SOUTH STRAFFORD — On a recent Tuesday morning, Newton School’s first-grade class’ assignments began with a walk.
Before the 16 students started climbing the hill behind the school, outdoor educator Becky Proulx warned them to stay away from a staked-out yellowbird nest and created a map during the walk. He encouraged them to collect items that could be used. .
“We’re going to wear owl eyes to see,” said Proulx, who also encouraged them to use raccoon paws and coyote noses to pay attention to the world around them.
“Let’s go!” one boy yelled, and several children rushed up the hill. Others participated in the class by picking up stones, branches, and leaves. As one child picked up leaves, he said to another, “I found one with a different texture.”
Not so long ago, the sight of children going outside to learn was a novelty, even in the Upper Valley, where being outside is part of everyday life. But after the coronavirus pandemic, outdoor learning went into full swing, with nearly all students spending time outdoors during class. An influx of federal funding has also allowed school districts to expand outdoor learning options.
South Strafford is a notable example. Prue works with all of her fourth grade classes, and the district used her ESSER funds to build a timber-framed outdoor classroom, which opened after a ceremony on September 28th.
The Hartford School District similarly plans to build classrooms on 15 acres of land it owns on Christian Street between Wilder and Hartford Village and expand outdoor instruction for all grades.
“I think it’s been one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic that it’s safer to be outside,” Hartford School District Superintendent Tom DeBarsi said in a phone interview.
One of the district’s three elementary schools, Ottaukchee School was a pioneer in outdoor learning and operated one of the first “Forest Kindergarten” programs in the area. In 2013, kindergarten classes began spending one full day outdoors each week throughout the year. The district’s other elementary school, Dothan Brook School, started an outdoor learning program for third graders several years before the pandemic.
“I support classrooms that want to have outdoor activities,” Dothan Brook Principal Rick Dustin Eichler said in a phone interview.
The pandemic has given all educators and children a taste of outdoor learning, he said. It’s not for everyone, but it worked really well for some students and some subjects, especially science, so it stuck.
The 15-acre property on Christian Street was given to the school district in 1990, and district officials have been debating how to use it ever since, Debarsi said. For the past several years, the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center has used the center to train students in the use of forestry and agricultural machinery. Approximately 5 acres of the parcel is open space and the remainder is covered by trees.
Some schools in Hartford are located on lots that are too small and too heavily paved to allow for adequate outdoor learning. Debarshi and others in the district envision the Christian Street property as a place where entire classes can spend a full day of outdoor learning. It can include a wide range of activities, from science lessons to cutting and using ski trails in the forest.
The district has $400,000 in ESSER funds distributed to schools as part of pandemic relief money set aside for the project, which likely wouldn’t have happened without federal funding, DeBarsi said. .
Plans call for an enclosed classroom building with restrooms, which is essential for programs that spend more than the school day on site. This requires a well and an on-site septic system. There will also be a shed for storing equipment.
Hartford’s Planning and Zoning Commission approved the project, but arrangements for when the site can be used, including weekends, are still pending. The project is on the Hartford Planning Commission’s agenda Monday night. Debarshi said the total cost of the project will be known once permits are obtained.
In one of Debarshi’s first assignments in education, his students created a 10-foot by 10-foot garden plot and planned what they would plant. That was more than 30 years ago, and outdoor learning has expanded dramatically since then.
Becky Proulx’s work with first year students at Strafford College shows how sophisticated outdoor learning is becoming.
Tuesday’s lesson continued with a unit on cartography. Arriving at a circle of log chairs in the field, Proulx asked the children to sit quietly and listen for a while, then placed the canvas in a rectangular shape in the center of the circle. The children helped her map the classroom, where they teach most days with teacher Morgan Fisk.
“How many desks are there?” Proulx asked. We then moved on to questions about the number of chairs and the number of windows.
She asked the 16 children present to think about the shape of the world they live in while holding physical objects that could serve as substitutes for desks, chairs, windows, and other classroom equipment. It encouraged them to manipulate numbers in their heads.
Then she and Fisk asked them to form small groups of three or four people.
“My invitation to you and your small group is to pick up a little sheet. That way, you can create a map of how to get from school to here,” Proulx said.
She asked the children to describe what they would put on the map. Then she agreed that the boy should always draw what is there and what will be there in the future.
The group stepped away from the circle and spread out the cloth on the squishy ground, rough with stubble and wheel ruts from recent mowing. The children ran to a nearby tree and gathered sticks, stones, bark, and other objects to represent locations on the map.
We also found caterpillars, centipedes, and spiders.
“Becky! I found a woolly bear!” cried Wilder Zollheide, curling up in his palm. One of his teammates asked if he was going to put it on the map. “Yeah! He’s going to be a teacher!”
Once completed, the whole group walked to each map and each small group gave a short presentation explaining the map.
“Heidi, would you please walk with me from school to the outdoor space (on the map)?” Proulx asked.
Heidi Moore walked her fingers from one side of the fabric to the other through a landscape of grass, tree branches, and torn leaves. Bedu, Bedu, Bedu,” she said. material.
After each presentation, a group member asks, “Do you have any questions?” Like a little professor.
“I think being outside is really good for the children’s bodies,” Fisk said as the children returned the map materials to their original locations. “This just gives them time and space to learn how their bodies move.”
Twenty years ago, children would primarily be playing outside while learning and interacting with technology in the classroom.
These relationships are now reversed as technology and the sedentary nature of using it have become the norm.
“I think a lot of kids right now don’t have a lot of opportunities to play outside,” Fisk said.
Outdoor learning touches on all areas of the Strafford curriculum, from the basics of listening and speaking to reading, writing, numeracy and science.
All first-year students were carrying green backpacks, and inside them were diaries wrapped in plastic bags to keep them dry. While most of the children were running around collecting materials, one girl was sitting on a log, drawing and writing in her journal, an unusual kind of freedom for a six-year-old.
“Third and fourth graders do more writing and drawing,” Proulx said. In fourth grade, students work with the nonprofit organization White River Her Partnership to create and set crawfish traps and study plant and animal ecology.
Proulx has been an outdoor educator throughout his career since the 1990s. She is currently affiliated with the Vermont-based Four Winds Her Nature Center, which sends outdoor educators around northern New England.
There is a difference between outdoor learning and outdoor teaching, but one is a gateway to the other.
Success requires buy-in from school leaders, teachers, parents, and the entire school community.
“If they’re going out and investigating, I think that’s a different kind of learning than just going out and investigating,” she said.
“It’s inquiry-based science and finding ways for kids to do something with it,” Proulx added.
She also works in schools in Lebanon and Enfield. Enfield Village School officials posted photos of the school’s new timber-framed outdoor classrooms on social media last month.
Newton School Principal Tracy Thompson sees outdoor learning as an integral part of the school, with strong support from teachers, parents and students.
Before the wooden frames were built, this kindergarten had its own classroom covered with wood, with logs for chairs and easels for lessons. The children leaned against trees and arranged chairs around the fire pit.
The contrast between this space under the trees and the way education has been for the past two decades, where federal accountability measures have been tied to standardized test scores, seems difficult to reconcile. In Thompson’s view, they are closely related. As long as children are learning, it doesn’t matter where they are.
“We feel that students learn better when they learn in the best possible environment,” she said.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.