Going back to school but staying outside

Around the world, we are thinking about when and how to bring children back to schools. This week we’ll talk about a seems-weird-at-first-but-on-second-thought-why-not idea of keeping kids outside for much of the day when they return to school. Why? For safety and for smarts.

School's out for (spring and) summer 

Most kids have been out of school since March. At the peak of school closures in April, nearly 1.6 billion children — over 90% of the world’s enrolled students — were out of school.

Image source. UNESCO Institute for Statistics estimates of school closures in April 2020. 

Now schools in countries like Taiwan, France, and Iceland have begun reopening. But because of safety regulations, children's school environments don’t look like they used to. In some schools, kids wear masks or visors. In others, they are separated from each other by plastic partitions.

Maybe there’s a better way to do this.

Image source. Children in reopened schools in France and Taiwan.

In North America, many regions only plan to reopen schools at the start of the next academic year in September. By that point, students will have been out of school for six months. 

During a normal summer, students forget some of what they learned during the school year. This is called summer learning loss, or more evocatively, the summer slide. Estimates of how much students lose over the summer vary study-to-study. But to give you a ballpark, a recent analysis of 200 million test scores from almost 18 million students across the U.S. estimates that over an average summer, an average student loses 17-28% of the previous year's gains in English and language arts (labeled ELA in the graph below) and 25-34% of the previous year’s gains in math. And younger students show proportionally larger drops over the summer than older students.

Image source. Students show English and language arts (ELA) and math gains over the school year and losses over the summer.

Image source. English and language art (ELA) test scores for students in grades 1-4 and 5-8. Younger students show larger drops over the summer.

There’s also a looooot of individual variability in how much students lose (and in some cases, gain) over a summer. Some students lose nearly all of the previous year’s gains, while some actually show faster gains during the summer than they do during the school year. Part of this can be explained by socio-demographics, but these variables show somewhat inconsistent patterns. We don’t yet know what helps some kids avoid or reverse the summer slide, but the home environment—parents’ involvement, skill, and expectations—may play a large role.

After seeing these numbers, you might understand why some in my household have called me “anti-summer”. I’m all for free time, but how about a few two-week breaks spread out over the course of a year instead of this great disequalizer, ahem... I mean "summer vacation"? 

In any case, after this year’s double-length break, I imagine we’ll see pretty wild variability in kids’ knowledge loss when they return to school. Kids’ home lives during the pandemic have been really varied. Some kids are home alone while their parents are at work in essential industries. Some kids have a non-working parent or caretaker. Some have internet at home and online classes. Some don’t. Some kids are home all day with parents who are working remotely. Some kids are experiencing immense stress because a parent has lost work or a family member has gotten ill.

This upcoming academic year will be important and difficult. It will provide an opportunity to minimize knowledge differences that accrued over six months away from school. And there will also be safety regulations to follow.

Keeping kids out(side) of school

So, stakes are high. What if we use this next academic year as an opportunity to try something new? Specifically, I want to make a case for a large-scale experiment in using school grounds for learning. 

There are many benefits to sending classes outdoors (see e.g., here, here, here): improved learning and academic performance, better communication and collaboration, and increased care for the environment.

Elementary-school-aged children are more enthusiastic about outdoor learning activities than older children. Since younger students will have also lost more knowledge over the break and will probably struggle more with safety rules indoors than older students, they seem like the perfect population to take outdoors for large parts of the school day.

Taking kids outside frees up classroom space needed to maintain social distancing. And the risks of COVID transmission are lower outdoors. For these reasons, countries like Denmark have already taken classes outdoors to get kids back in school this academic year.

But in order to make outdoor schooling a sustainable long-term practice, rather than a short-term fix we abandon come winter 2020, we need to consider the barriers that prevent outdoor schooling from reaching its full potential.

Image source. An outdoor lesson in Denmark.

Barriers to outdoor learning

A lot of research on outdoor learning has examined big and bold initiatives, like outdoor adventure activities, forest schools, and field trips. When well-planned, executed, and followed-up, these initiatives can improve students’ knowledge and skills in ways that complement classroom experiences.

But they have some pretty big barriers to entry. Two of these are fear and concern for students’ health and safety (What if a student gets bitten by a snake? Or breaks a leg?) and lack of time, resources or support to make these activities possible (Who is going to pay for the bus or park entrance fees? Who will organize the logistics?).                                  

These issues are less of a concern when school grounds are used for outdoor learning. Taking kids outside to a playground area doesn’t pose more risk than recess and doesn’t require booking a bus or collecting permission slips from parents.

So that’s positive. If we want to get kids learning outside this fall, it’s probably better to do it on school grounds rather than planning larger, more intricate activities away from school. 

But there are still considerable obstacles to overcome on school grounds. Distilling previous research on this topic (see e.g., here and here), there are four general barriers that crop up across different schools and regions of the world:

• Curriculum requirements

• Inspiration

• Confidence

• Physical constraints

Let’s take a look at each of them and how they can be overcome to make outdoor learning sustainable.

Image source. School grounds don’t have to be big or fancy to offer good spots for learning.

