The two-generation, bilingual Briya Public Charter School is an asset to the 65 Pre-K students who attend and the community it serves in Washington, DC. During the 2020–2021 school year, the school thought creatively and intentionally about how best to continue serving their community. While the school was engaged in some outdoor learning before the pandemic, they ramped up their efforts so that students (and on occasion, their families) could learn completely outdoors. 

They learned that outdoor learning not only offers a safe, equitable opportunity for in-person learning: it offers even more opportunities for sensory play, expanded freedom of movement, and rich language development. They also found that reframing learning in this context was a way to encourage resilience, curiosity, and joyful investigations in all-weather play.

For the 2021–2022 school year, they plan to remain outdoors. They hope to continue into the future by increasing time spent outdoors and expanding to the toddler program.

School Information

• School website

• School type: Charter, two-generation, bilingual.

• Grade levels: Pre-K (birth to 5) and Adult — note that it is the the Pre-K who did outdoor learning!

• Student enrollment: about 65

• Total faculty and staff: about 17 Pre-K teachers (two teachers bilingual and one aide per class), 5 coordinators, about 25 total staff.

• About the school: “Briya Public Charter School educates adults and young children in Washington, DC. Families enroll in Briya’s Two-Generation Program together: parents study English, digital literacy, and parenting while their children receive a high-quality early education. Briya also offers a high school diploma and training for medical assistant and child development associate credentials. The school believes, and research validates, that educating parents and children together promotes strong families and success in school and in life.”

• Partnerships: Mary’s Center, Bancroft Elementary School, and Bridges Public Charter School. Briya PCS is part of the Mount Pleasant Community School Consortium, which is made up of Briya, Mary’s Center, Bancroft Elementary, and other community-based organizations specializing in student- or immigrant-focused engagement.

Location

• Four locations in Washington, DC

Climate

• “Humid subtropical” climate with occasional “nor’easters” storms

• Plant hardiness zone 8a

• Mildly cold winters: 32°F–40°F

• Hot, humid summers: 80°F–100°F

• Snowfall: 15.5” per year

Outdoor Learning Infrastructure Overview

• Before COVID

  • Outdoor time included: two recess times, as well as gardening class once a week at three out of four sites, and at teacher discretion — this included story time, gardening activities, walks around the neighborhood.

  • 100% of students went outside for the activities mentioned above.

• During COVID 

  • All activities except for nap are held outside. In 2020, we had two existing garden spaces at Pre-K sites and we added a third site.

  • In 2021, we added “El Bosque”: we modified a forest area behind one site to be our new outdoor Pre-K space, and we also rented a backyard to open a fourth space. 

  • 2020–2021 school year: Five Pre-K classes at three different sites worked in small cohorts for half days, two  days a week.

  • 2021–2022 school year: five Pre-K classes across four sites for the whole day except for nap time, five days a week.

*Sources: Briya PCS website, NOAA

Backyard
To support the outdoor learning efforts, Christie McKay, the Executive Director of Briya, went door to door in the Petworth neighborhood to ask neighbors if the school could rent a backyard. She was successful and there is now a backyard space that has been converted a to a Pre-K outdoor classroom. 

Forest school
The head of security at Fort Totten, Jose Alfaro, helped immensely by suggesting that the forest area behind the school was a good location for a forest Pre-K. Briya now uses this as area for two Pre-K classrooms and the toddler students use the park that Nancy Striniste designed. 

Small Garden space
The Adams Morgan location has a small garden space that the class used previously for weekly gardening lessons. In addition to this space, students use the parking lot for gross motor activities.

Vacant area
In the Petwork location, head of the maintenance team, Octavio, cleared out the space, put in grass, and created a usable outdoor space.

Green Schoolyards America: Did your school use outdoor spaces before the COVID-19 pandemic? If so, how?

Lydia Mackie: Prior to the pandemic, the time spent outside varied per site. At a few of our sites, in addition to recess two times a day, children participated in weekly gardening classes with a local gardening teacher, who later was a tremendous help when we decided to do outdoor learning during the pandemic. At our Fort Totten site, we had access to the outdoor space that Nancy Striniste (founder and principal at EarlySpace and Director of East Coast Programs at Green Schoolyards America) designed, which was wonderful for conducting special lessons and reading stories outdoors, and this space informed how we might organize the other sites that we opened. At every site, teachers and students took daily walks around the neighborhood to observe and talk about local businesses, seasonal changes, and neighborhood pets.

GSA: How did your school decide to bring education outside this year?

LM: In the spring and early summer of 2020, our school decided that for our young learners and families it was crucial that we have an in-person, safe option to attend classes. Briya was adapting on-the-go in other ways to serve our community that spring, and the administrative team put their heads together to figure out how five Pre-K classes might be able to attend in person: outdoor learning emerged as the ideal solution.

