The Gardner Schools of Arts and Sciences, a small school serving about 100 students Preschool through 6th grade, knows that having opportunities for creative play and learning outdoors is important to children’s learning and happiness. This proved to be even more true at the start of the pandemic. After a remote Spring in 2020, the school began to make plans for outdoor learning for Fall 2020. The school leaned into their existing opportunities: small class sizes, some existing outdoor learning spaces, and a history of outdoor education.

Two notable successes are that teachers felt comfortable and supported in shifting to outdoor learning, and families felt they could trust the school to make decisions that contributed to students’ well-being while being safe in terms of public health. They also implemented simple additions, such as using wagons to cart supplies, and incorporating walking field trips to the local university campus. These strategies can be used at any school level, scale, and location when applied creatively.

The school has embraced outdoor learning opportunities that will continue into the future—tents and all!

INTERVIEW WITH SCHOOL STAFF

In September 2021, Emily Davis, Head of School spoke spoke with Green Schoolyards America volunteer and school parent, Jane Tesner Kleiner, to share how Gardner School of Arts and Sciences adapted their outdoor spaces during the pandemic.

Q: How did your school use outdoor spaces before the COVID-19 pandemic?

Emily Davis: The school already had several outdoor learning spaces, including early childhood spaces, learning garden, outdoor classroom and learning wetland/woodland. To reopen for fall 2020, we erected three large tents with sides to use for a variety of outdoor learning opportunities. The early learning classrooms have a stage with a tent and the older students used portable chairs to move to tents on the grass field.

Q: How did you decide to bring education outside this year?

ED: The school did switch to remote learning during COVID (spring of 2020), but was fully open during the 2020–2021 school year and is open full time for 2021–2022, as well. The team—staff and board members—met to discuss how to approach learning strategies while complying with federal and state guidance and mandates. Because the school has done lots of teaching outside and has small class sizes, the team determined the school could adapt to implement recommended safety features and protocols. A number of measures were implemented such as hand sanitizer stations, improved air filtration systems, use of open windows and doors for fresh air, as well as how best to utilize the outdoor learning spaces.

School Data

• School website

• School type: Private school, non-profit status.

• Grade levels: Preschool through 6th grade. The school saw an increase in enrollment for Kinder and 1st grade and a decrease in the middle school.

• Student enrollment: 93 students.

• Faculty: 17, including Spanish, Art, Music, PE/Health, Science, Early Childhood, Elementary and Middle School staff and Administration

• Campus size:  5 acres

Location

• Vancouver, Washington, a city north of the Columbia River and a part of the Portland-Metro area.

• Population is about 186,192.

Climate

• “Warm-summer Mediterranean” climate with cold eastern winds through the Columbia River Gorge and occasional frost.

• Very wet, cool winters: 32°F - 40°F

• Warm, dry summers: 70°F - 80°F

• Precipitation: 164 days per year

• Rainfall: 65.5” per year

• Snowfall: 1” per year

Outdoor Learning Infrastructure Overview

• Before COVID

  1. All classes have capacity and opportunities to go outside, including PE, general education classrooms, recess, and lunch.

  2. All students get a minimum of sixty-five minutes of recess every day, which is typically about two hours out of their seven hour day. Many of the classes choose to go outside for learning for hands-on projects, messy and maker space activities, PE field and forest time, projects in the gardens, and so on. On special days, children will spend the majority of their day outside for walking field trips and special activities.

• During COVID 

  1. The number of outdoor spaces added or improved due to COVID and capacity is the same as before; every class goes outside. Many lunches are outside, as well, especially on Pizza Friday!

  2. Teachers have increased the amount of time outside, especially when the weather is nice.

*Sources: Head of School, NOAA

Q: How did you prepare your staff and school community to take learning outside this year? Is your school collaborating with any educational partner organizations?

ED: Gardner has a strong community connection with the families that attend the school. There were a number of opportunities to connect with families to share latest updates on school improvements, both inside and outside, to help prepare for safety measures. We use e-newsletters, Zoom meetings and one-on-one conversations with families to ensure everyone’s needs can be heard and addressed. 

