Vision

This year, the Climate Action Team at HHS wanted to focus our efforts on getting more classes outdoors to learn, in hopes of creating a greater student-to-nature connection and reducing our school’s carbon footprint in the process. Our school already had an outdoor classroom to begin this school year, but we wanted to also create an Outdoor Learning Kit so that classes could learn outdoors in any space, not just where the classroom is located. This was envisioned to include flexible seating, clipboards, and chalk and chalkboard erasers (for the outdoor chalkboard), as well as an easy method to transport it between locations. With this outdoor learning kit, and classes learning outdoors more frequently, more lights and devices would be turned off, reducing our carbon footprint, and there would be an increase in student connection and care for nature, hopefully creating a desire to take climate action.

The Climate Action Team wanted this project to not only be used by classes, but also to be a way for classes to learn about Climate Action. Therefore, we also decided the grade 9 science classes would be involved in the planning of this project when the time came. We would educate them on how learning outdoors would make an impact on our carbon footprint, and we would involve them in the planning and purchasing aspect. In finishing the project, we also envisioned them looking at data and seeing how the outdoor learning kit actually increased the frequency of outdoor learning at our school.

Action

Once our funding from Learning for a Sustainable Future was secured, we took action! We began by sending a survey out to all teachers to assess how often they teach outdoors, their interest in doing so, and what supplies they think they would need to do so. We then began involving the grade 9 science classes through a lesson focused on “What can you buy with $500?”. Throughout this lesson, students were engaged in first brainstorming ideas of what they could buy if they could spend $500 on anything they wanted, and then they were informed we were putting together an outdoor learning kit with funds secured from Learning for a Sustainable future. From there, they got into groups and brainstormed what we could include in this kit and then built a budget for the kit for up to $500 maximum.

After this lesson with the grade 9 science classes, the Hampton High School Climate Action Team reviewed the budgets made by the ninth graders, added any additional ideas to our ideas we already had for the outdoor learning kit, built our official budget, and began ordering. We ordered: a wagon and net cover for easy indoor and outdoor transport of the learning kit, 24 floor cushions for students to sit comfortably outside, 24 clipboards for students to be able to write outdoors, a chalk set and chalkboard eraser to use on the outdoor chalkboard, and eco-friendly compostable wipes to clean the cushions and wagon wheels as needed.

In mid-April, the supplies we needed arrived and the Climate Action Team assembled the outdoor learning kit! An email was sent to all teachers at our school on April 16th, informing staff on how to use and sign out the kit, making the kit’s official debut just in time for Earth Week! Since then, teachers have been booking and using the outdoor learning kit to teach outdoors in any space they choose.
The final piece of our action included analyzing the booking sheet and sending out a second survey to teachers to once again assess how often they teach outdoors, their interest in doing so, and if they feel they have everything they need now to do so.

Reflection & Celebration

Reflecting on our second survey and the use of the outdoor learning kit, we have come up with many things we would like to do in the future to expand on this project. The main focus will be on our outdoor classroom that is currently present in the courtyard of our school. The nice thing about our outdoor learning kit this year is that teachers can teach outdoors anywhere they would like due to its portability. However, we would also like to increase the use of the outdoor classroom that is also present at our school. Some ideas for the future include creating a pathway from the door to our outdoor classroom to make it accessible to all students, incorporating a portable projector to make outdoor learning possible with any lesson, improving/adding to the current seating, and building a structure to provide shade on hot and sunny days. We look forward to what is to come with our outdoor learning journey!