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The Country School Sees Investment in Outdoor Learning Pay Off During Pandemic

Like many other schools around the state and around the country, The Country School (TCS) is heading into the upcoming holiday break with plenty of uncertainty. Despite significant adjustments, TCS has seen its unique learning model pay dividends during the pandemic, with a heavy emphasis on outdoor learning activities.

“Their success in the classroom—classroom without walls—is on par with the way it always has been,” said TCS teacher and Communications Director Teresa Sullivan. “It’s almost as though the kids are energized by being outside.”

With no school wide or even class-wide quarantines so far, Sullivan said that TCS’s cohorting model along with this commitment to being outdoors whenever weather permits has contributed greatly to a successful year.

Apart from activities like recess and lunch, TCS teachers are bringing their students outside for lessons whenever possible and finding ways to adapt popular programs (including Reading Buddies, which pairs a middle school and elementary school student in a reading mentorship) to an outdoor setting, Sullivan said.

Health officials have emphasized that keeping students outdoors is a positive step to prevent spread of the virus. Sullivan said that with many families cooped up indoors for long periods of time, being outside during school hours has also been a positive for students’ mental health.

“We take it for granted because it’s what we do,” Sullivan said.

Pre-K students take regular hikes around TCS’s 23-acre campus, and older grades have even managed to put together socially distanced outdoor day trips to places like Rockland Preserve and the Bushy Hill Nature Center, according to Sullivan, though overnight trips are not currently on the agenda.

And though the cold weather has made it more difficult and school depends on guidance that normally prohibits outdoor activities when temperatures fall below 40 degrees, TCS has no plans to return inside for the winter.

“The kids are always confident...no matter the weather,” Sullivan laughed. “But we’re out there as long as we can be...I think it’s who we are. Outdoors is part of the fabric of TCS.”

Sullivan described one day recently where she was waiting for her students in their indoor classroom space. When no one had shown up at the expected time, she said she looked out the window and realized the class was, in fact, waiting for her at their usual outdoor meeting space despite the cold weather.

“Ready to go, laptops up,” she laughed. “They’re embracing it.”

The ability to function outdoors during the pandemic hasn’t come without significant investment for TCS. Three outdoor amphitheater areas, which are made using adjustable tent-like structures with adjustable walls and ceilings, were installed over the summer. Even though these structures got blown around a good deal during recent windstorms, Sullivan said TCS will continue to use them during the winter.

Director of Technology Bill Leidt estimated the school has spent at least $60,000 on upgrades to its technology infrastructure, facilitated by what Sullivan called a “very generous gift,” though TCS already had some of the devices and products in place before the pandemic.

Leidt described the presence of gigabit switches—hardware that allows coordination and access for a large number tablets, laptops, and other Internet-connected devices on a network—as the “lynchpin” of TCS’s technology success. He said the school is also planning on installing a number of outdoor access points to expand wifi coverage around the campus, adding at least 3,000 square feet where students and teachers can use the Internet.

While being outdoors can certainly decrease chances of exposure to the virus, the school said the mental health boost that outdoor opportunities have afforded TCS students is also incalculably important.

“We’re all in it together...and we’re all making the best of it,” Sullivan said. “It’s their confidence, it’s their comfort, it’s their absorbing the material, and they’re being able to be successful despite all the challenges that are before them.”