The maintenance and operations team immediately got to work in preparing our two sites with existing infrastructure and our third site that needed a lot of work. In the meantime, Pre-K began the process of planning how we would transform our program to be hybrid, both virtual and outdoors. They created a new position—the outdoor curriculum specialist–and I transitioned from my role as a full time Pre-K teacher to that new role. It was helpful to have this specially designated role as it allowed Lena—who is the Director of Early Childhood Education—and me to act as the go-to team for any questions related to outdoor learning. In order to best work through the many logistics of the outdoor program, I worked with large materials (like furniture and seating) and curricular materials. Lena worked closely with teachers, organizing the additional staffing, and scheduling around health checks, meals, and other logistics. We worked closely with our very creative maintenance team, and additionally, we worked with our school gardener who designed a sensory garden at each site. She helped us a lot with transforming spaces that were unused or paved by adding potted plants and she also added native plants that would attract birds and butterflies. That helped prepare the teachers.

In thinking through how to use the space, we reflected on experiences we had outdoors with children prior to the pandemic. In my own practice as a teacher, Briya had always given me a lot of freedom to take the children outdoors. In the winter prior to the start of the pandemic, I had a few very energetic students who I felt would benefit from more time outdoors. When I brought this up to the Pre-K coordinator and Lena, they were incredibly supportive. My co-teacher and I took the children outside for free play in different areas around the school that we treated as special eco-systems, and they loved it. Their moods and focus improved, and eventually that experience informed a lot of our plan for the pandemic. I was able to say that I had this positive experience with the children outdoors, that they didn't run away, and they actually behaved better! In that experience and later during our time outdoors in the pandemic, I don't feel like we lost academic content. I feel like if anything we gained academic content, because we had this rich environment outside with an hour extra [each] day … It informed how much we could trust the children and how they would navigate the space as well.

LM: Everyone was rightfully a bit concerned in the beginning and in the height of the pandemic. I think when people think about the outdoor space, they think of recess, and what recess looks like, which is children running around uncontrollably. You can never imagine how they're going to focus … especially with the great big temptation of the playground next to them. 

So, what we really wanted to work on is cultivating this idea of “what do we have inside of our classroom and how can we move that outdoors?” 

We work a lot with “corners in the classroom.” We have the “dramatic play corner,” the “sensory table,” the “reading corner.” Through this design children are encouraged to play in small and focused groups. We tried to think through how we could bring the elements of this classroom management technique and design to the outdoor classroom. So the next question was around the supplies and arrangement that would facilitate that focus. 

Freedom of movement was a big concern at the beginning of the pandemic because there was still a suggested six-feet distance, even outdoors. Thus, we really encouraged teachers to have a strong sensory focus for preschool children. If anyone has worked with preschool students before, you may have seen it: they can squat and play with sand and water for a really long time. We predicted that after a long pandemic indoors, that a lot of children might arrive with very anxious energy. This kind of focused, sensory activity really calms them and it centers them. 

It was amazing because, during the first week of school, one teacher said, “We wish the school year was always this calm!” Because they have all this sensory play—and that's kind of led to what we're doing now will adopt more permanently—teachers kept saying, “I wish you could always be like this,” which was really wonderful feedback.

LM: To begin, the teachers at Briya are incredibly adaptive and truly embrace challenges and adventures. Our professional development is robust and the administrators at Briya really encourage a spirit of innovation. Briya is a Reggio-Emilia inspired program, and we have had extensive training on following children’s lead in developing curricula and thinking of play-based activities to engage their curiosity. At the start the school year, I developed an eight-week guide on social-emotional learning in the new outdoor classroom that teachers might use to get started. After that, the teachers had the freedom to choose their area of inquiry, and Lena and I supported them with materials and resources they might need. 

The greatest need for teachers was in support around logistics, as each teaching team had site-specific needs based on their students or location, as each location differed greatly. We worked with teachers through each season to think about everything that might make outdoor learning possible. Through the teachers and our amazing site coordinators, we also stayed in constant communication with the families to understand how they and their children were experiencing the outdoor classroom. Set-up and break-down of the outdoor classroom has been one of the biggest challenges, in addition to adapting to the weather, which I will explain further below. 

Our head of maintenance, Octavio, is incredibly creative and innovative: he helped us think through not only the logistics but also the actual design of play spaces and games for children. We also worked with our gardening teacher, Devon, as she helped us to build the plant and garden infrastructure in each season. Additionally, we collaborated with local community outdoor education advocates who helped us find logs for seating and kindly knitted winter hats for our staff and students! For the 2020–2021 school year, we did everything internally, though in the summer of 2021 we began to look for professionals that we could bring to Briya to teach us about year-round outdoor learning since we were moving to a permanent outdoor model.

Above: Sensory bins can be used in any size space and can be from a variety of items schools likely already have.

GSA: What about if you do not have a lot of room outside? How did you make the most of the spaces you have?

LM: One site was about the size of a driveway, though with raised beds, a large tree, and a bit of open space in the middle. Next to this space there was a parking lot, and we tried to think through how we could alternate between the two spaces. We did sensory activities in the garden and then moved to the parking lot for gross motor activities, and we also used the walls and fences to paint and play with chalk. 

