McDowell County students will soon have access to outdoor classrooms. Work began in December at Bradford Elementary, and Mount View and River View High Schools.
McDowell County students will soon have access to outdoor classrooms. Work began in December at Bradford Elementary, and Mount View and River View High Schools.
McDowell County Schools are using about $565,000 in federal stimulus funds to build outdoor classrooms at five different schools.
Amanda Peyton Assistant Superintendent and Project Manager at McDowell County schools says the pandemic renewed interest in spending time outside and also on the importance of proper ventilation.
Peyton says it’s been challenging to find available workers to begin the outdoor classroom project. Many contractors are already juggling other projects funded by federal dollars, with limited supplies.
Each classroom will have mobile and amphitheater seating, outdoor whiteboards, landscaping and sunshades.
A group of fourth and fifth grade students at Morgantown Learning Academy — a private, non-profit elementary school located in Monongalia County — are sitting at two picnic benches surrounded by a forested canopy on a recent Thursday. This isn’t a special field trip. Every Thursday, students spend part of their classroom time outside with Mountain Stewardship & Outdoor Leadership, or Mountain SOL.
Two streams — Lemon Creek and West Run — meander nearby the outdoor classroom. After a lesson on the basics, the students split into small groups, grab plastic probes the size of TV remotes and hop down into the creeks to take measurements.
“I think there’s a difference in opening up a science textbook and learning about water quality and looking at maps of a watershed,” Hannah Spencer said. Spencer is an instructor with and co-founder of Mountain SOL, an outdoor education program based in Morgantown.
“When you can go outside and be in your own watershed … I think it really brings it down to, to the level of ‘Hey, I have an impact here. And, you know, this is part of my responsibility, and I need to take care of it,’” she said.
Credit Jesse Wright / WVPB
/
WVPB
Hannah Spencer, co-founder and instructor at Mountain SOL, sits with some of her students Sept. 13, 2019, at Morgantown Learning Academy in Morgantown, W.Va.
Mountain SOL has partnered with Morgantown Learning Academy since 2014. Every week, teachers from Mountain SOL take every student out of their brick-and-mortar classrooms and into the woods.
The program reaches 200-300 students annually between its in-school programs at MLA and afterschool programs open to anyone between second and 12th grade. During afterschool programs, students learn outdoor skills like setting up shelters and building fires. In-school classes are shaped around the state-mandated learning standards.
“My favorite thing to say is that you can’t protect anything until you love it,” said Jen-Osha Buysse, co-founder and director of the program. “Mountain SOL is all about learning from a place of fun and adventure, and connecting new experiences and learning with coming from a place of passion.”
Buysse said she wanted to create a place where kids — and adults — could find joy in learning and caring for themselves and others in nature. The mountains of West Virginia, where she raised a baby, were an ideal place to create that space. The program was also shaped by Buysee’s experience spending two summers with the Huaorani people in Ecuador.
“I was absolutely floored by the level of responsibility that these young people showed, as well as the kindness, love, and teaching skill embodied by their elders,” she said. “I wanted to create a space in which we could inspire and trust young people in some of the same ways.”
Credit Jesse Wright / WVPB
/
WVPB
Mountain SOL student Hannah McKinstry builds a shelter in the woods during a Sept. 13, 2019, class.
Students are encouraged to take the lead outside. Kids are also given unstructured time to explore the natural world around them.
A study published in February found “particularly strong” evidence that experiences of nature boost academic learning, personal development, and environmental stewardship. In reviewing a series of studies on the impacts of nature-based learning, researchers found widespread evidence that experiences with nature boosted test scores, graduation rates, self-discipline and physical activity. Stress levels decreased and enjoyment of learning grew.
“It is time to take nature seriously as a resource for learning – particularly for students not effectively reached by traditional instruction,” the authors wrote.
Eighth-grader Braedyn Hill has participated in Mountain SOL programs for several years. He said every class is interactive.
“Every day is like its own separate adventure. You rarely get anything that’s the same,” he said. “It’s just having fun and enjoying yourself, but still getting the knowledge and information that you need to know to progress on in life.”
Credit Jesse Wright / WVPB
/
WVPB
Students in the Mountain SOL program help each other practice knot-tying Sept. 13, 2019, during a class on land the program leases from Morgantown Learning Academy.
Morgantown Learning Academy’s 12-acre campus is well-suited to incorporate outdoor education with its hiking trails, outdoor classroom and garden. Administrative Director Eve Ammons Ward said while the ethos of Mountain SOL is a great fit, it’s not without a few challenges.
