CREJ - Building Dialogue - December 2016
There’s one universal constant at any school: the raucous noise-filled schoolyard – the byproduct from the comings and goings and children at play. But there’s been an important evolution on these schoolyards and it’s enriching educational opportunities and creating safer, healthier environments for children. Over the past 35 years, I’ve watched and participated in the evolution of schoolyards for many public and private schools. I’ve seen this evolution change philosophies and as a result, what were once large expanses of harsh asphalt and rock, today, these same schoolyards are vibrant extensions of the educational program. 35 Years Ago For the most part, schoolyards were simply thought of as places for before- and after-school gathering and short breaks for recess and lunch. They typically had an athletic field for traditional gym classes during school and sports activities after school. Unfortunately though, a great majority of those schoolyards had sites that were not hospitable and lacked consideration of alternative uses. Often they used inadequate and sometimes unsafe materials. Typically, they were plagued with the following: • Large expanses of asphalt. • Playgrounds surfaced with sand or pea gravel, often at an inadequate depth. • If there was sod, it rarely had an automatic irrigation system. • Play equipment was typically bare steel and the most basic climbers or obstacle-course type equipment. • Little to no accessibility throughout the site. Making Change Thirty-five years ago, our firm began working with architects and school districts to reconsider the schoolyard – the evolution has been ongoing since. We pushed for safer and healthier sites. We advocated for connections to nature, low-maintenance sites and smarter uses of water. These ideas were implemented by incorporating the following: • Low-use areas planted with native grasses that required no irrigation in the long-term. • Native and adapted plant materials. • Efficient automatic irrigation systems for all schools. • Age-separated and easily observed play areas with upgraded equipment. Today’s Schoolyards as Learning Landscapes and So Much More Since those early years, we have figured out how to incorporate nature and learning into schoolyards. We participate in the continually growing national design discussion intertwining nature and play, incorporating learning into schoolyards, and design of inclusive playgrounds. Today, 35 years later, schoolyards often incorporate: outdoor classrooms, gardens, native plantings, riparian or rain garden plantings, informal track/trail systems, imagination play elements, activities or theming that play off of the curriculum, neighborhood or other elements that have significance to the school and neighborhood, colorful/imaginative play equipment, play surfacing that meets accessibility guidelines and fall attenuation requirements, activities and equipment that is inclusive of all abilities, shade shelters, both for student and after-hours use by the community, many configurations of seating areas for social opportunities, and environments and activities for students on the autistic spectrum to play and socialize more comfortably Real Examples of Change and Areas Still Lagging While embraced by private schools like the Montessori and Waldorf models, the adoption of using the schoolyard for outdoor education has been at a slower pace. Although the concept is highly supported and accepted, for many school districts the curriculum, maintenance and funding necessary to support it have been slow to fully develop. In Colorado, Denver Public Schools has provided support and funding to implement its innovative Learning Landscape Schoolyards in each of its 98 elementary schools. Other highly regarded programs around the nation include the Boston Schoolyard Initiative and the New York City and Trust for Public Land’s Schoolyard to Playground Initiative. Like these, many other districts and individuals schools have made breakthroughs in elementary school-level outdoor learning opportunities and reconnecting schools with their communities. Yet, middle- and high school-level programs have lagged behind. In Colorado, entities such as the lottery-funded Great Outdoors Colorado and the Colorado Health Foundation have stepped in to provide sources of funding for outdoor learning initiatives. Between 2013 and 2016, GOCO has offered a School Play Yard Initiative grant that “creates safer, more active play areas and environments for outdoor learning at schools,” (Our Grant Programs, www.goco.org/grants). Championing Schoolyard Learning and Connections to Nature I’m proud that we have been champions of expanding the boundaries of learning opportunities in the schoolyard. In the 1980s, we saved one of the last sections of undisturbed native prairie for a Jefferson County, elementary school outdoor learning area and created native learning areas to transition between the mountainous forest at a new elementary school in Nederland. In the 1990s, we turned a potentially sterile detention area for a large middle school into a biodiverse outdoor learning lab with thriving wetland plants and plentiful wildlife. In 1990 in Boulder, we designed the transformation of an elementary school’s concrete drainage swale into a thriving wetland, observation deck, boardwalk and outdoor classroom. This wetland area survived the massive Colorado floods in 2013, while the surrounding areas were devastated. The floods were described as 1,000-year rain and a 100-year flood, occurring over eight stormy days, causing devastation from the eastern side of the continental divide to the Colorado/Kansas border. Since then, we’ve worked on over two dozen Learning Landscapes for Denver Public Schools, complete with outdoor classrooms, gardens, artwork, colorful gateways and shade shelters, tracks, and environmental learning areas for Denver Public Schools. Student learning pieces include such diverse elements as weather stations with a remote readout for students to track the weather, themed elements which include facts such as insect and animal lifecycles etched in boulders and pavement, poems which describe the places and things one would see travelling along a nearby stream and floating all the way out to the sea, or the fanciful graphics with shapes and colors that students can study and count. We have also helped other school districts to expand their abilities to extend learning into the schoolyard. In the end, there is unlimited opportunity to connect children with the outdoors and enhance the school’s curriculum. Before, bland sports fields, plain asphalt play pads, wall-to-wall turf or pea gravel, and minimal social sites dominated school grounds. Today, equal importance on community use, educational opportunities and hands-on learning exist making the schoolyard more humane and interesting. \\ CarolH@dcla.net