Know Your Goals

This resource was last updated December, 2021.

Creating Healthy Learning Environments

Everyone wants to stay healthy. For school administrators and staff, however, this goal can prove challenging because of inconsistent information, shifting conditions, and conflicting opinions. It becomes tricky in this uncertain environment to come to agreement on strategies and protocols that promote health.

Recognizing this challenge, we recommend that schools create a few clear goals, informed by diverse stakeholders, to help everyone maintain healthy environments. These goals can help administrators and staff communicate transparently about the tradeoffs among the strategies and practices that might reach those goals, and increase the likelihood that parents, students, and other community members will embrace those strategies.

Consider incorporating outdoor learning into your goals and policies (e.g., school improvement plans, wellness policies, and community engagement strategies), making a version of these goals visible to all. Reminding all parties of common goals can help focus children, parents, teachers, and others on priorities to stay healthy and promote environments that support learning.

Here are some ideas to use as a starting point to help you shape your goals for promoting healthy outdoor learning environments and activities.

We support the health and well-being of all children, staff, and families. We will lower the risk and incidence of virus transmission by using outdoor strategies that are shown to be effective indoors, including wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, making frequent hand hygiene easy and the “norm,” staying home when sick, and cohorting groups of children and adults who work with them. When needed, we will implement isolation and quarantine measures with virtual learning support, in accordance with CDC guidelines.

We strive to create an inclusive and culturally appropriate outdoor learning environment. We recognize that outdoor learning can both promote inclusive environments and pose new barriers to inclusion. We will seek to continually learn about and address the unique barriers many families, students, and communities face in participating fully during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

We will foster opportunities for children to learn, play, and grow in ways that support all areas of development. That will include social-emotional, cognitive, mental health, sensory development and regulation, physical and gross motor development, and others, including physical health/chronic disease management.

We will seek ways that outdoor learning can build a sense of community, foster resilience, and promote learning opportunities for students and families in the following ways:

Modeling novel approaches to community well-being, demonstrating the courage and creativity to learn and play outdoors. In some communities, where educators and administrators may be unfamiliar with or inexperienced with the benefits of outdoor learning, a bias against the relative “worth” of outdoor learning can get in the way of evidence that it works. When those staff and leaders begin to trial outdoor education, they often quickly discover the multiple benefits of these approaches. Children and families often report more engaged, fulfilling learning.

Engaging partners in ways that promote healthy environments. Some schools have engaged local environmental education organizations to help identify outdoor site “assets” that educators can use to enhance learning. Explore whether a volunteer designer from the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative might be available to help your school district do this.

Encouraging outdoor play and learning among families, during out-of-school time. Many families may not have experience helping their children pull away from screens and indoor activities. Offering parents and students strategies that increase comfort outdoors can go a long way. Examples include boosting simple observational activities, yard or neighborhood “mapping” activities, and free play. When neighborhood conditions are not conducive to outdoor play, it may help to “bring the outside in,” offering natural materials (e.g., rocks, leaves, bark, wood, a sand sensory bin, and water) in place of man-made objects. These can often spur imaginary and peer play — important experiences for healthy development.

During these challenging times, try to engage members of your school or educational community to shape common goals. This process, the goals that emerge, and the community’s role in shaping these goals can offer an important ingredient of educational success: a shared purpose.

SOURCES

Green, C., (2017). Four methods for engaging young children as environmental education researchers. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, 5(1).

Waite, S., Goodenough, A., (2018). What is different about Forest School? Creating a space for an alternative pedagogy. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 21(1), 25–44.

Credits

This article was written by Mary Michaud, MPP, Health & Social Impact Strategies, LLC in January 2021.
It was reviewed by Zach Pine, MD, Zach Pine Create with Nature; Kathy Reiner, MPH, BA, BSN, RN; and Betsy Ukeritis, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative

The National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative supports schools and districts around the country in their efforts to reopen safely and equitably using outdoor spaces as strategic, cost-effective tools to increase physical distancing capacity onsite and provide access to abundant fresh air. The Initiative seeks to equitably improve learning, mental and physical health, and happiness for children and adults using an affordable, time-tested outdoor approach to keeping schools open during a pandemic.