“We bring a lot of mud inside,” she said, laughing. Experienced Mountain SOL parents often carry a “survival kit” in their cars, complete with trash bags to more easily deal with muddy kids.
Ammons Ward added that changes in student behavior are immediate and translate inside the classroom. Mountain SOL and MLA expanded their partnership this year to offer a forest-based pre-Kindergarten program called Little Acorns.
“Kids are more focused,” she said. “They’re ready to work, they’re ready to be engaged with their inside part of their education as well.”
About ten years ago, the National Park Service noticed that fewer kids and families were using the parks. And they wanted to change that.
So in 2009, they partnered with the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation to launch an initiative to help families unplug, get outside, and connect with their local natural resources. The initiative, called Kids in the Park, soon expanded to encompass pediatricians like Erin Regan who are trying to combat childhood obesity, diabetes and excess screen time by writing “scripts” for kids to go outside.
“If I have a kid who is overweight, a kid who is spending a lot of time in front of the TV — we ask about screen time at every check up — I’ll make the offer,” said Regan. “We just have a placard up in our waiting room, and so anyone who is interested who notices that and who wants to participate can ask about it, and we’re happy to have them participate as well.”
Regan has observed that kids aren’t moving nearly enough and they’re spending far too much time in front of screens. As a result, they’re restless, and have a harder time managing their emotions.
“Everything sets them off — I don’t think they feel like they’re in control. They don’t know what to do with themselves.”
Her daughter, 6-year-old Hannah, sits at her dining room table munching on an apple as she describes making “fairy dust” from leaves and seeing a turtle while at a Kids in the Park event earlier this year.
“My favorite things to do are probably run around and play with nature and make things with nature.”
Her doctor-mother said the science shows that kids who move more focus better and maybe even learn better.
On the Trail
At Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area in Hillsborough, N.C., Kids in the Park director Jason Urroz walks through one of the Kids in the Park Track trails. He stops at a colorful sign where two mascots — a dog (Track) and a dragonfly — are depicted in bright colors explaining the different activities kids can do.
“It attracts kids to want to come over here and look at the sign,” he says. “And then you’ve got the directions of the map telling you how long the trail is and these are the trails in this park. A nd while you’re hiking this trail, use these different brochures on your hike in order to learn about the pond life or the trees or go on a hide-and-seek scavenger hunt.”
As kids complete a hike or brochure, they can register online for little gifts such as stickers or a bandana. Additionally, if a child has registered for the Park Prescriptions program, when they log a hike or other activity, their pediatrician gets a message and that information is added to his or her medical file. The hope, Urroz says, is if they can get the kids excited about getting outdoors early in life, it will become a life habit.
“We try to make our trails 1-2 miles in length so they’re not overly strenuous and kids have a good time and they see different things and want to do it again,” says Urroz.
Outdoor Learning
Sean Higgins — the education manager for North Carolina State Parks — says for him, the program is about helping kids explore boundaries and learn experientially.
“Kids have been throwing rocks in streams and running through the forest for tens of thousands of years and kids more and more are indoors – they’re indoors more than any previous generation,” says Higgins. “They’re spending time on videogames and on screens.”
Higgins says he thinks a lot about what kids get from videogames and thinks it’s a feeling of control — getting to make decisions without an adult steering them.
“I think kids can get those same things outdoors. I think things like the Kids in Parks TRACK trails give kids the opportunity to make decisions, you know, which topics do I want to explore on the trail? It gives kids the chance to achieve things,” he says.
And it seems to be working. Urroz says 54 percent of kids who participate are first-time visitors to a park and 11 percent of kids were first-time hikers.
Pediatrician Regan has only been writing scripts for about six months and says for her, it’s too soon to see if the program is having an impact on obesity, diabetes and screen time. But anything that encourages kids to get outside and get them excited about it, is a win. She says she realizes getting outside can be really tough for working families, but making an effort makes a difference.
“My husband and I both work, so we really do our best to spend a lot of time on the weekends doing things, getting out of the house, not being inside and plopping in front of the TV yet again,” says Regan.
Although there are Kids in the Parks locations all up and down the Blue Ridge, only one park in West Virginia currently participates — Harpers Ferry National Park in the eastern panhandle. Urroz says he’d love to get some more West Virginia parks on board – all it takes is for a park to reach out and say, “Hey, we’d like to participate!”
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Marshall Health, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.
Community members are rallying around a school in the Eastern Panhandle. They want to build an outdoor classroom so that kids can get into nature more readily. The goal is to improve academic achievement and provide more opportunities – especially for kids from low-income areas.
