We've Come A Long Way: We Have A Long Way To Go

If you've been reading here for awhile, it won't surprise you to learn that when I reflect on this amazing school year, the cherry on top has been the creation of our new outdoor classroom, our all-hands-on deck, community-wide effort to transformation our small, urban courtyard, and through that our curriculum and our community. It was the effort as much as the finished product that made this year special.

One of the important characteristics of this space, for me, is that it not remain static, but rather evolve based upon the interests and talents of not just the children, but of our whole community. I expect to always view our outdoor space as a work in progress. In that regard, I'm trying to think of it like I would a science experiment or a piece of collaborative art, it will change a little everyday, sometimes by design, but mostly through happy, unpredictable accidents. It will be what we need it to be for a time, but only for a time, and then become something else. I wonder if the children who graduate this year will even recognize the space when they return to play with us a year from now. I kind of hope they don't. That will mean that the children who have come after them have made it their own.

This is where we played last fall:

This is how we transformed it this winter:

And this is where we were playing on the last day of school this spring:

I'm going to take it as an omen that this plant, which has always been in our garden, but has never shown us its flowers, bloomed for us this spring:

We've come a long way: we have a long way to go.