The History of the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative’s Working Groups
Moving academic instruction and other school programs outside quickly was an enormous undertaking, that we thought would be best accomplished with a collaborating team of colleagues. We invited practitioners and subject matter experts to join our working groups to participate in shaping this national initiative and hundreds did.
Working Groups
We convened ten working groups to explore key topics in more detail and develop strategies, ideas, and frameworks to assist school districts across the country. Together, the ten working groups created materials that fit together as “chapters” of what evolved to become a comprehensive, online resource library that we have made available for free on this website. Find the National Outdoor Learning Library here.
The working groups convened around the following ten topics:
Equity working group*
Outdoor classroom infrastructure
Park/school collaboration
Outdoor learning and instructional models
Staffing and formal/nonformal partnerships
School program integration (with PE, recess, before/after care)
Community engagement
Health considerations
Local and state policy shifts
Funding and economic models
*Equity has been the underlying principle for all of this work, and was infused into the overall approach for every working group. It is centrally important, so it also had its own working group to coordinate our overall approach to ensuring equity.
© drew Kelly Photography
© Ayesha Ercelawn
1. Equity Working Group
Throughout the U.S., many schools remained closed for months and even up to a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This left students without a place of stability, safety, protection, and resources to continue their learning and dramatically increased inequities for already vulnerable students, including students living in poverty, students of color, students with disabilities, multilingual learners, students in foster care, and youth experiencing homelessness. Many households lacked the technology and support necessary for students to be successful in distance learning. Working to ensure that as many school grounds as possible could be reopened and used safely by creating outdoor classrooms created a refuge for students whose circumstances prevented them from learning effectively outside of school.
It was the role of the Equity Working Group to assist in the development and implementation of systems to ensure that every child has an equal chance of succeeding in an outdoor learning environment.
11. Community of Practice for Early Adopters
In addition to the ten working groups above, we convened Working Group #11 as a Community of Practice for “Early Adopters”. This working group was a forum for interdisciplinary PreK-12 teams from schools, school districts, and county offices of education around the country that wanted to move forward with outdoor learning plans during the summer of 2020, before widely adopted, established protocols had been published.
This group met weekly that summer, extended through the end of 2020 and continues today. It provided a collegial forum to help participating teams support one another in this challenging work, as more schools reopened throughout the year. During the meetings, there were opportunities for educational institution teams to share their work and questions with one another in large and small group formats, and to work together across jurisdictions to cross pollinate ideas and build a community of practice. (Learn more about the Community of Practice as it exists today.)
Working Group Participants
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all of the organizations and individuals who collaborated to make this Initiative possible.