Community Outdoor School
Near and Far.
There are exciting changes coming in Maryland in regards to outdoor and nature schools and daycares. With the passing of HB525, Maryland’s Department of Education is walking purposefully towards licensing outdoor schools. This will be a long (and careful) process as it will result in changes to the State’s Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR). These changes are not taken lightly. HB525 will pilot programs in order to then recommend changes and additons to COMAR which will then need to be officially adopted by the legislators.
Near and far. Where we are!
COMAR is a set of regulations enacted by the State legislators. These detail the day-to-day operations of so many different businesses and pursuits. Operating an early childhood daycare, school, or center is but one set of regulations included out of the 36 in the annotated form.
Our governing agency, the Maryland State Department of Education’s Office of Child Care will refer to portions of this annotated document (section 13) to approve a child care facility. Key word “facility” since a large portion of the section lists environmental requirements from lighting to square footage to tables and chairs and materials. All of it casts a critical eye on staffing, space, and materials all with an eye towards protecting young children while also supporting them developmentally, socially, and physically. We have annual visits from licensing specialists the Office of Child Care to ensure that we follow COMAR.
As you can imagine, updating and changing COMAR is a careful process especially in reference to our most vulnerable citizens (children and elders), but it is done. For example, a change was made when measuring square footage of interior space per child. It was once 30sqft/child and it is now 35sqft/child. This single measurement of square footage, along with other considerations leading with location (address and its surroundings) of the child care facility, will determine how many children can be enrolled at that facility.
This, of course, makes a lot of sense. Children need space, the end. Currently, interior space is the leading edge of whether anyone can even open a space for children. If your center, family daycare, or school is located in an urban neighborhood — traditionally a space that is also underserved — your program prospects will be limited because of expense, limited available property, and neighborhood restrictions. This last, neighborhood restrictions, comes into play for us because our County steps in to determine if the proposed location is too close to neighbors, neighborhood opposition, traffic management plans, and parking plans. One or all could be deal breakers for dreams and meeting community needs.
We are not able to offer longer day, full week programming because our “home base” (our building and yard) only allows for a small number of children. In order to enroll as many children as we can — meeting the interest and needs of our community for outdoor schooling, we have to offer class sessions measured in hours and as partial week programming.
This doesn’t meet our community’s needs. As the only outdoor school in the neighborhood, it also means that only some children are able to attend. This is just not right.
Outdoor school licensing will change that dynamic if the process follows other State’s footsteps. Licensing guidelines will not be tied to interior space or location.
These ideas will come up against decades of perceptions of what makes an ideal setting for young children in the State of Maryland. It will come up against decades of perceptions of what families see in their mind's eye that has been shaped by the media, by special interest groups, by books, by so many things about where their child will be safely held and educated by other adults.
There is another hitch . Outdoor schools and nature schools — those perceptions are also shaped by stakeholders, advocates, the media, books, and organizations to be quite specific. Look up nature schools and you will see children following trails, in meadows, under a tree canopy, walking in streams in public or private land. The landscapes are large and wide. You will also learn of the benefits offered by outdoor schools.
This is not us.
Outdoor/nature schools like ours are under-represented in the story here in the United States. As an educator involved in early childhood development for almost three decades — I will never go back inside and our program is frozen in place by regulations and the regulatory process. For us to survive and thrive, we hope to be part of the pilot program because the eventual approval of outdoor schools is years down the road.
In this case, inclusion truly is opportunity.
Here are our facts.
Our outdoor school children are part of the neighborhood. The sidewalks are our paths. The street signs and utility paint markers guide us. We have grass and sky, wind and rain, tree and clouds. We also have stormwater in the gutters, trees hemmed in by curbs, neighbors and birds calling from apartment windows and high branches.
Our paths are sidewalks. We have the world, and all it offers, all around us.
While we have small-grove forests to go to on each side of our busy streets and sidewalks, these green spaces are stressed from stormwater run-off and an ailing tree canopy. As I write this post, Maryland’s governor has declared a state of emergency for Tropical Storm Ophelia. On Friday, when we went out, we did not walk to either of our green creek/forests because the wind was already up. Instead, we went to a place the children call the “Big Lawn” which is the quad of the local college and the no longer, functioning local hospital.
We stopped along our way and tried the ripe kousa dogwood berries outside one of the dorms — these were huge this year. What does that mean? Then the children ate their snacks brought from home at the roots of a grand willow oak before taking off to run on that Big Lawn.
I took a photo of one of their favorite places to be at the Big Lawn, under the weeping canopy of this tiny, slow-growing spruce. As I took the photo, I was thinking that I wanted to see if the camera could capture their play inside the branches (it couldn’t, which is perfect, really). Unsuccessful with that idea, I looked up to see what was going on (or not going on) at the once vibrant area hospital just across the street from this fairy house and I thought to myself — social media.
The close up of the branches with barely visible children is the social media story that says “NATURE CHILDREN." But the photo that shows who we truly are is the wide shot — the photo that shows the tiny tree at the edge of a parking lot with a no longer functioning hospital campus behind it.
It is my hope that our school will be part of the pilot program indicated in the HB525 legislation. It will allow us, in short order, in the nearness of soon, to become the outdoor school we truly should be. It will allow us to welcome more children and to model what an outdoor school could be for families who also deserve that option and will bring to the fore urban settings making it possible for family daycares, centers, and nursery schools to join with their own outdoor school initiatives.
Near and far. Our community outdoor school finds nature in the margins.
