About the project

In 2002, a small group of parents approached the principal at Flatirons Elementary school and the Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado, proposing the creation of an "outdoor classroom" that would serve as an experimental space for issues combining science, values, and society. Forming a partnership between the local school, Boulder Valley School District, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the University of Colorado, the Flatirons Outdoor Classroom is an interdisciplinary learning environment that combines elements of science, art, social studies, and the humanities.

The site, however, would not be fully utilized until lessons plans were created that made explicit use of the site. The parent group therefore submitted a grant application to the National Science Foundation for a teacher training workshop to develop classroom materials that could take advantage of the interdisciplinary space. 

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant to the University of Colorado to hold a summer 2003 workshop at the Outdoor Classroom for selected teachers within the Boulder Valley School District.  For one week, sixteen teachers (drawn from elementary, middle, and high schools across the district) spent their mornings participating in lectures and discussion on topics in geology, hydrology, botany, biology, geography, water politics, and ethics, led by local experts in these fields. In the afternoon, the teachers worked in teams to devise curricular materials for elementary and secondary school students relating the material covered in the mornings to the distinctive interdisciplinary capacities of the outdoor space.

The goals of the workshop were:

1. To provide the teachers with training in the Earth and environmental sciences, social science and science policy, and selected areas of the humanities so that they could design curricular materials that make effective use of the Outdoor Classroom
2. Through doing so, to create pedagogical materials on interdisciplinary educational education that can be disseminated locally, regionally and nationally in a variety of formats (such as publications, conference presentations, museum exhibits, and the Digital Library for Earth System Education)
3. To disseminate accounts of the pedagogical possibilities of the Outdoor Classroom so that this model may be adapted and adopted by communities nationwide.

Morning sessions were devoted to presentations by and discussions with a series of guest speakers drawn from the University of Colorado, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the City of Boulder Watershed. Speakers presented material on the wide variety of topics that make up an interdisciplinary approach to environmental education, including hydrology, geology, biology, environmental science, ethics, science policy, the philosophy of science, constructivism, and the theory and practice of interdisciplinary education.  Teachers also received a briefing book with a set of readings tied to the lectures.