Let’s Build Some Raised Gardens
Fourth-graders at North Jefferson Elementary School in Jefferson County are spending a portion of their morning learning outside of the classroom…in the front lawn of their school.
“We are making a garden,” a handful of them said, “We have three raised beds. One’s a circle. One’s [an] Orca. And one’s a square.”
Back in January, on a rare, warm winter day, these kids planted their first seeds in three raised vegetable gardens.
They designed and built the gardens with the help from their teacher Jim Jenkins and a newly formed community group based out of Charles Town called the Kiwanis Club of Blue Ridge West Virginia.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Kiwanis Club of Blue Ridge West Virginia member Roger Ethier helps two students dig in the dirt.
“The Kiwanis came to us and asked if they could make some raised bed gardens,” Jenkins said, “and I thought it was a great idea; they wanted the kids to raise their own food.”
This local chapter of the Kiwanis Club is a member of the Kiwanis International group, which says its focus is to empower communities and improve the world by making a difference in the lives of children.
“The school population is some of the most underprivileged population of Jefferson County,” noted Kiwanis Club of Blue Ridge member Tom Cain, “and we felt it important to adopt the school to try to come in and provide mentorship for as many of the students as we could.”
Increasing Educational Opportunities
North Jefferson Elementary School is one of more than 340 Title I public schools in West Virginia.
That means, most of the students at North Jefferson come from low-income households, so the school gets federal financial assistance to help ensure its students meet state academic standards and get as many of the same opportunities as other schools.
The Kiwanis Club stepped in to help enrich educational opportunities at the school, but wants to go beyond three raised garden beds. They hope to secure private and state funding to revitalize the entire schoolyard behind the school, turning it into an outdoor classroom.
Jenkins, the students’ teacher, is excited for it.
“This area right here is going to be a monarch way station, and that’s going to be a wildflower meadow there, and we’re gonna have book stations, benches, geology,” he explained, “and then behind the school, if you have time, we’ll look at the spot I think the outdoor classroom’s gonna go.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Students step back inside the classroom with their teacher Jim Jenkins to graph out the best locations in the soil to plant their seeds.
Behind the school, the hope is to create a variety of seating areas and outdoor learning stations. Jenkins hopes to teach not just science out here, but also writing, math and social studies.
“This is an ideal location for an outdoor classroom,” said Roger Ethier — also a member of the Kiwanis Club of Blue Ridge West Virginia. He’s been spearheading the outdoor classroom project at North Jefferson.
“When the students finish the outdoor classroom, they have this beautiful outdoor area where they can hop, skip, and jump, and just have a great time.”
Inspiration from 500 Miles Away
Ethier says this outdoor classroom project was inspired by a successful initiative in Boston, Massachusetts called the Boston Schoolyard Initiative.
The Boston project lasted almost 20 years, and by the time it ended in 2013, more than 80 schoolyards in Boston were revitalized from barren asphalt lots to centers for recreation, learning and community life, including 33 outdoor classrooms.
Kristin Metz was the Director of Education for the Boston Schoolyard Initiative for thirteen years. She and teachers involved in the Boston project participated in a study where they reported observing significant growth in students as outdoor classrooms were more utilized – from deeper interest and confidence in science coursework to a sense of equality among their peers.
“It leveled the playing field that students who had very different life experiences could come together and share what they were doing outside, and that gave them more respect for each other,” Metz said.
Metz says she thinks the same thing could happen for the students at North Jefferson – many of whom come from low-income homes.
According to a 2011 study done by the National Center for Education Statistics, students in the United States who come from low-income homes are five times more likely to drop out of high school than middle-income students. In West Virginia, one out of every 100 students dropped out of high school during the 2016-2017 school year, according to state sources.
“If students are outdoors, they have access to a wide range of experiences,” Metz noted, “You know, you can touch things that are very soft, or hard, or brittle, or bristly, or spikey, or soggy, and that’s just at the very, most basic level – you have this range of materials, and they’re available, they’re free, they’re just there, and so I think that it just very much enriches what students have access to.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
One of three raised garden beds at North Jefferson Elementary; the Orca garden.
What’s Next for North Jefferson Elementary?
The Kiwanis Club of Blue Ridge West Virginia has continued to develop school gardens at North Jefferson Elementary over the school year, but still doesn’t have the funds to build out the full outdoor classroom.
They hope to hear soon about a state grant that would allow them to make progress.
As the school year nears its close, the students at North Jefferson now have spinach and lettuce growing in their gardens, and they’ve recently planted strawberries.
A solar panel was also installed to provide rainwater irrigation to support two butterfly beds and the raised gardens.
