Displaying items by tag: outdoor learning

Outdoor Afro founder Rue Mapp.  Bethanie Hines via Revelator

Black people like nature, too. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at outdoor magazines before Outdoor Afro got started.

This story was originally published by The Revelator. There are Southeastern chapters of Outdoor Afro, including Knoxville.

If time and money weren’t an issue, what would you do?

That’s what Rue Mapp’s mentor asked her as she faced the completion of her college degree and an uncertain job market.

“I’d probably start a website to reconnect Black people to the outdoors,” Mapp replied, a story she recounts in her new book Nature Swagger. Soon after that she launched the blog Outdoor Afro, which began with stories of her own experiences in nature. It was inspired not just by her own love of the outdoors, but of a desire to increase the visibility of Black people enjoying those spaces.

The town of Farragut owns the outdoor classroom property on Campbell Station Road at Farragut High School. It’s difficult for students and teachers to use the outdoor classroom as much as they’d like. Ivy Zhang/Hellbender Press

An educational outing to a living laboratory by the high school is considered a field trip

Hellbender Press intern Ivy Zhang is a junior at Farragut High School. She plans a career in journalism and digital media. 

KNOXVILLE  — The best place to learn about the natural environment is not in a classroom. It’s outside.

Teachers and students at Farragut High School said the school’s outdoor classroom improves academic performance and there is a schoolwide desire to utilize it even more as an educational resource.

Students show more interest in learning when they are outside in a calming, natural environment, teachers said. And for those studying the biological sciences, outdoor classrooms serve as a living laboratory for the study of soils, trees, plants, animals, insects and other natural resources.