Outdoor Education

BRING TEACHING AND LEARNING OUTSIDE

As of fall 2023, Boston Public Schools is the proud home of 83 school gardens, 38 outdoor classrooms,
5 green stormwater infrastructure sites, 5 hydroponics programs, 2 Freight Farms, and many play structures. 
Join Friends of the Boston Schoolyards as, together, we continue to invest in Outdoor Teaching and Learning assets for all BPS school communities.

Any educator can tell you that outdoor education and exploration, whether it’s in the students’ schoolyard or on a local field trip, can open children’s minds to the way the world works and create a fascination with nature. Since documenting the impacts of outdoor education can be difficult, the University of Chicago was commissioned to conduct an independent study of Boston’s Science in the Schoolyard (SSY) initiative. The survey results (from science teachers) highlighted the power of having outdoor classrooms on school sites and targeted training programs for educators.

Some of the findings of the Science in the Schoolyard Evaluation were:

  • Students who go outdoors for science indicate greater interest and confidence in science.
  • Students who go outdoors for science are more likely to report that they observe, investigate, use science vocabulary, and demonstrate independence and curiosity.
  • Teachers report particular benefits of outdoor science education for English Language Learners and students with disabilities, including vocabulary development.

From 1995-2013, the Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) transformed Boston’s schoolyards from barren asphalt lots into dynamic centers for recreation, learning, and community life. School-by-school, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, BSI connected children, families, community members, and teachers with vibrant outdoor spaces for increased physical activity and creative new approaches to using the schoolyard for teaching and learning.

The 35 Outdoor Classrooms built and 88 Schoolyards revitalized over almost 20 years provide urban schools with varied natural eco-system features, weather stations, vegetable and herb beds, and safe play spaces. The Schoolyards promote physical activity for students and the Outdoor Classrooms provide outdoor learning spaces that nurture an awareness and stewardship for the natural environment. BSI also developed outdoor lessons and professional development for teachers.

BSI accomplished their work through a public-private partnership between the City of Boston, Boston Public Schools, and the Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative. 

Read more about BSI’s accomplishments in the The Atlantic and about how “Boston Leads the Way  Outside” in the fall 2014 Foss Newsletter. Explore a wealth of schoolyard and outdoor classroom design, maintenance, curriculum and more at schoolyards.org. For a school-based example, follow updates from the Everett School’s outdoor classroom.

The Boston Schoolyard Initiative offers a number of e-resources at schoolyards.org to support teachers using the school gardens and outdoor classrooms. Consider joining the BSI legacy non-profit Friends of the Boston Schoolyards.

In 2022, BPS made major investments in outdoor teaching and learning, utilizing ESSER funds to carry on the legacy of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI). The BSI, a public-private partnership between the City of Boston, Boston Public Schools, and the Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative, renovated 88 schoolyards and created 38 Outdoor Classrooms from 1994-2014, and created an accompanying outdoor teaching and learning curriculum. Teachers and students utilize the spaces for art, science, writing, and ESL enrichment. 

In addition to hiring the district’s first ever Outdoor Teaching and Learning Manager, and creating a new section of the BPS Grounds Grew dedicated to the outdoor classrooms and gardens, the 2022 investments are being used to: Operate, renovate, and redesign 38 Outdoor Classrooms (OCs) and begin designing new outdoor classrooms; Add new school garden partnerships with Green City Growers and CitySprouts and sustain existing ones (BPS currently has 51 partner-led school gardens and 28 Teacher Champion-led gardens, totaling 79 active school gardens; 23 school gardens are new in 2022); Provide professional development, stipends, and materials budgets to Outdoor Teaching and Learning Champions (identified school teachers); and Fund “Rites of Passage” experiences for students in 7th grade with Boston Nature Center, Thompson Island Outward Bound Center, and Hale Reservation.

OUTDOOR CLASSROOM USER GUIDE

The Outdoor Classroom User Guide is designed to help you understand how to best use and steward your BPS outdoor classroom. For additional information, please visit www.schoolyards.org.

