CLEVELAND, Ohio - Nature can be a very effective classroom. On a cold morning last winter about a dozen preschool students got an object lesson in the circle of life when they stumbled on a dead buck on their daily outdoor adventure.
The students attend Laurel Schools' outdoor pre-primary school on its Butler Campus in Geauga County. Their classroom is a 140-acre plot in Russell Township. For days after discovering the dead deer, they returned to observe the carcass being consumed by scavengers.
Program founder and teacher Audrey Elszasz said that the children weren't scared or saddened by the sight of the dead animal. Instead, they were fascinated.
"There was a real force of curiosity for the children, to see an animal that wasn't alive anymore," said Elszasz, 54.
Outdoor schools are growing in popularity and are seen as a way to connect children to nature and to help engage students with a range of learning styles. Laurel School is a private girls school in Shaker Heights but its preschool programs are co-ed. Tuition for the program ranges between $10,964.50 to $16,620 per year, dependent on if the student is in a half-day or full-day program.
The outdoor school was inspired by similar nurseries and schools in Scandinavia and on the west coast of the United States. The school incorporated existing research of the psychological and physical benefits of nature on children.
Cleveland.com explored the program as part of Cleveland Connects: The First 2,000 Days, an informational series on the importance of investing in the first five years of children's lives. Cleveland.com looks at soft skills and the roles that parents and preschools play in developing the skills.
Cleveland Connects: The First 2,000 Days is sponsored by PNC Bank and presented by cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and ideastream, the public broadcasting entity that includes WVIZ/PBS Channel 25, WCPN FM/90.3 and WCLV FM/104.9
The students at Laurel's outdoor school steer their own studies according to their interests. After they found the buck they continually requested to see the decomposing carcass.
"Just the circle of life can be part of our content, because there are predators and there are prey," said Elszasz. "You can see them all over the forest."
Last year was the first for the outdoor pre-primary program, and it's the only one of its kind in Ohio. Laurel's outdoor pre-primary school had a wait list of five to 10 students, according to Meagan Salata, the director of pre-primary and primary school admissions.
The 12 children enrolled in this past year's outdoor pre-primary school are not only physically fit; according to Elszasz, they also have higher endurance, better observational skills and respect for the world around them. They know how to take care of themselves when it's cold or rainy. Regardless of the weather conditions, the students continue to have school outdoors.
The campus includes a yurt as a home base, where students can gather at the beginnings and ends of their days. The round, portable tent also offers indoor protection during especially dangerous weather conditions.
On particularly cold winter days, Elszasz built fires for the students to huddle around. Additionally, the children learned how to stomp, run and play to keep themselves warm.
"They're taking responsibility for the basic needs of taking care of themselves," she said. "They're learning how to respect nature, instead of feeling like everything they see they have the right to touch or destroy."
These benefits of outdoor education are visible even in programs that are less immersive than Laurel.
Stonebrook Montessori, located on the east side of Cleveland, places emphasis on including nature in lesson plans even though the majority of the school's curriculum takes place inside, according to principal Jacqui Miller.
Stonebrook offers free tuition for accepted students. Students can only be accepted into their program if they live in the nearby area, and preference is given to Cleveland residents.
Miller, 48, has been a Montessori teacher for over 20 years. All Montessori schools incorporate nature into their teaching ideology.
"The walls of the classroom can sometimes be overwhelming on any given day. If the child is having a hard time settling for any reason, they know they can go outside," said Miller. "It definitely helps regulate children who are having trouble in the classroom emotionally. It allows them to get their hands in the dirt, and it allows them to be creative."
This holds true even at the Cleveland Montessori, in the middle of urban Little Italy. Though the building on Mayfield Road doesn't have much room for nature, the students still plant vegetables and explore the park across the street.
Schools around Ohio are incorporating outdoor education into their curricula where they can, and when they don't have the resources available, they sometimes look to afterschool programs like the ones offered at Nature Center at Shaker Lakes.
As part of their school programs, the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes teach various classes to many different grade levels from neighboring Cleveland, Shaker and Cleveland Heights schools. The organization serves over 15,000 students during the school year.
Cleveland students specifically get involved through the Applied Science for Kids (ASK) program. It is part of the "Learn, Protect and Stay" collaborative which helps educate and inspire students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. This program is free for all students, paid for by sponsors, but some of Shaker's other after school programs have fees attached.
"For kids, it helps them develop problem solving skills," said Raja Byrnside, the director of education for the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes. "The exposure that it provides for inner city students is amazing, but for all students, it's very eye opening and gets a lot of them to connect in a way."
Byrnside, 39, has worked for the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes for 10 years. Once, she received a comment from a parent that their program educated children better than their school year curriculum did.
Incorporating nature into school is an effective way to engage children who might otherwise struggle.
"We've seen incredible results with lots of different types of learning styles already," said Elszasz.
Broadly, outdoor schools have profound benefits for every kind of student. Laurel's Center for Research on Girls has started collecting data to compare student performance in the outdoor preschool program to indoor ones, and Elszasz thinks the results will further demonstrate the benefits of nature in education.
Though Laurel's program is unique in that they teach purely outdoors and have an accessible forest available, Elszasz thinks that any school can find a way to incorporate nature into their programs.
"Even if you don't have 148 acres of forest, even if you only have a fenced in piece of grass, there are things to look at," she said. "There's nature everywhere, even in the middle of the city. I think it's a matter of opening the eyes of children that maybe don't pay attention and don't notice it."