This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Subscribe to their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
To me, the smiles in the back-to-school photos seemed more forced this year.
How can I get my hands on dystopian headlines about schools: closures for excessive heatruined buildings with hazardous indoor air quality, Shortage of mental health professionals in schools.a worsening mental health emergency – and, on the other, the promise and excitement of a new year of learning?
I offer a common sense proposal to help. I “discovered” it as a teacher in 2011. Many educators implemented it in the fall of 2020. But it is nothing new. It was evident even at the beginning of the 20th century.
Teach students outdoors.
I credit my old high school Spanish class for my discovery. It was located in a repurposed shopping center in Durango, Colorado, and the window wall of its store didn’t exactly have any opening windows. I wasn’t supposed to prop up the doors due to safety risks. The air conditioning did not work. August and September temperatures in my classroom were in the upper 90s and low 100s. It was unbearable.
We improvise. We spread out across the parking lot, playing conjugation musical chairs standing on the notebook spaces instead of sitting on chairs. We sang and danced “Pie-pie-pie” (a Spanish twist on “head, shoulders, knees and toes”) in a giant circle. Our paved heat island was better than the indoor one, but it was still too hot. So we headed to a park a few minutes walk from our sauna.
We did classes chasing the shadow. I bought a small whiteboard and filled a cardboard box with dry erase markers and additional writing utensils. I even started adapting my lessons to the park with less papers that could fly around and no screens. This gave way to more movement, flexible group work and games. My students were super committed to learning. Outside, a chatty squirrel allowed for a “mental break” and a new Spanish vocabulary word, “ardilla.” The distractions of nature almost seemed to help my students focus. Since then I have discovered investigation validating that feeling.
The end of autumn arrived with cooler temperatures. Even though our outdoor class was up and running and I had over a decade of experience as an outdoor educator, I brought us back inside. My students didn’t question it. On autopilot, we march inside to be surrounded by the comforts of the classroom: white boards, dry erase markers, a sometimes functional Smartboard, speakers to blast Aventura and Enrique, books, paper, desks, chairs.
Looking back, it seems negligent to have taken my students back inside. I faced fewer barriers to teaching outdoors than most teachers, thanks to two decades of experience leading wilderness expeditions and teaching high school students everything from English to natural history to environmental ethics in outdoor classrooms in the Bolivian Andes, the Canadian Arctic, the canyons of Utah and the mountains of Colorado.
In Durango, a mountain town with a rich outdoor recreation culture, most parents were happy for us to be outside. My project-based learning charter school curriculum was mine to invent. My students and I were insulated from many standardized tests and accountability pressures. We had a big park nearby.
COVID was our national windowed classroom moment. In the fall of 2020, many districts, schools, and individual educators across the country began outdoor learning out of necessity. Green Schoolyards America led a beautiful collective effort to document outdoor learning practices in a National Outdoor Learning Library.
In the fall of 2020, at another rural Colorado school, we improvised an outdoor school to make in-person learning possible. Students spent full days outdoors alternating with days inside with their classroom teachers. In November 2022, after that school received a Bright Spot Award from Governor Polis for its academic growth during the pandemic, I received an email from the principal. Your opinion of him? The outdoor school was a causal part of their success.
The evidence of learning in nature is convincing, robust and growing. Stress reduction. Improved attention and cognitive function.. More physical fitness. Fewer behavioral challenges. Greater commitment. Improved cooperation. Better relationships between students and between teachers and students. It even has promising potential as an equity lever.
But I fear that the autopilot response that led my students and me to stay home is happening across our country in the wake of the pandemic. As we return to “normal,” we forget about the immediate benefits of learning outdoors.
I know that the magical combination of favorable conditions I faced is far from reality for most teachers. I also know that widespread adoption of outdoor learning in nearby nature is simple and could happen almost overnight in schools with access to green spaces. In those schools, let’s strengthen educators’ capacity to teach students outdoors. let’s buy the necesary resources to support outdoor classrooms. If we can provide 1:1 tablets, surely we can make 1:1 clipboards plus a classroom cart, or “go-bin,” with writing utensils, foam seats, and a portable whiteboard.
Next, let us remodel or develop school systems from scratch to integrate and support outdoor teaching and learning. In the meantime, let’s mobilize parents and community members as additional labor who can transport materials, help students cross busy streets, and share what they know about local flora and fauna. Just like that, outdoor learning can create a positive feeling about what’s happening inside (and outside) school.
For some schools, the solutions are less immediate. Excessive heat. Poor outdoor air quality. Armed violence. Concrete as far as the eye can see. These are real issues that need to be addressed. For these schools, let’s do two things. First, we immediately infuse the indoor environment with nature to create green learning spaces filled with plants (real or fake!), nature images, nature soundscapes, and nature objects like pinecones, seeds, and shells.
In parallel, let’s work harder to ensure that these schools have safe and close natural spaces.
Because back to school should mean getting back outdoors for everyone.
chalk beat is a nonprofit news organization that covers public education.
Related: Outdoor learning helps students in our district see sustainability in action
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘6079750752134785’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);