100 Mile Elementary
This spring we’re experimenting with moving our staff meetings outdoors. Research consistently shows that spending time in nature improves focus, creativity, and collaboration. Studies have found that people generate more ideas and engage in more open conversation when meetings take place while walking or outside rather than sitting indoors.
Time in natural environments also helps restore attention and reduce stress. Environmental psychologists describe this as attention restoration—when the natural world allows our minds to reset and return to complex thinking with greater clarity and calm.
For us, this shift is also about something deeper: connecting to the land. Many Indigenous ways of knowing recognize the land as a teacher. When we step outside together, we are reminded that learning, reflection, and leadership do not only happen in meeting rooms. The land invites us to slow down, listen, and see our work in a broader relationship with the place we live and learn.
As a school committed to place-based learning and the values of belonging and relationship, gathering outside is one small way we can align our practices with what we hope students experience every day — learning that is connected to community, land, and one another.
