Alexander Central School District
This year our focus has been creating new interest in our project. We have added many new administrators and staff in the past few years, and we have lost several of the people who were a part of the original excitement of creating an amazing space for our school and community. We want to regenerate this excitement in our staff, our students and their parents, as well as the Alexander community.
This past spring a portion of the district’s superintendent conference day was held in the outdoor classroom. We are fortunate that an educator from the DEC knows and loves our space. She has taught in the outdoor classroom before and happily led this session. We had three goals in mind; 1) introduce new staff to the space, 2) to show teachers simple ways to move instruction outside, and 3) to add new membership to the outdoor classroom committee. We will continue to work on theses goals during the upcoming school year.
We added some new features to two of our stations. Messy Materials received a face lift. We replaced the log perimeter (which for some reason kept rolling away) with what we hope are immovable rocks. The rocks were donated by a local quarry, County Line Stone. Thank you, Buyers family for this generous donation. Our Dirt and Digging station, an outdoor classroom favorite, needed some new sand tables. With grant funding from the Conable Family Foundation, we were able to replace them with two colorful, weather resistant ones.
Summer school students in grades pre-k through 5 received some of their instruction in the outdoor classroom. They, with their teachers, participated in language arts, science, history, art, and music activities led by a retired Alexander teacher who advocates for getting kids outside. In addition to enjoying learning in nature, the students and their teachers learned that the outdoor classroom can be used for more than play.
Since we opened our outdoor classroom door (our beautiful custom-made arbor) in 2012 the children who first enjoyed the space have graduated. New families have become a part of our school district. The outdoor classroom committee’s goal has remained the same-to inform the Alexander school community of the benefits of spending time in nature and provide opportunities for them to do so.