Contact BPS Outdoor Teaching and Learning Manager Michelle Martinat if you would like a hard copy of the Story Book for your BPS school.

SCHOOL GARDEN & NATURE RESOURCES

GREEN STORMWATER INFRASTRUCTURE AT BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

In 2014, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (Commission) approached BPS about collaborating on Green Infrastructure/Low Impact Development (GI/LID) pilot projects to coincide with BPS’s comprehensive Educational and Facility Master Planning process (BuildBPS).

GI/LID is a stormwater management approach that mimics nature. In the natural world, rainwater soaks, or infiltrates, into the soil. Unfortunately, rainwater can no longer infiltrate into the ground because of buildings, pavement, sidewalks and other urban surfaces. GI/LID features capture raindwater runoff and filter the stormwater through plants and soil before it returns to the groundwater system. Learn more on the Commission’s website.

 

The Commission and BPS selected five schools throughout Boston, schools that are in areas of high pollutant (phosphorus) loading. The five GI/LID pilot schools are: the Washington Irving Middle School (watch the ribbon cutting ceremony), Rafael Hernandez K-8 School, David A. Ellis Elementary School, Jackson/Mann K-8 School and Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and the Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers (Fenwood location). The Commission, with the help of an engineering firm called Horsley Witten Group, designed the GI/LID features to include rain gardens, bioretention areas, bioswales, tree pits/tree trenches, stormwater chambers, and more!

The Commission also worked with a former BPS curriculum writer and the Charles River Watershed Association to author stormwater/GI curriculum for 5th and 7th grade, in accordance with the new MA Science and Technology/ Engineering Standards, to accompany the five pilot projects. Contact the BPS Science Department for more information.

BPS teachers Nicole Ruttan (Umana Academy K-8) and Kris Grymonpre (McCormack Middle School) were awarded the 2019 Massachusetts Secretary's Award for Excellence in Energy & Environmental Education for their “Stormwater Management Curriculum integration pilot program”, using the Irving Middle School's green stormwater infrastructure to teach the BPS GSI curriculum. Congratulations, Nicole and Kris!

2019 Massachusetts Secretary's Award for Excellence in Energy & Environmental Education

BPS teachers Nicole Ruttan (Umana Academy K-8) and Kris Grymonpre (McCormack Middle School) were awarded the 2019 Massachusetts Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Energy & Environmental Education for their “Stormwater Management Curriculum integration pilot program”, using the Irving Middle School’s green stormwater infrastructure to teach the BPS GSI curriculum. Congratulations, Nicole and Kris!

