walden.
The key idea to pick out from this memoir is the idea of connecting with nature. Thoreau presents connecting with nature as not a pleasure, but rather a necessity. He introduces the idea that nature can be a source of spiritual rejuvenation as well as a necessary aspect of life to feel whole. The spiritual rejuvenation aspect of nature is something that he outlines throughout the memoir. This is done through the discussion of the way that one can interact with nature and how to feel one with nature. Thoreau says that “we must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake”, meaning that people tend to fall into a monotony of life, living the same day over and over again, which becomes strenuous and makes people feel trapped. By going out and spending even 15 minutes a day in nature, people are able to feel that sense of rejuvenation and this can act as a mental reset for them.
This idea has been backed by a Harvard-reviewed study that found that just 20 minutes a day in nature, even if it is just sitting outside during this time, can lower the level of Cortisol in the body, the primary hormone for the body’s stress response. This further backs the writings of Thoreau in Walden, especially considering the line, “We need the tonic of wilderness.” Though written hundreds of years before any study was published on this topic, wilderness and nature has quite literally become a proven tonic for stress. This mental reset helps to reframe the mind and helps one to feel more whole and energized.
This brings up the point once more that most students are unable to simply leave to go out into nature whenever they please. However, there is a simple solution to this. Though not as effective, a similar effect can be felt by simply sitting by an open window and feeling the breeze or watching the trees sway. This can be a great way to help lower stress levels in the classroom and can help the students feel less rundown and burnt out from schoolwork. Further, to those students that have access to nature such as a local park or front yard, they can sit outside and read or do work and still feel more relaxed and refreshed if they do not have 10-20 minutes to sit outside in nature and do nothing but enjoy it. This small effort to make it outside in any way, shape, or form can have a massive positive impact on the stress levels and mental health of these children who feel overwhelmed to an unprecedented level.
References
American Psychological Association. (2000, December 14). Studies show normal children today report more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950’s [Press release]. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/12/anxietyThoreau, H. D., Bowman, J. C., ed. (1917)
Walden, or, Life in the woods. [Chicago, New York, Scott, Foresman and company] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/17029241/
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Elongated Lobster, I’m delighted to see you did not start by offering a 1000-word Definition of Transcendentalism. 🙂 It’s hard to say what if anything you did decide to define, but that’s not the most important characteristic of your first 1000 words on any topic. Crucial is that you map out the territory of your argument, and you’ve done that in earnest. Students are overwhelmed by constant pressure to perform their school work, and time outdoors or at least in contact with fresh air is the balm that can relieve it.
What you don’t do, surprisingly, is contrast the two states physically and vividly. You get your students out of doors or into an open window, so we can feel the breeze with them, the sunshine on their faces, but you don’t confine them indoors or in a roomful of screens each displaying competing artificial images as an oppressive daymare from which they need to escape. Your “stress” is entirely abstract, not felt. So we don’t get the release we need from escaping to the park.
Your paragraphs were MUCH TOO long to contain just one main idea, as they should, so I broke them for you, perhaps in places you wouldn’t have. You can put them back together any way you like, just not in their original condition. Notice that things repeat in successive paragraphs, meaning that you were returning later to the same ideas, or cycling through several thoughts, not fully developing each in turn.
Your sentences, too, contain repetitions, like a speaker rehearsing a speech using several approaches to the same bit. I used boldface to identify some of these repetitions, which deprive your work of the command you want to achieve over your material.
Finally, there are the sentences that start with THIS, a surprising number. They also make you sound tentative, as if you knew you had to finish something you had begun before you could start on a new sentence.