The Waldorf School
of DuPage

Warrenville, Illinois

The Waldorf School of DuPage is an independent school in the western suburbs of Chicago, situated on five acres of wooded and open land that allow students to experience the natural world every day. The school serves ~100 children, who range in age from early childhood through 8th grade.

The Waldorf School of DuPage was one of the first schools in the country to decide to address COVID-19 by aiming to bring its school program outside nearly 100% of the time, for all students who wished to return to in-person learning in the 2020-21 school year. They successfully achieved this goal by collaborating with members of their school community in late spring and over the summer to build outdoor classrooms that were ready by the first day of school in September 2020.

Their new outdoor seating areas have enough capacity for every child and every teacher at the school. Each outdoor classroom includes hand-made desks that were designed and constructed by volunteers from the school community. The school partnered with a local company to provide weather-proof tents that can handle the snow and are approved by the local fire department.

The community also helped to install canopies in the forested areas of the campus that are used by early childhood classes. This community participation helped the school to save money, to build their outdoor classrooms quickly, and to customize their outdoor environment to support their curriculum across the grade levels.

Interview

We spoke with The Waldorf School of DuPage’s Administrator, Rebecca Gandy, in mid-September to find out how their outdoor learning efforts started. We followed up with her again in mid-November to hear how things are going, now that the school community has settled in:

Q: Why did your school decide to bring education outside this year?

RG: “Early-on, after shelter-in-place orders were enacted for COVID-19, faculty initiated conversations about longterm planning and reopening of their campus for on-site learning. This pilot group formed a reopening committee in the spring while the 2019-20 school year was still in progress. This committee was especially focused on investigating ways to reduce the risks of disease transmission with reduced use of face coverings. They noticed that all state and federal communications and guidance encouraged being outside for its increased ventilation and ability to physically distance. In surveys to families about what they would feel comfortable with in Fall 2020, the only thing that 100% of people responded positively towards was being outdoors.

In Waldorf education, nature is already incorporated into instruction and curriculum. Given these factors—family support, state and federal guidance, and Waldorf philosophy—the question for the reopening committee became: How do we get outdoors more?”

Q: What are your goals for outdoor learning?

RG: “The Waldorf School of DuPage is aiming for outdoor instruction 100% of the time when possible. Exceptions will be if families are opting for distance learning or distance learning is needed due to health concerns, or for severe weather days. To achieve this goal, the school adjusted its school calendar to consolidate breaks to the coldest parts of the year. Additionally, we are offering in-person learning using indoor classrooms or distance learning only on severe weather days. By investing in outdoor learning infrastructure we are making long-lasting additions to our programming and enhancing our school’s existing instructional opportunities. Our overarching goals with outdoor learning are to provide an opportunity for safe and healthy in-person interaction and to make up for the vital in-person interaction that we missed in Spring 2020”

Q: What was your school’s planning process for outdoor learning?

RG: “Our school started with a lot of ideas and solutions for the question of how to get outdoors more with students. We began with three different scenarios for outdoor infrastructure: 1) temporary tents, 2) wooden pavilions, and 3) canopy spaces in our forested areas. Due to permitting, the wooden pavilion-style structures have been delayed, but remain a long-term vision for the school campus. Our school partnered with a company to provide tents that can handle the snow and are approved by the fire department.

The community of families came together to support the school in planning for outdoor learning. Families have volunteered their time and labor to support tent installation. A parent who is a carpenter drew up designs for outdoor desks and other parents have worked together to build them. The desks come in three sizes for different-aged children and are each designed for an individual student, which makes physical distancing easier. The community also helped install canopies in the campus’s forested areas for use by early childhood classes. Through community volunteerism and family support, The Waldorf School of DuPage has been able to save on costs and build classroom areas quickly to get students back to in-person learning.”

Q: It’s November now. How have the last 2.5 months been going for you? What has it like being outside this semester?

RG: “We have successfully operated outdoors since the beginning of the school year. We have outdoor classrooms for each grade, and for Early Childhood. Keeping the outdoors as Plan A, we have had only one day in which the Early Childhood was closed for weather and the grades were inside for part of the day. On rare occasions a class will come inside for a short period of time. Early in the year our first grade came in for lunch a few times due to wasps that were very interested in their lunches. There was thunder one afternoon that brought students in for the last 45 minutes of school. For some classes, orchestra is held indoors in very small groups twice a week. We truly are outside nearly 100% of the school day. And we are acclimating well to the cold weather as well.”

Q: It sounds like you have been very successful with being open during a pandemic. Can you tell us about your approach to managing virus transmission?

RG: “We have a very specific reopening plan with regards to health screenings and mitigation measures. Every family signed a Health Pledge at the beginning of the year promising to follow our plan by supporting standard mask wearing, social distancing, and hand sanitizing, staying home when sick, and seeking testing when appropriate. Layering those measures with being outdoors is what we believe has enabled us to stay open, in person, with not one positive case among our students to date.”

Health Protocols

• Reopening Plan and Handbook, November 2016

• Health Pledge, required for all families, faculty, and staff who return to school

More information and resources

• Summer blog post about their approach to outdoor learning

• Presentation slide deck shared by The Waldorf School of DuPage

• Downloadable case study, written by Naomi Stern

• Facebook page for The Waldorf School of DuPage

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.