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Our thoughts about developing an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School began with the idea of building a structure that would provide some shade, where classes might gather. It is critical that we learn from the experience of others who have gone down any of the same paths we are looking at.

Thus, it would be very useful if a friend would reach out to teachers and building leaders at the Thomas O’Brien Academy of Science and Technology (TOAST) and seek out thoughts on the pavilion built there about five years ago. The important question to ask is “what would you do differently if you knew then what you know now?” Asking if teachers like the pavilion won’t tell us much. Asking if they use the pavilion might get us slightly closer to useful information. But really we want to know why they use it or why they do not.

This, of course, is just one of several pieces of the project we could really use help with. Please visit here to learn more about this project and the thinking about it. And please read the first, second and third previous posting on moving this project forward.

—Bill Stoneman

The Vegetable Project proposes to build an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School. But what exactly is that?

We took one shot at answering this question on Aug. 12, 2017. But here is another: We are thinking of an outdoor space that offers teaching and learning opportunities that are unlikely to work quite as well indoors, taking advantage especially of stimulation of all the senses, the contribution that contact with nature makes to wellbeing and the real-world experiences that can make learning feel relevant. Perhaps, however, that still does not explain what exactly an outdoor classroom is.

It is worth knowing then that there really is no single definition. The term is used differently by different people, different developers and different schools. A look, however, at how others use the term reveals some pretty exciting possibilities.

The Jeffers Foundation in Minnesota, for example, casts everything on the other side of the schoolhouse window as an outdoor classroom and encourages teachers to bring classes outside to explore and to find creative ways to present the same lessons they teach indoors. The foundation, which describes its mission as supporting environmental stewardship through education, offers tons of great ideas and support material at its web site. We would presumably have to travel to attend one of its signature workshops, titled The Outdoor Classroom; Team Teaching with Mother Nature. But videos and PowerPoint presentations at the web site could really help an enterprising teacher get started.

—Bill Stoneman

A new study concludes that children’s respiratory health benefits from living near greenery. http://www.childrenandnature.org/2017/07/28/urban-biodiversity-affects-childrens-respiratory-health/?mc_cid=78c824fddc&mc_eid=3ddfa7c2d0

Arranging lives so that more children are raised near green spaces is awfully difficult. Schools, however, that see their mission more broadly than the Common Core, or at least recognize that the critical role that health plays in academic performance, can support some of the same possibilities by taking steps to get students nearer to nature more often, by bringing teaching and learning outside.

Indeed, the more attached we are to our digital devices, the more important developing outdoor classrooms become.

—Bill Stoneman