In this age of technology, scholastic learning has become trapped. Students begin to lose focus as the beginning of summer rolls around, yet teachers try to hold classes the same way as they always have.

More classes should be held outside.

Holding normal classes in the outdoors improves student performance.  Students are able to retain information better after experiencing a change of scenery. “[T]he unique setting of the outdoor education centre leads to increased academic achievement” Dennis Eaton, Ed-D. said in his 1998 thesis.

Eaton’s thesis mentions how many schools are doing away with outdoor education because of the cost and because they aren’t seeing the benefits.  

Eaton said that “outdoor educators are also confronting a ‘back to basics’ wave designed to focus them and their students on identified learning outcomes and to reduce the time devoted to what are perceived as extraneous and frivolous experiential components and processes.”  

The media has recently been focused on ensuring that the music and art departments of schools remain in the curriculum. However, experiencing the outdoors has become something relatively unheard of in the school curriculum. In sixth grade, DTSD students went to a outdoor camp for two and a half days, and any other outdoor class experience was administered by the whims of the teacher.

Holding a class outside is seen as an extraneous and frivolous experience, and many administrators, board members, teachers, and even students might see it this way since there aren’t many studies out there about the positive impact outdoor lessons have on topics other than ecology and biology.

However, the National Education Association said traveling outdoors can inspire students’ writing and illustrate mathematical concepts, not just their knowledge of the environment.

While there aren’t many studies about the impact of the outdoors on other typical subjects, a study by Ming Kuo, Matthew H. E. M. Browning, and Milbert L. Penner that centers on biology shows that the third graders they studied returned with roughly double the focus of a normal classroom setting.

Over the course of a school year, two classes of third graders spent half their biology classes outside and half inside. The factors they used showed that focus increased during the outdoor lessons.

The subject matter they taught was the same, yet a change of environment for the students allowed for more focus. This variation would also increase focus and achievement in others subjects as well, as the NEA suggests.

Though, one set back that may pop to mind is the availability of spots to hold outdoor lessons. But this isn’t really a set back at all, almost every school has a patch of grass outside that students could use. Ming Kuo, one of the co-authors of the study, said, “We could have taken these kids into capital-n Nature; but the kind of nature that we studied turns out to be pretty common—just a patch of grass with an access road.”

To ensure that more classes are held outside, contact Derry Township School District Superintendent Joseph McFarland and other board members by filling out this form.