The New York Times Student Journalism Institute

On a recent January afternoon, a warm breeze blew and sunlight streamed down onto a van where a small group of kindergarteners were scrambling to get inside. The children, students at Sierra Oaks School in the old mining town of Oracle, Ariz., had decided they wanted to play in the local park instead of work in the computer lab.

For students at Sierra Oaks, a charter school for kindergarteners through eighth-graders founded in 2002, playtime in the park is an important part of the school day — an opportunity to be outside on a warm afternoon and learn from nature. According to the principles on which the school was founded, an extra breath of fresh air is essential in a world where students are increasingly plugged in to handheld video games, cellphones and other gadgets.

The school community also built a yurt — a circular wooden and canvas structure — behind the main school building as an additional classroom space to connect students to the outdoors.

“If it’s nice out, you roll up the windows,” said Carol Mulholland, a school administrator.

The school’s founders hoped that in addition to offering students a strong basic academic foundation, Sierra Oaks would incorporate plenty of hands-on learning experiences emphasizing nature and the outdoors, alternative energy and art.

As idyllic as the environment at Sierra Oaks may appear, however, these days the school has been contending with some of the more challenging realities of education. The high-stakes pressure of standardized testing in reading, math and writing skills has changed curriculums in public schools across Arizona, and the case at Sierra Oaks is no different.

Now students go outside to read or do science experiments only when the activities fit in with the government’s required charter school curriculum, and when scheduling allows. The yurt, which once served as the classroom of Lynn Eggleston, a co-founder of the school, is now used as a multipurpose room.

Eggleston is no longer involved heavily in the school’s day-to-day operations but does take classes out hiking once a week. Her original mission for the school, she said, was to give students an experience they might not otherwise have had in a world where the outdoors is often forgotten.

Years ago, Eggleston said, she saw a television program about a basic, back-to-the-books school in California where students wrote in journals, read and did projects that didn’t involve technology. It was an inspiration. And so Sierra Oaks’ founders created lessons that would exploit the biodiversity of Oracle, the proximity of the mountain ranges, and the resources provided by a garden kept by faculty and students.

“I wanted to give them a first,” Eggleston said of her students. The children might not have taken the initiative to engage with nature on their own, but once they were given the opportunity, they often got hooked, she said.

Eggleston’s dream was to start this alternative school, but she came to a point in her life when she needed to move on, she said. She was an administrator last year, and now she just remains on the school’s board.

Other schools around the country have implemented similar approaches to learning. In New Mexico, for example, Albuquerque Academy focuses on experiential learning and incorporates outdoor education in several ways.

“Students are super affected by technology,” said Sarah Councell, a teacher at Albuquerque Academy. “It is so important to have that time to connect with nature on a deeper level. To lose that would be a huge disservice.”

Students need to actively forge a bond with nature because so much of their lives are centered indoors, she said. “The wilderness is shrinking,” Councell said. “It’s not this renewable resource. It’s not going to grow.”

Bruce Johnson, the department head of teaching, learning and sociocultural studies at the University of Arizona’s College of Education, said schools that incorporate outdoor education into their curriculums provide additional benefits.

“A connection with nature makes people more emotionally happy,” Johnson said.

Even though outdoor education is no longer the sole focus at Sierra Oaks, the school does retain some of its mission — to encourage students to learn what they can from their experiences in the environment.

Much of the school’s nature education still takes place in the yurt. Eggleston, who once worked as a forest ranger, and whose children grew up in a yurt attached to their home in the Chiricahua Mountains, in southeastern Arizona, said building the yurt at Sierra Oaks was a no-brainer — not only was it a way for the students to make something together, but it was also an inexpensive way to tie the outdoors to learning.

Inside Sierra Oaks’ yurt, students take art and music classes, and use the space as a meeting area. This past November the school hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in the yurt for students and parents. The garden is located right outside, between the yurt and the main schoolhouse.

Eggleston said she was happy the school was still there. It may not have remained the place she envisioned from the beginning, she said, but the yurt, at least, stands as a reminder of what the school strived to be, before an emphasis was put on “teaching to the test.”

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to accept.

“You create something,” Eggleston said, “and it can be hard to see change.”