DISTRICT HIGHLIGHTS

  • The Holmes Innovation School won a 2018 “If I Would I Could” Grant from the Beker Foundation to build a schoolyard garden. Led by the school’s library teacher, grade three teachers, paraprofessional, and students, the Holmes planted herbs, vegetables, and flowers, learned about the growing process, composting, and bees, and enjoyed the results of their garden during a celebratory feast.
  • Led by Science Teacher Teresa Strong, Dante Alighieri Montessori School students began composting food and yard waste in fall 2018. Students learned about the composting process and mixed the finished product into existing schoolyard deadpan soil. Students learned that food scraps and leaves can improve soil, providing nutrients for plants and soil creatures, and they learned how students play can play a role in the process.
  • Boston Green Academy is a Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center multi-year partner school. Every year, all of BGA’s middle school grades stay on Thompson Island for an immersive fall 3-day outdoor environmental science learning adventure and a spring 1-day team building and leadership experience. 
  • Additionally, BGA’s entire 8th grade class visits the White Mountains in New Hampshire every spring for a 3-day, 2-night outdoor leadership experience with A Mountain Classroom (part of the Appalachian Mountain Club). Here students split into smaller groups, hone their leadership skills, and climb the nearby peaks. A Mountain Classroom provides inspiring outdoor settings and experiential methods to engage students and their teachers in learning.
  • BPS Science, Technology, and Engineering Department, Museum of Science, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and Friends of the Boston Schoolyards collaborated on a PD opportunity for teachers “Science in the Schoolyard – Teaching Science Standards with Outdoor Spaces” and utilized the Mission Hill and Alighieri schools’ outdoor classrooms for the PD. 18 teachers participated in the PD, held in May 2019.
  • BPS partner CitySprouts is currently at 9 BPS schools. The CitySprouts mission is to cultivate wonder for all children with hands-on learning through urban gardening.
  • While schools were closed in SY20-21 to in-person learning, 35+ BPS school gardens were operated by Facilities Management, teacher champions, CitySprouts, Green City Growers, and Growing Resilience. These partners grew, harvested, and donated more than 1400 pounds of produce to Boston families, while ensuring the gardens remained maintained and operational for students and teachers to use once they returned to in-person learning. The Boston Globe wrote a story covering these efforts. The group was awarded the 2021 Massachusetts Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Energy & Environmental Education. The district’s long-range, equity-driven goal, spearheaded by Facilities Management and the STE Department, is to provide hands-on gardening education at all schools. BPS currently has 51 partner-led gardens and 28 Teacher Champion-led gardens, totaling 79 school gardens.
  • Climate Science at Boston Public Schools is addressed continuously through the curricular offerings aligned to the 2016 MA STE Frameworks. One example includes the use of the outdoor classrooms – lessons embedded within the FOSS curriculum bring students outside of the traditional classroom to investigate a myriad of phenomena. Lessons on erosion, deposition, and weathering; insects and plants their complex relationship to each other; animal/insect habitats and human impacts.
  • The BPS Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Program and its garden partners contributed to the 2022 Food Literacy in Massachusetts report published by the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative. The report and Collaborative’s efforts have led to the recent filing of the bills “An Act to promote food literacy” (SD.1348 / HD.2580). 
  • Excel High School, TechBoston Academy, and Burke High School have been chosen to each receive a Fork Farms Flex Farm in the school’s cafeteria. This opportunity is funded by a 2023 $100,000 USDA Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant. The grant was secured through a partnership between BPS Food and Nutrition Services and Facilities Management with Green City Growers.
  • Charlestown High and English High have been chosen to each receive a Fork Farms Flex Farm hydroponic unit in the school’s cafeteria. This opportunity is funded by a 2023 $25,000 Massachusetts FRESH (Farming Reinforces Education and Student Health) Grant. The grant was secured through a partnership between BPS Food and Nutrition Services and Facilities Management with Green City Growers.

USDA FARM-TO-SCHOOL IMPLEMENTATION GRANT

Green City Growers, in partnership with the Boston Public Schools, BPS Facilities Management, the BPS STRIVE program, and Friends of the Boston Schoolyards, was the recipient of a 2019 $100,000 Farm-to-School Implementation Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Thanks to this generous grant, Green City Growers worked in collaboration with BPS Facilities Management to provide BPS STRIVE special education students with hands-on vocational training. Skills taught to the STRIVE students included building agricultural infrastructure, crop cultivation, and landscape maintenance. BPS STRIVE students, ages 14-22, from C.A.S.H., English High School, Charlestown High School, and East Boston High School, constructed four 4’X8’ raised garden beds at C.A.S.H., Mission K-8 School, Edwards Middle School, and Umana Academy, respectively. The STRIVE students also designed, planted, and maintained these spaces as agriculturally productive school gardens over the 2-year grant timeline.

Due to the success of the program with STRIVE, once the USDA grant funding was expended, the BPS Special Education Department continued funding the program, and even expanded it to three new school locations: Brighton High School, English High School, and Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. With the closure of the Edwards Middle School, that program was moved to Charlestown High School.

CONTACT US

Facilities Management
1216 Dorchester Ave.
Boston, MA 02125
617-635-9576

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