Lessons Outside

-CharlieRocket

We all love spring. We spend November to February stiff as boards walking around campus in attempts to brace ourselves from the chill that is Virginia in the winter. When the cold begins to break in February and March, Mary Washington spring semester classes begin to be thin out and Ball Circle is filled with bodies playing Frisbee, reading or lazily sunbathing. After months of freezing our tails off, that first sunny, 65 degree day is one of bliss – until you realize that you have to pack up your blanket and be in class in ten minutes.

Here’s the thing: sunny, beautiful days have a pretty high skip rate. No one wants to be in a windowless classroom full of computers when there is beautiful grass to sit on and a hair-rufflin’ breeze to wrestle with. The few students that actually go to class feel like chumps and gaze out the window to Jefferson Square, Ball Circle and Campus Walk and look at their friends who are getting Vitamin D. Even the professor regrets faking sick. So, here’s the obvious solution: when the weather becomes nice and the class looks antsy, professors should occasionally hold class outside.

First, holding class outside would boost the number of students attending class. If a student is going to skip to class to be outside, there is no reason why he or she would not go to class on a day in which he or she will be outside anyway.

Second, this can boost class morale. There are always different group dynamics within classrooms, and there are always classes in which the students all know each other and classes in which all students are anonymous. Bringing a class outside for a lesson would help the students meet each other not only by mixing up seating arrangements, but also because they immediately have a commonality of excitement going outside. It would be difficult for a student to not make a comment to another about this new shared experience, thus creating a bond between two potential friends.

Bringing a student out of the halogen-lit, linoleum-tiled rooms of academic buildings can save energy. If a classroom has lights, computers, projectors and other electronic equipment, the professor and students will turn off these devices when exiting the classroom. This can not only save the school money on the electric bill, but it can also increase the lifespans of the gear.

Rather than losing students due to beautiful weather, professors easily the power to move their lessons outdoors, thus reducing the number of students skipping class, creating a camaraderie among pupils, and saving electricity in classrooms due to the increase in technological presences in classrooms.