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Posted by Gabriele Zompì – Despite the constant challenges and attacks that you are often asked to respond to, the Italian school can still offer innovative educational and training offerings, but it should be noted that not everything that is innovative is new. And so, then, educational and training methods that seemed definitely abandoned and no longer available are rediscovered and revalued.
Among these methods, the “open-air school” played an important role and importance, a model of school that in this time of pandemic seems to be able to re-propose itself with more force and more success than in the past and that has its roots in the former. years of the 20th century, exactly in 1917.
In that year, when the explosions of the grenades of the Great War were heard in the air, the then mayor of Bologna, Francesco Zanardi together with the councilor of the school Mario Longhena, created the first public kindergartens and proposed a model of education . It integrated that the school had the presumption, perhaps even a bit crazy, of extending education and learning to places other than the traditional classroom in which the acquisition of knowledge and educational principles was a bit forced.
Just over a century ago the first open-air schools, the first school canteens, the first summer camps and the first “schools for late arrivals” were inaugurated. The system guaranteed all children, even the least favored or those with learning disabilities, to learn, have fun outdoors and eat healthy.
This is how the first open-air school was born in a city park outside the walls of the center of Bologna and the students who attended it, for eight hours a day, were “armed” with transportable desks, woolen blankets, clogs and waterproof. , so that you can spend as much time as possible outdoors, to play, teach, experiment and rest …
These schools are the “Fortuzzi” and are located, today as then, in the Margherita gardens, the largest green lung in the city.
In this school, teachers and students were the first to understand that mathematics and geography, as well as Italian and natural sciences, can also be learned by teaching outdoors. Regardless of the weather conditions.
A form of teaching that has been adopted more recently also by the Longhena schools in Bologna, thus confirming itself as the first city in Italy to think big in outdoor educational projects, thanks to the already consolidated tradition on the subject in preschool ( with the school in the forest that will be discussed later), but that involves and attracts more and more new educational institutions, which today are about 25.
To unite these schools as a common thread, in 2016 the “National Network of Outdoor Schools” was created, which groups and harmonizes the different experiences of a structured outdoor school system, where lessons can be taught outside the classroom, to rediscover a relationship with nature is not only primary schools, but also childhood schools, which are interested in the first place in the “new” way of proposing the acquisition of knowledge. Some kindergartens even offer outdoor activities, although they are aware that for such young children we still cannot speak of a real “open-air school” proposal.
The project for an open-air school started from below, that is, from a group of parents who, after having seen their children spend a lot of time outdoors during kindergarten, began to “push” for that experience could also continue in elementary school.
There are many and different collaborations in the Regions with Universities, in particular with the Departments of Education Sciences, with Local Authorities, with Environmental Foundations, with Associations and also with informal groups. The collaboration, in the Emilian capital, with the Villa Ghigi Foundation, which deals with environmental education, naturalistic dissemination, analysis and planning of the territory is significant. The Foundation, which is based in the park of the same name in via San Mamolo, offers activities in nature for schools of all levels, from kindergarten to high school. He also has an intense training activity. Within the network of open-air schools it deals with the training and facilitation of teachers by creating specific annual courses. The Foundation was also the promoter of the project “The school in the forest”, aimed at kindergarten children, activated in 2010, monitored with an ad hoc research trajectory and carried out over a couple of years. And it can be said that it was from this project that the “open air schools” project was born and developed.
Continuing with this last project and taking care of its developments, the Alma Mater of Bologna could not fail to be present. Michela Schenetti, Associate Professor of General Didactics of the Department of Education, who coordinates training and research for the Internet, affirms that a proposal for an open-air school today must be configured as a continuous and transversal approach to all schools, although it cannot yet be define and propose as a model to follow sic et simpliciter. “I find it difficult to think of a model – he says – because history teaches us that this can lead to the hardening of practices. I like to think of a transversal approach to any school model, rather. Outdoor schools focus on relationships: with children, between children and with the world and offer teachers great opportunities: to embrace the emotions of children, who in this pandemic period are showing great courage, commitment and spirit of adaptation and support their learning with authentic, three-dimensional and meaningful experiences. Practicing active outdoor education today more than ever has to do with the well-being, safety and health of adults and children. It offers the opportunity to open up to the territory, the city, the community and return to children that beauty and sense of adventure, responsibility and autonomy that is often sacrificed within the walls of the classrooms.
It allows us to take steps towards a change that is as necessary as it is important. And for that reason, doing school outdoors today I believe that it is not only an opportunity that should be taken advantage of only under certain conditions, but a necessity for the world of education to be pursued with an intentional and collective commitment. “
Therefore, an outdoor school can provide the opportunity to connect and consolidate the relationship between the school and the extracurricular, the local community, the territory and its resources. It allows the transfer of knowledge between different generations. It has the potential to educate in the care and respect of the environment, in addition to promoting sustainable development. It invites you to assume responsible attitudes in relation to the environment and to know and respect the rules of behavior in gardens, parks and public spaces in general.
In conclusion, the open-air school offers a different way of learning, of relating, of growing in nature and with nature, in a world that seems increasingly distant from loving and respecting it. With the outdoor school, even the little ones understand the great task that we all have to do: respect and love nature and consider it as a true, great and unique inheritance for future generations. After all, an outdoor school should do “just” this.
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