If you only have access to asphalt, you can still add sensory bins that the children will enjoy. Add plastic boxes and fill them with water or sand and whatever materials relate to your curriculum. Implement outdoor play for 30 minutes in the sensory bins and see how they really benefit from that!

Ideas for a small spaces

• Sensory Bin Materials (click for visual supply list)

• Bucket and shovel

• Paper on a wall

• Utility cart (and if possible, a shed to store loose parts supply)

• Water source

• Permission for gross motor play (tricycles, etc.)

GSA: Tell us about how you planned for winter weather, or any suggestions you have for other schools?

LM: Meet families where they are: The parents were very involved in our winter planning. In DC, there are no public schools that are outside all year round. Outdoor learning was not something that we had many local models to model after, so we did a lot of research on outdoor programs in other parts of the country. A lot of the current models are in Vermont and Massachusetts, and one argument is that if they can do it, anybody can do it. But through another person’s perspective, one might say, “Well, they're used to it in that region.” So we try to have empathy for families who are exploring outdoor learning in winter for the first time. We encouraged an open dialogue and we invited parent representatives from each class so that we could have an open discussion about outdoor learning, what their fears were, and what their concerns were. We also talked with teachers because not all teachers signed up to be outdoors in the middle of winter. We collected their input about the types of materials and practices that would make them feel comfortable, such as clothing, heaters, and occasional time indoors. 

These discussions led us to make a decision that we would have a fundraiser to buy winter clothing for all of our Pre-K students who participated in outdoor learning. Our investment in winter clothing was the best investment we made the whole school year because it really allowed everybody to participate and play outdoors in all weather. We purchased clothing for the parents as well, because some of them were attending with their children and so we wanted to make sure they had what they needed as well.

Another positive moment that happened in winter was that we purchased herbal teas for the children to have with their snacks after extensive exercise. The parents also joined for tea time at one site and it turned into a daily community building event, everyone bundled up outdoors with tea and happy children.

Ideas for Winter Supplies

• Tents

• Heaters

• Tea

• Appropriate clothing for ALL

Winter Advice

• Focus on gross motor movement and increased exercise. For example, if a math lesson is about patterns, figure out how to apply physical movement to the lesson.

• Send out a weekly newsletter to families to plan.

• Even if you are concerned about winter, start small and start with spring planning by integrating just 30 minutes of outdoor play!

• One teacher [on a rainy day], let the children vote if they wanted to go inside or if they wanted to stay outside, and they said we all want to stay outside! [They ended up having fun lessons and playing out in the rain.] This led us also to invest in muddy buddies and rainboots for our 2021–2022 school year, which is useful for chilly or rainy weather.

LM: Yes, Briya has decided to move to a more permanent outdoor learning model due to the positive outcomes observed by the teachers, staff, and families.

For example, teachers noticed that children exhibited fewer anxious and active behaviors because movement and sensory play were such an integral part of the outdoor classroom. Furthermore, children engaged in activities for a longer period of time, which really drove the conversations throughout the day. As a bilingual program, rich language exchange and inquiry is an integral part of our program, and teachers felt that the children were quite adept at expressing their curiosity. There was a spirit of scientific experimentation and problem-solving in many of the classrooms, as children asked poignant questions about the compost worms or designed their own tricycle obstacle courses. At lunchtime, children sat longer and ate more, and during nap the children slept more deeply and for longer. 

At the end of the year, we gathered feedback from teachers and almost all said that they would like to continue outdoor learning in the future. Therefore, this summer we invested in more outdoor infrastructure such as sheds and furniture, math and literacy materials, gardening tools, books, and clothing such as rain gear in order to make outdoor learning more permanent across all sites.

GSA: Is there anything else you would like to share?

LM: Reminder of the importance of healing from the trauma and all of its different forms and the benefits of what being outside for 30 minutes can do for our mental health!. So if we're going to be healing from this [period of time], the outdoors is a wonderful antidote. 

I have a few elevator pitches. I'll say, you know, “We talk about children bouncing off the walls, but what if there were no walls?”

And then the other thing I often say is, “[Look at] how many people bought standing desks last year, and how many people said that going for walks, gardening, and spending time outside with their friends was exactly what they needed to feel better. Yet, for our children, they can't just go outside and go for a walk whenever they want! I think it's important for schools to give children that opportunity to heal from this collective trauma – even if they haven't experienced high levels of adversity, though a lot of our students do. Just approaching it from a collective trauma point of view is really important.

Above: Adults and children alike enjoy and benefit from sensory play—even a tub of bubbles!

Visual supply lists from Briya PCS:

• Sensory Bin Materials (Word Doc)

• Winter Outdoor Investments (Word Doc)

• Makeshift Outdoor Classroom (Word Doc)

Briya Outdoor Learning Program

Click on the video below to watch a beautiful visual overview of Briya’s outdoor learning program.

Community of Practice Presentation

Click on the video below to heard Briya PCS’s staff Lena Johnson and Lisa Luceno share more about the outdoor learning strategies at the school, as well as inspiring stories of resilience from their school community. This Community of Practice presentation is from August 17, 2021.