My desire is to give kids the opportunity to love nature.”

Shannon Rozea

Get outside!

Learn more at Thrive Outside's website.

A stroll along a winding meadow path, surrounded by native plants, reveals a world alive with butterflies, ladybugs, and the cheerful chatter of birds. Along the way, quiet seating invites students to pause and listen to the birds sing. The path continues past a pavilion to a serene pond, where glimmering fish swim just beside the woodland area. This enchanting landscape is more than a dream — it’s a vision coming to life through Thrive Outside, a movement reimagining Rhode Island’s schools as places where learning is rooted in nature.

Shannon Rozea founder, director and landscape architect of Thrive Outside used phrases like woodland area, meadow walk and creativity space to describe what she called a “rewilding” initiative that she is helping schools incorporate into their educational efforts throughout Rhode Island. “My desire is to give kids the opportunity to love nature,” she said.

After having five children of her own and witnessing the shift in public education toward more screen time and less time in nature, Rozea became inspired by the Boston Schoolyard Initiative, where schoolyards were transformed into outdoor classrooms. She set out to bring a similar change to Rhode Island.

“I was 4-years-old when my dad got a new job, and we moved into this huge, beautiful house that felt like a sprawling mansion. It’s where I first connected with nature and where I truly began to thrive,” she said.

In 2017, Rozea founded Thrive Outside with three initiatives in mind — to tackle the disconnect with nature in schools by transforming schoolyards into outdoor learning spaces, to launch a training program for K-12 teachers in Rhode Island on how to use these spaces as learning opportunities, and to offer afterschool programs and community events where children can connect with and explore nature. She has successfully developed an outdoor classroom at Melville Elementary School in Portsmouth and is now in the process of creating one at Kickemuit Middle School in Warren — with the help of the community.

^{Dr. Lora Helton and Shannon Rozea speak with some of the students who are volunterring  time to plant some greeneray in their outdoor learning space.}

The children have spoken

Outdoor spaces became a haven during the pandemic for most people. Heading back to the office might have seemed dreadful to adults, but how did children feel heading back to school? 

Dr. Lora Helton, the school psychologist at Kickemuit Middle School, gave her input on this topic. She said, “Coming out of COVID, many children were struggling with mental health challenges — feeling anxious, depressed, and disconnected. While some of those effects have lessened over time, the impact is still visible in classrooms today.” She and the teachers talked about creating a small space outside, but Ana Riley, the superintendent of schools in the Bristol Warren district, had bigger plans — and so the vision to give the children the large outdoor space they needed began to take shape.

“Anyone who is a parent knows that when you take them outside, it shifts everyone’s well-being. Kids just want to get their hands in the dirt. It’s therapeutic to be in nature, so it’s not just a space for education,” said Helton. She spoke about how this space will open the door to more coping strategies for kids who might need a mental break from the classroom.

Having no window in her office during the pandemic, she was forced to take her sessions with clients outdoors. The benefits were obvious. “I still do it now,” she said.

The kids at Kickemuit have classrooms that share a view of the development of their “outdoor classroom,” and they seem very excited for its completion. With a large grant from RIDE, the project has been able to take grand steps toward completion after seven years in the planning process. “The hope is to be finished by next summer, and if we keep the momentum in the community going, I believe it will happen,” Rozea said. 

There will be a woodland area, a meadow walk (with plenty of seating throughout), raised beds for gardening, a compost, a shed, picnic tables, a pavilion with seating for an audience, a creativity space and the one thing the kids are most excited about — a pond.