A Visit to Tree Island at ABS

A few years ago, members of the kindergarten team at the Allen Brook School did a lot of research and investigation around outdoor education and how that would benefit students and learning. Many valuable concepts were put in place. When we returned to school this year, that group of educators enhanced their work even more. 

The teachers involved include: Adam Deyo, Laura Dyer, Sarah Read, Chelsea Laberge, and Marie Fetters. Adam provided the guest blog post below and he and Laura shared the photos seen in the slideshow. A while back, past kindergarten students named their outdoor classroom space Tree Island, as seen on the sign they inventively created. 

“Hey, look over there, it’s Leafy!” says one Kindergartener as they walk with the group up the winding trail from the Allen Brook. Leafy is a Boxelder Maple tree that was aptly named earlier in the Fall. “I found a corndog!” says another child as they pluck a cattail from the tall grass along the trail’s edge. “Let’s go to the Hideout and build a boat!” The hideout is a small cluster of mostly invasive Buckthorn that creates a tiny little nook perfect for constructing. Near the entrance, another child practices her high bar routine from an evening gymnastics class on a hearty branch while another swings from a vine. These are just a few examples of how children are making sense of the landscape around our school and in turn developing a sense of place through play. Long before the onset of COVID, the benefits of playing outside were well known to help children build self-regulation and cope in an anxious world.

The University of Vermont’s PLACE program references this quote from Mitchell Thomashow, “People are typically interested in understanding who they are in relationship to where they live. By exploring the places that are most important to them, they are most likely to take an interest in the human and ecological communities of those places” (Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change, 2002) . Through intentional revisiting of an outdoor space throughout the year, we believe that the roots of curiosity and stewardship are fed through experiences in the natural world at school. As a team, we have been following research and practice closely in this area over the past 5-10 years. Our outdoor program was incrementally built each year, starting with Laura Dyer and Sarah Read’s classroom and now all four of the classrooms spend long periods of the day outside each with their own style, and with many shared routines and purposes. We were also fortunate to take a summer course with Eliza Minucci that allowed us to imagine one “forest day” becoming a daily practice. This solidified our intentions and confidence!

The land around Allen Brook school provides countless opportunities. As the children visit familiar trees to observe change over time, search for unique leaves, or use sunflower seeds on a ten-frame to build 1-to-1 correspondence and number sense, they are learning in the outdoors. In a recent talk with a group of teachers and administrators Joan Haley of Shelburne Farms discussed multiple ways outdoor education can occur. This nesting model includes (from large to small/gradually more integrated): learning with the outdoors, learning from the outdoors, learning about the outdoors, and learning in the outdoors. COVID has focused the spotlight on outdoor experiences at school and we are fortunate to have built a strong foundation of experiences of learning in nature.

We are grateful for the support of our Building Principal Angela Filion, Williston Schools Principal Greg Marino, CVSD Superintendent Elaine Pinckney, and the many families in our classrooms. Our hope is that the shift to outdoor learning sticks when COVID restrictions are lifted, the benefits are easy to see and a sense of reciprocal joy is deeply felt.