The 12-Acre Classroom: An IGL data use case from the Gordon School
This spring, Gordon School launched the 12 Acre Classroom, an initiative aimed at giving faculty and staff structure and inspiration as they integrate Gordon’s outdoors into their work.
Gordon was founded in 1910 as The Open-Air School, and outdoor learning was a large part of the school culture from day one. In 1964, the school doubled down on this commitment and moved to a twelve-acre campus with wild spaces and wetlands.
Gordon has a longstanding commitment to educating children to be advocates for positive social change, and the outdoors have been part of that work. Over the past five years, as climate change has become a global emergency, Gordon’s advocacy work has grown to engage students as hands-on stewards of the earth, with lessons that show them that they can have a direct positive effect on the natural world that surrounds them. There has been an explosion of agriculture on campus, with gardens but also composting, and soil experiments under grow lamps in the winter, as well as large-scale projects replacing invasive species with native ones in Gordon’s wild spaces.
Benchmarking with the 2025 IGL Report
As Gordon sought to take this work to the next level, the 2025 IGL Report on Climate Education and Sustainability Leadership in Schools* was invaluable. It offered perspective on the work already happening at Gordon, as well as inspiration for ways that Gordon can serve as a leader among schools in the year ahead.
Curricular integration
The IGL report had only one-third of the reporting schools teaching systems thinking or futures thinking, despite its importance for preparing students for climate realities. This curricular integration is already common at Gordon, not only in issues like sustainability but in other areas as well. A sixth grade clothing swap brings in art and fashion, graphic design and math, in a lesson that introduces the concepts of closed-loop systems, fast fashion, retail systems, and the power dynamics involved in global production, trade and consumption. This degree of integration is present in lessons as disparate as the second grade picture book award (writing, illustration, research, comparative literature, consensus-driven decisionmaking and the quirks of the publishing world) and the sixth grade recipe project (addition, multiplication and proportions, inflation and food access, and the cultural values embedded in family recipes).
Student wellbeing
Just 7% of schools in the IGL report were providing programs addressing climate anxiety and resilience. In recent years, Gordon has made repeated investments in social and emotional support for students in general, and has intentionally structured its social justice and sustainability lessons to center students as empowered agents of positive change.
Quick wins are important
The report argues persuasively for the importance of quick wins in building community support for sustainability initiatives. Gordon has an established track record with visible successes that draw in community buy-in, like composting, garden construction, and renewable energy—in Gordon’s case, hydroelectric offsets.
Launching the 12 Acre Classroom
The next step for Gordon is the rollout of the 12 Acre Classroom, which provides faculty with a framework to stretch their imaginations about ways to use the outdoors to advance student learning.
The groundwork has been laid over the past few years, with year-round activity in Gordon’s gardens, with students of all grades, and high-profile compost efforts like a pumpkin reclamation after Halloween. Barriers to going outdoors have been removed when possible (every Early Childhood student has a head-to-toe rainsuit) and new signage has clarified which wild spaces are in-bounds for play and exploration. A longstanding third grade lesson in wetlands stewardship, which has them advocating for the health of Gordon’s pond, has been expanded to engage students in second to eighth grade in the work of removing invasive species along Gordon’s stream.
The launch took place in late April with a professional development event that included all of Gordon’s professionals, including office staff and after school care workers. The morning built on the planning and brainstorming of a small committee of faculty who had been meeting since September.
Led by Gordon’s Head of School alongside the school’s Green Dean, the morning began with a statement of mission:
Our 12 Acre Classroom initiative is more than using our beautiful campus; it is a commitment. It ensures that every child at Gordon develops a meaningful relationship with the natural world, understands their responsibility within it, and sees themselves as capable of caring for and shaping a more just and sustainable future.
…and focused on a series of questions:
How do we find equity in nature-based teaching?
How can I center outdoor education when teaching traditional content?
How can using nature extend what happens in the classroom?
What does being outside give you that being inside doesn’t?
The launch took place as two highly visible campus projects began: a move to organic, pesticide-free lawn care that requires some reseeding of grass, and a multi-year stream reclamation project. What could have been an unsightly pair of events on campus have been contextualized by thoughtful signage (some made by three-year-olds) and community-wide communication. The stream reclamation project began with the call for every classroom to create “love letters to the stream,” in whatever form is appropriate to their age, with the letters collected and displayed later this spring.
Looking ahead
The April workshop ended with a simple set of challenges addressed to every Gordon professional:
- What is one outdoor space on this campus I could use or connect to my work?
- What would I need to make that happen?
- What is my first small step in that direction?
And, for now, that is where the project stands as far as individual classrooms and offices go. The goal is for a culture shift, and Gordon knows that a culture shift cannot be a top-down dictate. No one is telling teachers what their first small small step should be.
But it has been made clear that everyone is expected to have a clear, thoughtful answer to that prompt. As Head of School Meredith deChabert wrote to parents a few days later, “the 12 Acre Classroom is about more than getting children outside. It is about what being outside makes possible—curiosity, connection, perspective, and purpose—and how we bring those qualities into everything we do at Gordon.” These are essential goals in every Gordon classroom, and everyone on campus is held accountable for them.
On a more institutional level, the ideas for next steps are more concrete:
- Establishing a seventh grade signature experience that centers sustainability with a visible culminating product.
- Engage Division Directors and Deans in professional development centered around culturally responsive outdoor classrooms run by Unearthing Joy. This training will serve as the foundation for this work and help drive momentum.
- Seeking out community partners, especially ones with connections to local indigenous communities and communities of color. Some examples – helping guide urban schools getting outside, help others compost, lead professional development for other area schools on teaching and learning outside.
- Exploring off-campus professional development with programs like Bioneers.
- Continuing to support campus improvements and buildings and grounds practices that highlight sustainability, communicating the goals of these projects clearly, and involving students whenever possible. Currently, Gordon is exploring curriculum and teaching strategies provided by Unearthing Joy and Thoughtbox Education.
