The Evolution of Outdoor Education for Schoolchildren

Recently published in Educational Facility Planner, the professional journal of the Association for Learning Environments, “The Evolution of Outdoor Education for Schoolchildren”, by Carol Henry, reflects on the evolution of outdoor education in schoolyards. 

While thoroughly embraced by private schools like the Montessori and Waldorf models, the notion of using the schoolyard for outdoor education has been sluggish in adopting by public schools. Although the idea may be accepted, for many school districts the curriculum, maintenance, and funding necessary to support it have been slow to fully develop.

While sluggish in some areas of public education, especially with middle- and high school-level programs, in others outdoor learning environments are making great strides impacting children across the country.  In Colorado, Denver Public Schools has provided support and funding to implement its innovative Learning Landscape Schoolyards in each of its 98 elementary schools. Other programs around the nation include the Boston Schoolyard Initiative as well as New York City's and Trust for Public Land’s Schoolyard to Playground Initiative. Like these, many have made breakthroughs in elementary school-level outdoor learning opportunities and reconnecting schools with their communities.

Increasingly, entities such as the lottery-funded Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) and The Colorado Health Foundation are stepping in to provide sources of funding for outdoor learning initiatives. Between 2013 and 2016, GOCO offered School Play Yard Initiative Grant that “creates safer, more active play areas and environments for outdoor learning at schools.”

Championing Outdoor Learning Since the 1980s

Design Concepts has long been a champion of expanding the boundaries of learning opportunities in the schoolyard.

The 1980s

In the 1980s, we saved one of the last sections of undisturbed native prairie for a Jefferson County, Colorado, elementary school outdoor learning area and created native learning areas to transition between the mountainous forest and a new elementary school in Nederland, Colorado.

The 1990s

In the ‘90s, we turned a potentially sterile detention area for a large middle school into a biodiverse outdoor learning lab with thriving wetland plants and plentiful wildlife. In 1990 in Boulder, we designed the transformation of an elementary school’s concrete drainage swale into a thriving wetland, observation deck, boardwalk, and outdoor classroom. This wetland area survived the massive Colorado floods in 2013, while the surrounding areas were devastated. The floods were described as 1,000-year rain and a 100-year flood, occurring over 8 stormy days, causing devastation from the eastern side of the continental divide to the Colorado/Kansas border.

Today

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Since then, we have worked on over two-dozen Learning Landscapes, complete with outdoor classrooms, gardens, artwork, colorful gateways and shade shelters, tracks, and environmental learning areas for Denver Public Schools. Student learning pieces include such diverse elements as weather stations with a remote readout for students to track the weather, themed elements which include facts such as insect and animal lifecycles etched in boulders and pavement, poems which describe the places and things one would see travelling along a nearby stream and floating all the way out to the sea, or the fanciful graphics with shapes and colors that students can study and count. We have also helped other school districts to expand their abilities to extend learning into the schoolyard.

Two Innovative Outdoor Learning Environments

Design Concepts is fortunate to be working on two of the most exciting outdoor learning environments for high schools in Colorado and Wyoming, fully integrating the schoolyard into the schools’ curriculum. See full story on these projects at:

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·       Former CAPS/Roosevelt High School, now known as Pathways Innovation Center in Casper, Wyoming

·       Warren Tech Option School Career and Technical Center in Lakewood, Colorado

We are currently working on two exciting high school projects (see full story on these projects here), to fully integrate the schoolyard into the schools’ curriculum at:

·       Former CAPS/Roosevelt High School, now known as Pathways Innovation Center in Casper, Wyoming

·       Warren Tech Option School Career and Technical Center in Lakewood, Colorado

See the Association for Learning Environment journal for the full article

Sheridan's Safe Routes to School - Be Safe Out There!

Remember being a kid? You walked or biked everywhere, all the time.  And walking to school was the worst.  As I recall it, I walked uphill both ways.  In a snowstorm.  Even in June.

Believe it or not, kids who want to get to their school and play destinations today may have it worse than we did back then.  Creepy strangers.  High speed traffic.  Dark alleys.  

But a recent youth engagement effort in the City of Sheridan, Colorado set out to make the community safer for kids .  The Sheridan Safe Routes to School (SRTS) project engaged 28 students at Fort Logan Northgate School to find out where they like to go for fun, where they feel safe or unsafe, and how they get to places they like to play and hangout.  They took photos of their world and worked with a local spoken work poet to describe the images using their own voices.

Thoughts of one youth participant:

“The broken sidewalk reflects on us as a city. Sidewalks like this reflect poorly on our city and show visitors how little we care about the safety of not only our pedestrians but our bikers too."

The results of the students’ hard work were compiled in an interactive Sheridan Safe Routes to School Web Map, where users can see youth photos and comments, and begin to understand their world as they see it. 

