REEP

As a high school student, I have spent a good part of my life staring out a window from a classroom. Be it in math, science, or English, when it is a nice day outside, and my desk is up against anything that lets me see outside, no work is getting done.

While the responsibility of my negligence does lay upon myself, I think it is only fair to give a little credit where credit is due. The way my daily schedule is built, the one that wakes me up before the sun is out and gets me home as the sun is setting, has a lot to do with why I find staring out a window so entertaining.

Think about it. I spend about three-fourths of my conscious week inside of a classroom or doing homework, and when the birds outside are chirping, and the sun outside is shining, that just feels like a little too much.

Maybe I just have spring fever.

Or maybe not.

 

 

I’m not advocating less school, and I’m not advocating shifting the time at which school starts. Both of these topics have a degree of merit behind them, but are not the focus of this post.

What I would like to see happen is actually very simple, and much easier to implicate than the two topics mentioned above. It’s simple really, just go outside more.

Hold class outside. Read outside. Have lunch outside.

Any and all of these ideas are fantastic, and schools should work to include them into the daily routine.

There are endless medical studies showing how kids these days don’t get the Vitamin D they need because they spend too much time inside. This problem is actually way easier to resolve than some people make it out to be. When students spend about eight hours at school five days a week, the simple practice of holding one class outside a day, or even making kids eat lunch outside, would work wonders.

Last year, I actually had a teacher who would combat the rise of daydreaming in people like myself by randomly moving class outside for the day. While we didn’t get as much done in that day as we could have, the quality of the class increased by a factor of ten. Everyone was much more awake, much happier to be there, and the stuff we learned that day sank in a lot deeper than some of the other stuff I had to learn during junior year.

As the seasons shift yet again, from winter to spring, students are going to begin to long to trade in the hum of an incandescent light bulb for the warmth of the sun against their skin.

Let this be a warning: Teachers, try as you might, the daydreaming will persist, and your students aren’t going to want to go anywhere with their minds but outside.

So why not just incorporate it into the schedule? Just a little time outside.

It’s going to make students, and maybe even teachers, feel a little more relaxed and a lot more happy.

But then again, I have a little bit of a bias here; I have spring fever. Would class outside be too much of a distraction for students? Or would it actually help quell the daydreaming and make everyone a little bit healthier at the same time?

Let me know in the comments below.