Outdoor Classrooms Shouldn't End With the Pandemic

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- In the weeks since the Centers for Disease Control issued new guidelines for reopening schools, we have learned one lesson: It's going to take more than a policy document to make this goal a reality. That's especially true in poor communities, which have been hit hardest by Covid-19, and where students have suffered the greatest academic setbacks. Many families as well as educators remain reluctant to return to in-person instruction.

Instead of engaging in political finger-pointing, there is one approach that might foster confidence in reopening in-person schools while also promoting learning and the physical and emotional health of students: a mandatory, extended spring-to-summer  curriculum focused on outdoor learning. President Joe Biden alluded to his support for summer school during a CNN Town Hall on Feb. 16.

A key reason to require an extended academic year is that reopenings are likely to happen too slowly and fitfully to make much of a difference, from an academic perspective, if the school year ends in June. That's especially true since the Biden administration announced this week that it is requiring districts to administer annual standardized tests, which typically occupy schools during the first half of April.

The annual testing season also means that schools often spend much of March on test prep. While the administration would have been wiser to cancel this year's tests, as they have no diagnostic value, it is allowing schools to modify test schedules. (Unlike locally developed diagnostic tests that allow teachers to tailor lessons to student needs, state-administered standardized tests can take months to mark and, therefore, have little pedagogical value.)

Schools should take advantage of the opportunity to postpone standardized tests to the end of summer or even the beginning of the next school year, and complete current academic projects at the end of March. Schools could then use much of April to give students and staff a one- to two-week break, with the remainder of the month devoted to planning a full spring-to-summer curriculum.

One important goal would be to take advantage of warmer weather and to borrow from myriad programs that allow teachers to develop mixed schedules of in-school and out-of-school work. Such curriculums allow schools to experiment with engaging hands-on projects that are now common among both public and private progressive schools. Equally important, they would help students who have spent months in isolation and on Zoom screens get outdoors and moving.

Teachers in a number of districts, even in cold-weather states like Wisconsin and Maine, have experimented successfully with outdoor learning. For example, in Sussex, Wisconsin, about 20 miles outside Milwaukee, kindergarten teacher Peter Dargatz aims to spend as much as four-to-six hours each day teaching on an outdoor trail he began to cultivate long before the pandemic behind Woodside Elementary School, which has mostly remained open during the pandemic for both indoor and outdoor classes.

Children learn to count and write by observing what they see outdoors — the number of pine cones, descriptions of bird nests, letter shapes they see in nature. Students work on transforming the school's acreage back to original prairie, planting native shrubs and weeding — a long-term project that teaches children patience because they may not see results until they reach fourth grade. By April, at the start of the Great Wisconsin Birdathon, Dargatz's 5-year-olds will sit outdoors 15 minutes at a time, identifying bluebirds, chickadees and wrens as they migrate north.

By moving classrooms outdoors, schools can solve two problems simultaneously: Provide rich learning experiences for children of all ages — in the Bronx, high school students study the Bronx River and local parks as part of science class — while also opening up school indoor space for some socially distanced classes for other grades.

The growing availability of vaccines will make indoor classes more practical. But after months of Zoom classes and social isolation, schools should prioritize outdoor learning and activities that promote students' mental and physical health, including play.

A spring-summer curriculum would also give districts the opportunity to test the “balanced calendar” concept, which was gaining popularity in some districts even before the pandemic as a way to mitigate summer learning loss. This approach has students in school year-round with one- to two-week mini-breaks throughout the year. While 86% of schools operate on a traditional schedule, nearly three million U.S. students, or about 4%, attend a year-round school.

Year-around academic schedules are controversial because they can interfere with summer plans, such as vacations, camp and job- and internship opportunities, although a well-designed summer program should build in such opportunities. They can also be unwieldy for families with children in different schools with different schedules.

However, this summer, when the lingering pandemic is still likely to curtail travel and other summer activities, would be an ideal time to try an extended-summer schedule. Families may be eager to travel and socialize with family again, but the nation's priority should be to promote children's learning and health.

The benefits of year-round school are clear, especially for disadvantaged students most at risk of losing skills learned in the spring over a long midsummer break. Poor children also have few educational summer options. Schools with year-round schedules also enjoy lower teacher turnover; teachers say they appreciate the frequent short breaks, rather than one long summer hiatus.

However, a decision to extend the school year at the last minute will likely require teachers to work more hours. The federal government should earmark some stimulus funds to support extended schooling, especially for the poorest districts.

State and city governments, meanwhile, could build goodwill with rank-and-file educators by working with teachers to develop spring-and-summer curriculum plans and by speeding the availability of vaccines for teachers with the condition that they can return to the classroom faster.

Teachers' unions in some states have balked at reopening plans. They should work with districts to make a spring-and-summer schedule work. If they don't, they risk squandering the goodwill they earned during the widespread protests over pay and teaching conditions two years ago and during the early months of the pandemic as they adapted to teaching remotely. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of "After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform."

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