Our team created a web portal called the SafeStart 2020 Plan.

The plan covers eight key areas of information to help families find what they are looking for. Emily Davis, the Head of School, made several videos to provide key information and keep families informed. The team tried to automate wherever possible, such as health screenings and check ins for students in the morning.

Q: How did your school plan and implement your outdoor classroom infrastructure? What was involved? Who did you find to help you with this? Were permits needed?

ED: As mentioned, many of the outdoor spaces were already established. We did not need to obtain permits to erect the large tents as they are not permanent features. Any furniture needs, like chairs and desks, were portable and set up in the tents as needed. Our early education classrooms have direct doors leading to their outdoor learning areas, from the main building on campus, so they don’t need to go through the whole building unless using interior restrooms. The older classes (3rd/4th and 5th/6th grades) are in portables adjacent to the main building, so they, too, have direct access right outside their door to the outdoor learning areas. The other piece is adding wagons to carry and move materials, such as clipboards and portable equipment. How to manage logistics of moving items around was more difficult to resolve than changing curricula for outdoors.

Q: What types of planning and implementation did you do related specifically to COVID health needs? (e.g. outdoor hand washing stations, health protocols, etc.  Did you seek expert advice?)

ED: The team worked diligently to keep informed of the regional Public Health Department and State guidelines for safety. We do have outdoor hoses if items need to be washed off and hand sanitizer stations are located throughout the campus.

Q: When did your school reopen using outside spaces?  Tell us a little about how it is going for you now regarding the logistics involved with being outside.

ED: We reopened for regular scheduling with the 2020–2021 school year in September 2020. One of the biggest curricula changes has been music, which we have moved mostly outside.

A year into this, everything feels normal. We're into our routines with all of the safety protocols and students love to get outside—rain or shine—to learn. None of it's been easy, and it's been a lot of added work, but we've been creative, flexible, and decisive on what our plans are and that's made a world of difference for students in our community.

Q: What would you say have been the biggest challenges and the successes of holding school outdoors? 

ED: One of the biggest challenges was just overcoming the transition from outdoors to indoors and back, including hand washing and sanitizing and the transporting of equipment and supplies—such as helping younger students to not leave materials outside at the end of the day. Along those lines was the purchasing of the necessary materials to make the shift to meet the extensive guidelines, such as the tents, extra handwashing stations, and so on.

Our successes include the teachers comfort to move so much teaching outdoors. Many of the staff already had ideas on how to teach outside, especially since we have so many resources, like the learning garden. There are so many great hands-on activities in our outdoor setting. For example, the kids went on a “Noun Walk” and walked around the wetlands area to spot all of the nouns around them.

Another success is the community who put their trust in us to make all of the necessary changes and keep their kids in school safely. Lots of open and transparent communication across several means helped to make the transition easier.

We also continue to expand our walking field trips, as we are fortunate to live near the Washington State University Vancouver campus.

Q: What’s next? Do you think you will continue to use outdoor learning as part of your overall approach after COVID is over? How will what you did during COVID impact what you do in the future? 

ED: We will definitely continue to teach outdoors post-COVID as it follows the model of host we teach using the Multiple Intelligences with project-based learning. We use lots of hands-on projects in real world settings. Some kids have their own camp chairs that they use and write on their clipboards, so that will still be an option. The teachers have not really asked for permanent desks and chairs outside, as they like the flexibility to move around to the different locations around the campus.

Q: Would you recommend that other schools try this?

ED: We would recommend it 100%! Everyone on the staff is part of the solution to make the changes work on campus. The school community is dedicated to making decisions to help keep the students and staff healthy. The students have become accustomed to these changes due to COVID, AND they are still finding joy in their experiences outside and still love learning!

When you do make these simple changes—masking, taking lessons outside—it works. This long into the pandemic, the protocol works well and we have had no transmission on campus. They are healthier, they are active, and they are engaged. Being outside has been incredibly beneficial to their physical health, mental health, and well-being.

Building trust and transparency in communications is key to working with the entire school community in the expectations and ownership in the overall program. When problems or questions arise, everyone is committed to working together to finding a solution.