In Fall 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I was required to teach in person. Although quite uncomfortable, I improvised.
On my first day back, after months secluded in my apartment, I noticed large wedding tents pitched around campus. Inside were tables, chairs, and heaters. Immediately, I started meeting there, seeking to offer engaging, yet safe, classes. Without walls separating learning from environing, I became increasingly attuned to campus life—the hum of HVAC units, the white noise of fountains, the rhythms of class, the buzz of bikes, the flights of hawks, the jumps of squirrels. More attuned than ever before to the concrete details of my university, my classes changed accordingly, even as the pandemic raged. Never had I experienced classes so palpably alive.
After a year of trying out various sites around campus, in Fall 2022 my university created two outdoor classrooms, some near new fire pits. While North Carolina is almost always warm, those fires allow us to stay warm during those few chilly weeks in winter. Today, I teach all my classes outside, usually sitting in the Adirondack chairs circling fire pits. I tell students before the first day that we will be almost [exclusively] outside, and the word spreads quickly because so many people see us perched around campus. Though some students drop, I am now so convinced of the magic of teaching philosophy outside that I have no intention of going back inside, and I think others should try it. If you are intrigued, or maybe even do it a bit yourself, here are just a few (of so many!) reasons why more philosophy teachers should try teaching outside as much as possible and only go back inside under protest or inclement weather.
The first thing I noticed was the increased amount of sustained energy. The natural energy of towering oaks, blooming azaleas, and yellow daffodils, as well as the songs and movements of birds, squirrels, and bugs, feed the class energy. In my three years of teaching outside, never has a student fallen asleep. Rarely do students yawn or show fatigue. Rather than inhaling each other’s exhalations, outside we breathe fresh air and it shows in the quality of conversation and thinking. And this is not just my take. Our Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning visited several of my classes to conduct surveys and guide conversations on the students’ experience. Every student reported feeling less tired and more engaged.
Even with this increased energy, a common worry about outdoor teaching concerns attention. It is true that a loud truck or laughing passers-by can distract, but there are good and bad distractions. For example, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan’s The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective suggests that people concentrate better while in nature. They call it “attention restoration theory.” When outside, my students “effortlessly attend” nature’s abundant “soft fascinations”—drifting clouds or the rustling of leaves—which rejuvenate their attention, thereby increasing their ability for sustained and intense engagement with class. As one student said, “When I am inside, I just can’t see; but outside my vision and thinking expand to the horizon.”
Yet rather than going to an idealized nature, I try to take advantage of the vibrant campus life right outside the door—teachers walking to class, tours for prospective students, athletes running across a quad, even leaf blowers. After all, Elon University is a designated botanical garden and recognized as one of the most beautiful campuses in the U.S. Yet our classes, I suggest, have not seized the opportunity to make every inch of campus a potential learning space. Even when it rains, there are several spots with overhangs that allow us to stay outside comfortably. There’s nothing like discussing Thales while water falls all around you. This even applies to relatively severe thunderstorms.
My dear former colleague and brilliant pedagogue Anthony Weston told me of one of his favorite moments as a teacher. In a course he held at Elon’s Loy Farm, they were sitting under a metal overhang when a hail storm burst. The noise of the hail hitting the metal was so loud that they could not talk, instead forced by the sky to sit and listen. Not too long into their “silence,” something overtook the class, something that could never be recorded in a book, reduced to an argument, or even shared in a discussion. Call it communion with nature or a shared quiet moment of co-listening, Anthony’s openness to letting nature have a say in philosophical thinking allowed the magic to enter the class and elevate their philosophical experience.
My point here is not to advocate for treating everywhere like central North Carolina, but instead to encourage every philosophy teacher, wherever you are, to attune to the life of your unique campus and greater environment, to let the magic in. Going outside invites you to seek out your horizons and your situatedness. While Elon is lush with Southern Magnolias and towering oaks, on a visit to Thomas Nail’s outdoor classes at the University of Denver he showed me the magnificent Rocky Mountains composing their western horizon.
Porous borders of outdoor spaces also change who is in class. When outside, with the classroom extending so broadly, those who are often not seen as part of the class are included in the class. This includes the chance walkers-by, the grounds people, anyone, which allows the improvisational productive engagements with other knowers besides academic faculty. Even animals are part of my classes now. Where I often hold classes, several hawks soar above us. Few philosophy classes have hawks as regular visitors, but they seem to love hearing about Spinoza or Fanon.
Outdoor learning specialist Jill McSweeney characterized this as public v. private classes. Ancient philosophy was, for many, a public act—in the Agora, under the Bohdi tree, or alongside the Nile. Inspired by the public and open nature of so much of antiquity, my classes seek to revive that seemingly forgotten setting for the practice of philosophy. Must we, today, begin teaching philosophy by closing off the world, by shuttering ourselves inside?
Public, open learning also promotes sociality. My classes are experiments in discursive improvisation. I have not lectured in a decade and rarely allow technology in class. Rarely do I even teach texts I’ve read before, meaning that my classes are variably organized discussions, usually rooted in short pre-class writing assignments called “ruminations.” When I arrive at class, I never know exactly what will happen—but this is the magic. Rather than telling students what to think, I stage philosophical experiences that orient individual ruminating into group discussions so that we can think together. Thinking here means creating, generating thoughts as a community, with and through our personal relations. To do this effectively, students need to be willing and ready to engage with ideas, people, and problems, and I have found that students are much more open and eager to talk and think together when we are outside. Compared to indoor classes, my students report feeling more connected with their classmates and invested in others’ learning.
Finally (for now!), students report feeling more agency when outdoors. While indoor classroom spaces are often seen as “belonging” to the teacher, outdoors students report feeling more encouragement to take part in the construction of the class, which makes them feel more responsible for the quality of the class and everyone’s experience of it. While some students call it “more informal,” I follow Fred Moten’s advice not to confuse informality with lack of sophistication. Students say they feel more invited to and appreciated for sharing their thoughts, especially concerning things about which they feel less confident. And as students take more agency and responsibility, outdoor classes tend to promote better conversations on such sensitive and uncomfortable topics. I teach about race and gender all the time, topics many find difficult, if not unsettling. If students feel uncertain or are unwilling to risk saying the wrong thing, class suffers. Yet being outside brings a sort of openness, literal and figurative, that invites students to take the risk and engage challenging topics.
Importantly, all of this is happening at Elon University, which is nationally recognized for its excellence in undergraduate teaching, innovation, and learning communities, especially with support from our Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. As we, as an institution, continue to imagine and create ways to increasingly improve teaching and learning, my hope is that outdoor classes will be a key part of our future as well as philosophy across the nation. Perhaps most of all, I am still very new to this, and would love to learn from others, especially those who have done this far longer than me (such as this chapter, this podcast, or this philosophy nonprofit). If you, too, teach outdoors or are intrigued, please let me know. Several of us at Elon are hoping to make outdoor learning more accessible, inclusive, and expansive so that anyone interested can enjoy the beauty and power of teaching outside.
Ryan J. Johnson
Ryan J. Johnson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Elon University. He has published several books on Continental Philosophy and Antiquity, is co-author of Phenomenology of Black Spirit, and co-editor of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy issue on “Philosophy as a Way of Life.” His next book is on the abolitionist John Brown and Black Spinozism. He loves Spinoza, John Coltrane, and trains.
