Learning Without Walls: The GUS Campus as a Classroom
One of the things families notice almost immediately at Glen Urquhart School is that learning doesn’t stay neatly contained within classroom walls.
Children are outside — often, joyfully, and with purpose — moving fluidly between the indoors and outdoors as a natural part of the school day. Across campus, across divisions, and across disciplines, outdoor learning is both organic and intentional. At GUS, the campus itself is not a destination; it is an extension of the classroom.
Moving fluidly between classroom and campus changes the way students learn—and the way teachers teach. Children benefit from movement, hands-on engagement, and a sense of ownership over their learning. From the first weeks of school, students learn that the outdoors is a place for thinking, questioning, creating, and caring. They learn how to move thoughtfully through shared spaces: balancing conversation with awareness, curiosity with responsibility, and independence with community. Sometimes the destination is planned, sometimes the learning unfolds simply by being there. There’s no designated time to be in an outdoor classroom or a block on the schedule. Our students know it’s always a possibility, and often a priority.
“Our students instinctively know it’s a healthier way to learn - the vitamin D, the cool winter air, collaboration outside with a classmate, or putting their skills to the test in authentic scenarios.”
Outdoor learning also provides authentic contexts for many academic skills across subjects and grade levels. First graders, for example, plant bulbs in the fall—exploring science concepts like roots and growth while applying math skills such as depth and measurement. In the spring, they return with rulers in hand to measure emerging daffodils in inches and centimeters, discovering that math lives in the real world and that learning deepens when it’s shared. Across campus, social studies, literacy, science, and math blend naturally when learning is grounded in place and purpose.
“Our teaching and learning are relaxed and natural. Kids are more engaged and are better able to attend because they have ownership of what they bring back to the classroom.”
Some of the most powerful outdoor learning moments aren’t loud or flashy — they’re quiet transformations. A student who finds their voice after a few muddy forest visits, the child who never thought of themselves as a “nature kid” but begins to thrive, the collective pause, by both adults and children, to truly look and listen. These moments reflect the heart of the GUS mission. Through this kind of learning, students come to understand that they are part of something larger than themselves — responsible not only for the natural world around them, but for one another.
“Taking a breath of fresh air in the middle of a writing lesson is possible because they’re used to it. Alongside academics, we’re intentionally developing executive functioning — managing clipboards, not dropping their pencils in the stream, packing for field trips — skills that will serve them well for life.”
What truly sets GUS apart is that this approach is not exceptional — it is expected. Outdoor learning is supported, encouraged, and woven into the fabric of the school day. Teachers are empowered to make it a central part of their practice, and students arrive prepared for learning to happen anywhere. At GUS, rubber boots are as essential as pencils, a quiet signal that mud, weather, and changing seasons are not obstacles to learning, but part of it. We don’t have just an outdoor classroom; we are an outdoor school. Much of our campus remains purposefully undeveloped, allowing the natural world to flourish — so students can observe it, learn from it, and care for it.
At Glen Urquhart School, the outdoors is not a break from learning. It is learning – deeply aligned with our mission to cultivate curious, capable, and compassionate students who understand their place in the world and their responsibility to it.