Taking things outside
Cumberland teacher wants outdoor classroom
CUMBERLAND – Most people can probably recall May and June days in grade school when they were sitting in a classroom but yearning to be outside, distractedly gazing out the window at the sunlight streaming across the grass.
Then there’s the issue of increased screen time among students, between using Chromebooks in the classroom and spending time on electronics at home.
When kids spend time outside, studies find that “they’re more engaged in the classrooms, that they’re more self-motivated to learn and that they’re more active learners,” said Dianne Boisvert, a fifth-grade teacher at Community School. “When they transition back into their regular classroom, those benefits are still there.”
With this in mind, Boisvert and teachers across grade levels at Community School are in the early stages of planning an outdoor classroom at the school. The school raised more than $7,000 from a color run held in September, and the outdoor classroom committee’s next step is seeking volunteer landscape architecture guidance.
The concept for the outdoor classroom is three-fold, including a large-group instruction area, a space for small collaborative work and a wooded trail for students to do research among the trees.
First and foremost, Boisvert would like to see an amphitheater built into the hillside behind the school for full-class instruction. For small-group work, she envisions an area nearby with picnic tables – ideally round ones – and some sort of shade structure or canopy.
“It’s hard to find a quiet space that you could actually use, and there’s not a lot of shade,” Boisvert said of the current configuration of school grounds.
For inspiration, Boisvert visited the outdoor STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – park at Exeter-West Greenwich Junior High School. But the school got a $99,910 Champlin Grant for the project, a lot more funding than Community School has, and the Cumberland teachers are looking to do something more cross-curricular.
“We want a space that all teachers can use, whether it’s the ELA teacher or music or art or anybody, just a space where we can take the classroom outside the traditional four walls,” Boisvert told the Cumberland School Committee in a presentation about the idea.
Of course, the outdoors certainly does lend itself to science instruction, especially considering the school has science kits that incorporate outdoor lessons.
Second-grade teacher Robin Nason said it will be nice to teach in a space where students are surrounded by the things teachers are talking about.
“I’m just looking forward to a different space to teach in,” she said. “I know anytime in my classroom I do anything different with the kids, as far as where they’re sitting or how they’re learning, they get excited about it.”
Fourth-grade teacher Cathy Knasas noted that the Soils, Rocks, and Land Forms module has kids taking samples of humus, sand, silt and clay.
“They actually take samples from the school yard, so they can see, ‘Oh, even in the school yard there’s different soils, depending on where it’s located,’ and then they talk about erosion,” she said.
An electricity kit gives students a miniature solar panel, which they can use to rotate or motor or hook up to another solar panel. Another kit has kids going outside to find leaves, twigs and critters to put in a terrarium.
“We want it to be accessible to all teachers, because the area is really pretty,” Knasas said of an outdoor classroom. “The classrooms get so stuffy sometimes. It’s nice to get that fresh air.”
Knasas, Nason and Boisvert are all part of the outdoor classroom committee, which includes one teacher representative from each grade level. The committee has also sought input from other teachers.
The idea for an outdoor classroom began with the physical activity committee, which worked with the organization My School Color Run to plan a color run in September of 2016.
With her parents’ blessing, the committee made the run a memorial run for Emily Otrando, a former Community School student who died from a staph infection in 2014, at age 10. She was described in her obituary as “a sweet, loving, beautiful child who found joy in life and nature.”
“We felt that this was a fitting way to kind of honor her,” Boisvert said.
Boisvert said that so many people expressed interest in the color run that she had to start turning people away. It ultimately raised more than $7,000.
Boisvert hopes to use this money for materials and get volunteer help for labor. Other areas of focus include making sure the outdoor classroom is low-maintenance and safe.