March, 2020. It is the Thursday before Spring Break. My students and I have gone outdoors to complete our class, attempting to escape the stifling heat of a new building with windows that can’t open. We settle ourselves on an elevated loading dock on the back of the building, near what we call Point Lookout, a rocky bluff that overlooks Lake Taneycomo far below. It is a perpetually windy spot, and just as we settle in, one student fumbles his folder and drops it off the dock. Explosion. Papers actually blow over the roof of the three-story building as students run to capture them. Just as everyone had returned to their spots, the students’ everpresent phones began to vibrate. The college was moving online after Spring Break. Not a lot of learning took place that day.

Accordingly, during the ensuing years of pandemic education, I was not among those educators who relied on outdoor learning. I clung to my comfort zone in the traditional classroom, albeit with masks and distance intruding.

Five years later, though, I am making a more concerted attempt to take my classes outdoors, not to protect my students from viruses, but to return them to contact with the Real. Over 90% of students have their own smartphones by age 12. Traditional classrooms don’t present a sufficient challenge to those dopamine machines. Banning smartphones from the classroom is necessary but not sufficient. The outdoors—with its variable temperatures, uncomfortable surfaces, and bugs—offers the best means to confront our habits of distraction, forcing students to face the unpredictable, often uncomfortable but deeply pleasurable stuff of nature. The outdoors, after all, is a reliable source of needless splendor.

These days, I will take many of my classes outdoors from time to time, if only to enjoy a nice day or escape a hot classroom. (Climate control in the aging buildings where I teach can be of variable effectiveness.) But my most sustained experiment in outdoor learning thus far was my Place Writing class this past spring semester, for which I set an expectation that the course would meet outdoors at least once per week, regardless of the weather.

Despite the fact that the course met from January to May in the variable and often harsh climate of southern Missouri, we had remarkably few truly uncomfortable days. Eventually it became a running joke that God was bailing the students out, protecting them from truly uncomfortable weather. Often the day before we met outdoors saw heavy rain or cold temperatures, and then the weather moderated by the time of our class. When there was rain—which turned out to be seldom—we met in a sheltered place. When it was cold, I brought handwarmers, although most students didn’t use them. I think we were actually most uncomfortable on a day when it was in the 50’s, an inbetween temperature that tempted all of us to wear lighter jackets than we really needed. I made the mistake of choosing an exposed location for our meeting, and when a wind kicked up my fingers started to grow numb. We wrapped up early that day for comfort, but I think that was the only time.

My students had a wonderfully game attitude, and I never heard a complaint. Of course, that may just mean that they complained out of earshot. But in truth, I think they would have spent even more class time outdoors than we actually did. In course evaluations, they expressed appreciation for the outdoor time as helping them “see the value of the ordinary.” My favorite student comment, however, came from a Conservation and Wildlife Management major: “Now I can say I have had a humanities class that spent more time outside than my conservation courses.”

The Place Writing class was largely a discussion-oriented course, but I also enjoy taking larger, more lecture-oriented courses outside. For these, I have invested in some necessary kit. I have a portable chalkboard and an easel that comes out when I take larger courses outdoors. And, this fall, I was able to secure funding to purchase a class’s worth of camp chairs, allowing my students and I to have more choice of location and comfort of seating when we go outdoors.

For those other teachers who might be interested in teaching outdoors more frequently, I have learned a few things to keep in mind. I don’t use PowerPoint in teaching, but if you do, you’ll have to find an alternative means of conveying information—I still like to give out or to receive a printed handout. Prepare your students for the likelihood of outdoor meetings, and follow a predictable structure if you want to take them out in bad weather. (Nobody ever complains about a spontaneous trip outdoors when the weather is nice.) Consider shade and shelter from the wind when you pick a spot, as over an hour period these factors make as big a difference in comfort as the temperature. We want to have an encounter with the Real, but too much discomfort will impede learning for most people. Try a variety of locations around your campus until you find the ones that work the best.

I’m still very much at the beginning of my experiment in teaching outdoors more intentionally, so I have only a very little advice to give and much, much to learn and reflect upon. I would love to hear from others who have taught outdoors at any level. There is a body of writing about this subject, but I have only poked around in it a bit. So please leave a comment if you have advice or experiences to share.

I’m not going to claim that teaching outdoors is some magical technique for solving education. It does introduce distractions of various sorts, though these at least have the merit of being real things and not digital ephemera. It was not transformed my teaching or removed the common hassles of teaching. But it has been good for my teaching. It has helped me get quicker on my feet and more adaptable, and given my students and me a greater range of experiences. Most importantly, it underscores a point I am always trying to impress upon them, that studying the humanities doesn’t mean retreating from real life, but getting out deeper into it. For that reason, I’m committed to continuing the practice. Wind and all.

As this essay makes clear, I am bracing for the oncoming semester, my mind more and more taken up with syllabi and assignments and office hours. But this is actually quite a change from how I spent the latter part of our summer. I’ll be writing about this more, I think, but suffice it to say that our roof sprung a leak in June, and lacking the money to have it professionally re-roofed, I had to do the work myself, with the aid of friends and family. It turned out pretty good, I think.

Though I began the summer writing quite a bit, with the roofing job underway my writing slowed almost to a halt. And, to be candid, it risks doing so still further. Even a DIY roof is pretty expensive, so my family will be facing a financial crunch for a while. Since the writing I do tends not to be remunerative, it tends to become a lower priority when our family needs more money, as I seek out other ways to supplement our income. But this next year is especially important for my writing: I have a sabbatical in the spring semester, and hope to move some larger projects (a next book or two) forward significantly.

All that being the case, if you would like to help me invest more time in my writing, you’re invited to Buy Me a Coffee. I have no intention of paywalling this newsletter or taking paid subscriptions, though I do often flirt with the idea of producing a physical newsletter or zine. (A sabbatical project, maybe.) For now, even some modest support in the form of a coffee or two feels like what I can justify with my output—and it would make a big difference for my family.

So thanks for considering it. And, even if you can’t, thanks for reading. Attention is the form of generosity every reader pays a writer, and it’s something I can never fail to be grateful for.

Buy me a coffee