Equity in Outdoor Education

K-12 STEAM education

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Google "importance outdoor education schools" and dozens of scholarly articles appear about the necessity for children to go outside. According to the Outdoor Education-Research Summary, learning outdoors improves school engagement and performance; increases students' physical, mental and social wellbeing; supports emotional, behavioral and intellectual development; increases enthusiasm for learning; develops a sense of our place in nature; and engages families and the community.
The communities served by the Pasadena Unified School District are among the greener areas of LA. Each of the 23 public schools in the district is no more than a mile or two from the Arroyo Seco, Eaton Canyon Nature Center, the Huntington Gardens or a public park. Most have a school garden. And yet, only some students currently have structured outdoor experiences with their teacher or a naturalist. Our goal is to ensure all PUSD students have sequential opportunities to learn outdoors from grade TK through 12.

Currently, the degree of a student's participation in outdoor education in the Pasadena Unified School District depends on the school they attend, their grade level, or how committed their teacher is. The grant will support the creation of a sequential curriculum for grades TK-12 that will, when fully implemented, engage all students in a program that integrates experiences in nature with lessons in science, math, language, arts and history. Funds will support the development of units and lesson plans, new and expanded partnerships with aligned organizations in this community (e.g. One Arroyo Foundation); and training for teachers and volunteers. Our vision is to create a sequence of experiences that doesn't just build knowledge and skills but empowers and equips students to address the challenges of climate change. The students’ experiences throughout the program will align with their developmental progress: Exposure (early grades; all schools and students): Exploring the outdoors with our senses and observing and interacting with nature.
Experience and Enhancement (upper elementary and middle grades; all schools and students): Deepening our understanding of the natural world, our place in it, and our impact on our environment.
Expertise (high school; all schools; elective classes for some students): Expanding our knowledge and our ability to effect positive change through in-depth study of natural and environmental science, work-based learning, and career exploration.

This work has the potential to be a model for schools and districts throughout LA County, programatically, practically, and economically. Outdoor learning experiences do not always need to involve the expense of a bus or many hours away from school, which are often cited as barriers. This project will demonstrate that students can interact deeply with nature by growing plants in a raised bed on a school campus, or by observing insects and animals in a micro-habitat of urban trees, or by any number of experiences. PEF and PUSD will make the curriculum available to all LA County schools and districts for no charge.
Like many other areas of LA, the communities served by PEF and PUSD are sharply divided along socio-economic, racial, and geographic lines; the majority of the district's student population are from low-income families. The project can be a model for increasing access to greenspace and meaningful educational experiences in nature for underserved populations across the County.

Students and teachers currently learn outdoors and interact with nature through experiences in school gardens (both food production and native plant gardens), field trips for students in grades 3, 4 and 5 in partnership with the Huntington Gardens, Arlington Garden, and the Armory Center for the Arts (Children Investigate the Environment); and Agro-Ecology elective courses, garden clubs, and farm-to-school internships in high school. Evidence comes mainly from pre- and post-participation surveys that have shown positive change in the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and agency of students of teachers in the sciences and other curricular areas, as well as in the participants’ physical and social-emotional wellbeing. As we scale the program to the entire school district over the next four to five years, our goal is to measure how effectively the elements of the project build on each other, i.e., are students improving their knowledge, skills, attitudes and agency sequentially over time?

The Pasadena Unified School District is PEF's principal partner in all of our programs and initiatives. The role of the PUSD staff identified above is to ensure the project includes the voice of teachers, staff, administators, and leaders from the Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development Department in its development. This ensures that the project will be authentically implemented in all schools and grades. PEF's main role is to leverage the resources of the community – funding, volunteers, and partnerships – to support and sustain the project, and to advocate for it in the district and the community. A collaborative project of similar scope and intent, My Masterpieces: Discovering Art in My Community, has engaged all PUSD students in grades K-6 for more than a decade.