Curriculum requirements

School curricula place many requirements on teachers and there’s a pressure to “teach to the test”. In this context, outdoor learning can seem like a nice-to-have that may not help students acquire any knowledge or skills that they will be tested on later.

Seeing how the outdoors connect to the material students are learning is easier for some subjects than others. For example, a study of 45 schools that underwent greening initiative of their grounds found that science and physical education were the subjects most often taught outside, while subjects like language arts, math, or geography were rarely or never taught outside.

This doesn’t mean that nearly all subjects can’t be taught outside. As part of another study, teachers came up with creative activities like using chestnuts, pine cones, and shells to practice math or using observation in language arts lessons: “Look at that tree. Its color, its shape. Look again: tell me what else you see.”

The big problem is that finding links between mandated curricula and outdoor activities takes time and effort. One way that teachers have overcome this problem is by working in teams to develop a common teaching framework and to share learning activities with one another. In one school, teachers created packs of outdoor learning cards. Each card listed a learning assignment related to the school’s curriculum that kids could complete during free time.

On a broader scale, non-profits have stepped in to develop and share outdoor lesson plans tailored to local curricula (e.g., Evergreen for the British Columbia curriculum). There are also websites that aggregate teaching resources, including resources on outdoor learning (e.g., Twinkl). But given feedback from teachers that scarce time and energy are a major problem, there seems to be an opportunity to create products that assemble outdoor learning activities linked to school curricula. Apart from schools and teachers, parents might also be interested in easy, low-key outdoor learning activities for kids that don’t require hours of research and prep (cause who has the time???).

Inspiration

It’s hard to start doing something new. As one teacher explained: “It’s just easier and safer maybe to teach the old way in the classroom.” When teachers themselves have spent all of their schooling indoors, what can motivate them to get out of their comfort zone and start to teach outdoors?

Outdoor learning activities for teachers are one inspiration. Teachers participated in learning activities demonstrated by more experienced teachers recognized the potential that outdoor learning has and realized that moving outdoors might not be as difficult as they previously imagined.

Outdoor learning doesn’t have to be big and grand. As one teacher described: “Small things you are doing can already be big… there are a lot of learning opportunities.” Another teacher described the relief of realizing that outdoor teaching is doable: “I felt my shoulders relaxing, I definitely want to start doing it myself.”

Once teachers took their first steps to teaching outside, further inspiration came from seeing how their students reacted. Many children expressed wonder and surprise, which was gratifying for teachers. Children were also receptive to learning things that would normally be a tough sell, like math.  

Confidence

Another barrier to teaching outside is confidence. Teachers report worrying that they will lose control of students or that it will be difficult to manage their behavior outdoors. What if kids stop listening or wander off?

To get past this barrier, teachers report needing to get a new teaching ‘tude. An easy-going one. Instead of focusing on fear, teachers learned to trust children’s independence and responsibility. This could be difficult, since monitoring the children and making safety warnings was second nature.

Familiarizing students with the outdoors, repetition, and rules also helped. Teachers started with walks around the school grounds or took the class for a reading break outdoors. Going outside frequently made it routine and outdoor rules were laid down so kids wouldn’t get hurt.

Another fear that held teachers back was the fear that class would go off-track and that students would ask unexpected questions. Lessons are rarely linear or predictable outside. Teachers had to overcome assumptions about needing to show mastery or being able to answer every question on the spot.

One way that this fear might be allayed is by moving typical lessons to an outdoor classroom, rather than trying to come up with new activities around school grounds. This approach has been shown to be effective even with young students. For example, in one study, kindergarten teachers reported that students enjoyed class more in an outdoor classroom vs. an indoor one. And the teachers themselves also enjoyed teaching more in the outdoor classroom. Kids agreed. Most of the students reported liking the outdoor classroom more than the indoor classroom. And the outdoor classroom was especially beneficial to students with disabilities, who were less distracted and spent more time on-task outside than indoors.

Another possibility is to designate or hire one teacher to be an “outdoor” teacher who guides outdoor activities. Informal, all-ages activities, like maintaining a garden, can still result in a lot of learning, as reported by one such teacher: “Teaching just happened out there . . . we picked up apples and leaves and put them in the composter. We screened compost. We brought mulch in and soil in, and the older children spread it on the hillside. We planted. And I did a lot by letting them learn through playing… They would dig deep holes in them, build landscapes, whatever. Stomp through puddles.”

Image source. An outdoor classroom for a kindergarten class.

Physical constraints

A final barrier to using school grounds is practical. The school grounds might be badly designed or maintained, or there might be inclement weather (cough, cough Canada).

The design and maintenance of outdoor areas is one area where parents might pitch in. Some previous studies, like the outdoor classroom study mentioned above, recruited school families to help repurpose and improve school grounds for teaching.  

As far as weather, teachers in northern climates report success teaching outside in the fall and spring. Seasonal changes offer good learning experiences for kids. In the fall, kids can use leaves, chestnuts, and acorns to create crafts. In the spring, they can sow seeds and observe plant growth and development. And of course, in some temperate places outdoor learning can happen all year.

We have two months to get ready for the start of school. By considering barriers to outdoor learning and adopting solutions to address them, I hope that schools that try out outdoor classes this fall can keep things going long-term.

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