Summer break isn't always a break for many teachers.

Many have to receive professional development training that's required to continue teaching.

The Kentucky Association for Environmental Education held a unique training in Midway this week.

The Outdoor Learning Symposium gave teachers the skills and the confidence to think outside the classroom.

This is a day where we bring together teachers from a particular area and just try to give them an opportunity to get some experience outdoors, gain some resources that they can take back to their classroom and then use with their students.

Oftentimes, we're kind of stuck in history into our classrooms and we have to make our own movement breaks inside the classroom.

But they any opportunity that we can, especially for middle school students, they don't get to recess anymore.

So it's great to just have that opportunity even if it's going outside to just sit on the sidewalk, like they still have that fresh air and they have that movement by going there.

And then they also get to learn a little bit about nature.

From a like a hands on perspective, we are going to be going out the door right beside our room.

How fortunate are we that sometimes that's not the case?

One of the highlight sessions is called Take It Outside.

It's outdoor classroom or just outdoor learning management for for what it looks like to, you know, control your students and monitor their behavior to make sure you're putting yourself in a position where they can always say, you can we get back in our seats.

And that also helps the teachers feel more comfortable with taking them out when they have those routine set and they know what they're doing and have the skills that they need to take their students outside.

One of our newest programs is called the Kentucky Green Schools Program.

There's these themed investigations that students really lead the way in looking at what's in their school and how they can conserve or save.

And it's really a benefit to the school because they're going to then work together as a team to develop an action project, to develop, to address some of those issues that they discover through their investigations.

Science in general, I think is a awesome subject area because you can go out and really connect with what you're learning about.

And so obviously outside in nature plays a really big role in that.

And next year, upcoming, we have this really big opportunity to incorporate more project based learning, more community based projects into our daily curriculum.

So it just comes at a really good time.

Engaging and entertaining.

A form of education is always going to be a positive for the kids.

I think that the teachers are gaining insight and reminders about it's okay to not use the technology.

It's okay to build projects that are and I'm betting both the best of both worlds.

It's okay to allow students to be outside and that that learning is just as important as the learning that's happening within the classroom walls.

When you look at the research, the the mental health benefits of just being outdoors, whether you're actually learning something or not, but just being there is is huge.

It's it's the most magical thing to watch your kids when they start to just breathe in that fresh air.

You can have a kid who is super fidgety inside and take them outside and just watch them calm down and like connect to where they are.

This is the seventh Outdoor Learning Symposium in Kentucky.

It changes counties every year, and the goal is to bring the program to Eastern Kentucky next year.