The students cited flowers, green spaces, police bicycle patrols, and well-designed sidewalks as positives. Places in open view such as schools and parks were preferred. Among the kids’ greatest concerns were drunk people, drug dealers, and potential predators. Environmental factors such as traffic, walking hazards, and barbed wire also made the list.  Places with poor visibility or limited access such as dark woods and alleyways are avoided.   Interestingly, many locations the kids use for recreation were perceived as safe by some, and unsafe by others. 

Several ‘Signature Projects’ were developed as a result of the youth engagement process.  The kids' work inspired the passing of a $33 million bond in Sheridan for infrastructure improvements, and they were lauded by the Mayor for their efforts in 'giving us our marching orders' on how to spend the funds. 

This successful project was co-led by Jennifer Henninger, Sheridan City Planner, and Cindy Heath, Executive Director at GP-RED, a non-profit initiative of our old friends at GreenPlay, LLC.

Read more about Sheridan and other Safe Routes projects here. 

YMCA Symposium Explores New Terrain

For the first time, Snow Mountain Ranch at YMCA of the Rockies in Granby, Colorado hosted the 2016 YMCA Camp Marketing and Financial Development Symposium. With attendance by YMCA representatives from across the country, the symposium was geared towards YMCA camp marketing and financial development. Many educational sessions focused on all forms of marketing development for camps, donor fundraising, strategies and relationships, working with boards, committees and volunteers, and camp diversity.

Design Concepts sponsored the event, with Shanen Weber, Principal, attending the conference. Shanen shares, 

The symposium literally gave Design Concepts the opportunity to show the type of work we do, and specifically how we worked with YMCA of the Rockies to create their Family Adventure Park, summer tubing hill, and adventure zone playground. It was an invaluable opportunity to show other YMCA's how we could help with their future projects, goals and visions.

Snow Mountain Ranch representatives conducted a site tour of their camp amenities stopping at the summer tubing hill and adventure playground (currently under construction). An explanation of the planning process, funding, construction and use was shared, with Shanen being able to provide input from the designers’ perspective. Conversations and questions asked focused on how the tubing hill has attracted so many to Snow Mountain Ranch, which was the original goal of the project. Other YMCA's were able to see the results of 'out of the box' ideas and what the possibilities are outside of typical programmed activities.

Conversations continued in small groups/sessions and focused on the importance of introducing and exposing the younger generation (small kids) to being outside, enjoying their natural surroundings and environment. The YMCA camps nationwide significantly contribute to nurturing youth towards the “get outside and play” initiative. 

About That Using-technology-to-get-people-outdoors Trend

Are you self-conscious when outside with your head down looking at your phone? I used to be. But today, maybe we shouldn't be.  

Those Awkward Phone Years

We went through an awkward time when our love affair with our phones was growing exponentially, but for some reason, it felt wrong to be doing it outside. I used to question myself in an insecure way,

• "Is everybody looking at me?"
• “Am I being completely anti-social because I'm outdoors staring down at my phone?"
• “How can I make myself look like I'm doing something really important, versus catching up on my Facebook feed?"

Things have changed a lot in the past few years and we're getting comfortable with this all-to-common anti-social heads-down look. Today it's not such a big deal because everyone else is doing the same.  Not that its necessarily a good thing, but we’re a lot less self-conscious or judgmental of others with their noses buried in their smartphone.

There’s a Whole New Smartphone World Out There

Let's go even further to use our phones to get us outside. Even our phones today can hold us accountable for spending time outdoors. We should feel guilty if we don't get outside to use our phone. Alright, let's not get carried away, let's find a balance. 

Enter the world of interactive experiences to help get people outdoors and into nature. The most recent explosion of Pokémon Go comes to mind. Let's appreciate for a moment (remember, no judging) how it drew people to get off their couches and not just get outside, but physically active. That’s an awesome thing! Albeit, the downside is we’re all still staring at a screen the whole time.

Next Evolution = “using-technology-to-get-people-outdoors-trend”

Have you seen Discovery Agents developed by some creative folks north of the border? It's a really cool app playing off the “use-technology-to-get-people-outdoors-trend,” and also gets people to look up and engage with nature. Rather than staring at a screen and fighting a mob to bag an oh-so-rare Squirtle, how about using our phones to solve challenges that can only be accomplished outdoors while engaged with our surroundings? Think about how crazy that would have sounded five years ago.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your phone and get out there!

Close to Home

As part of his research into the factors that affect resident’s perceptions of park system adequacy, Robby compiled a set of statistics for over 1,800 people that tells a story about the footprint of parks in a segment of America. It reveals that the “typical” household has access to approximately an acre and a half of park land within a ten-minute walk from home, along with other insights. The results, as summarized in an article in the November issue of Parks & Recreation Business, should be of interest to planners and policymakers across a range of community types and sizes.