Outside Time Is Good for Kids. It Might Save Their Teachers Too.

We talk a lot about what outdoor time does for kids. But new research from Texas A&M is asking a different question: what does it do for their teachers?

Dr. Arianna Pikus has spent her career studying how nature can be used as a learning environment — work she says grew out of her own time as a preschool teacher, watching what kids needed and what traditional classrooms couldn't always give them. Her most recent study, published in AERA Open, compared preschoolers in nature-based settings with peers in conventional classrooms, tracking literacy skills and executive function across a full school year.

The kids in nature-based programs spent, on average, two hours more outside every day. And they kept pace academically — developing early literacy and executive function skills like working memory and inhibitory control at similar rates to their indoor peers.

That finding deserves more attention than it usually gets. The fear many parents and educators carry about outdoor learning is that it trades academic progress for fresh air. This research says otherwise. Outside time didn't cost kids anything in the classroom. It just gave them more. Kids who spend time outdoors get more movement, more sensory experience, and more of what childhood is supposed to feel like.

But Pikus didn't stop there. She also looked at what outdoor learning does to the adults running these programs. The results were striking. Teachers in nature-based settings reported lower stress and higher well-being, and were less likely to burn out and leave the profession.

"We found that teachers who engage in these types of programs or who spend more time outside during a typical school day have less stress," Pikus said. "They report higher levels of well-being and they are less likely to suffer burnout and thus leave the profession."

At a time when teacher shortages are a genuine national crisis, that's not a peripheral finding — it's a policy argument. The same environments that help kids thrive may be helping keep experienced teachers in classrooms.

Pikus also notes something worth sitting with: we still don't fully understand whether the problem is less outdoor time, more screen time, or the combination. "Is it just that they're not outside, or is it they're spending less time outside and simultaneously more time in front of screens?" she said. "We're still trying to piece that apart, but we do know that when children spend more time outside, there's all of these benefits to them in multiple areas of development."

What's clear is that nature-based settings offer something that's hard to replicate indoors — opportunities to develop skills in ways that feel authentic rather than prescribed. As Pikus puts it, these environments "have opportunities to incorporate activities to develop those skills within children in potentially more authentic and meaningful ways than you might find in a traditional setting."

The case for getting outside keeps getting stronger. For kids and, it turns out, for the people raising them.