Outdoor Classroom Program Changes Attitudes
by Laura Doty

"I'll never forget Eric," says Elena Rivas, third grade teacher at the William E. Russell Elementary School in Dorchester. "When we first came outside, he was hitting the trees with sticks. By the end of the year, he would say to me 'I saw some kids touching the trees. I told them not to do it.'"

Eric's transformation is a common one in the Outdoor Classroom program. Many children first enter the orchards intentionally or distractedly breaking branches or hitting trees. Weeks or months later, the same students become protectors of the orchard. At the J. P. Holland Elementary School, the orchard already has many protectors, despite the newness of our program there. A student waiting for the bus ripped the top off a young peach tree, and Janis Maloney's third graders were there. "Why would you do that to a tree?" one of them questioned the student. Matthew Goode, school-yard visionary at the Holland, explains that many children have a lot of anger or frustration with no real outlet. "They end up taking it out on their environment." The destruction is not intentional but merely a consequence of the circumstances many children face. Once children develop awareness and forge connections to their natural environment, the vandalism stops. Caring for the trees seems to be an outlet for many children.

Pruning and planting seem to be activities that focus children's' energy and enthusiasm. Children love to use tools, and they thrive when trusted to use something as valuable as a pair of pruning sheers. By planting seeds and seedlings, children get to see the direct results of their work. Mary Ellen Mellon's class at the Winthrop school in Dorchester put considerable effort into creating a new perennial bed, and they were quite proud of their work. Pat Nee's special needs class at the Russell cared for a struggling filazel bush and brought it back from the brink. Due to their hard work in the insect garden, the children have transformed the Russell yard.

School-yard learning seems to awaken something in our students. " My kids love the program," Dawn Cohen, second grade teacher at the Winthrop, commented to me one afternoon. "It is especially beneficial for my slower readers." Many students who are distracted in the classroom are engaged and challenged by the hands?on activities, but it is not just these students who benefit. Janet Cronin, second grade teacher at the Russell, uses EarthWorks' lessons as a focus point for her children's writing assignments. "When they write about EarthWorks, their writing is much more vivid. Whenever they can write about what they have experienced, their work is improved." Direct experience makes potentially dry subjects fun for many students. "They love it," says Rivas. "When they wrote their autobiographies, many of them said they weren't good at science. When I asked 'what about EarthWorks?' they said that they were good at EarthWorks because it was so fun." Indeed, we often hear children comment on how they never knew science could be so fun. A third grader at the Otis School in East Boston told me that he wanted to be a scientist because it was fun to go outside and find out what was going on.

While we focus our lessons on the science curriculum for the Boston Public Schools, the value of our program reaches further than teaching science. Our program opens new doors for children ?? exposing them to new foods, subjects and ideas. Students gain confidence as they succeed in science, a subject that many children find difficult. Students are empowered as they show their skills to younger students. At the Curley Middle School, Elizabeth Chartier's eighth graders taught lessons to Jennifer Felicetti's sixth graders; they all then worked together to build a new trellis for grapes. "They did a great job, and were very serious about their jobs," commented Felicetti.

Many thanks to the people who have worked in our school-yard orchards this past spring: The teachers at the Agassiz, Curley, Hennigan, Holland, Russell, and Winthrop Schools and EarthWorkers Kari Kulig, Alan Lans and Mark Walter. We were also pleased to work with the Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH) and the teachers of the O'Donnell and Otis Schools in East Boston.