Jaime Zaplatosch
VP, Green Schoolyards for Healthy Communities
Children & Nature Network
Depending on where you are in the world, the start of the 2021-22 school year and the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant might feel like “déjà vu all over again.” But, in fact, we are in a much better place to support going back to school fully in person this year. Many partners over many years have developed resources for taking learning outdoors — an approach that can provide a safer return to school now and enhance children’s learning and well-being all of the time.
Recent efforts of the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative and CCCN communities like Baltimore, Maryland, and Austin, Texas have given us more tools and real-world success stories. As Richard Louv writes in his latest column, “we have all we need to shift learning, lunch and other school activities to outdoor spaces for the 2021-22 school year, at least some of the time.”
 RICHARD LOUV LEARNING OUTDOORS: Keeping students and teachers safer, improving education, and bringing healing during the pandemic Eighteen months ago, school districts were mostly at a loss when it came to dealing with a global pandemic. Today, educators and communities have everything they need — if not in money, then certainly in good examples — to turn their schools into safer environments for students and teachers, and at the same time, improve educational outcomes. READ MORE |
Norfolk Green Care Network 