Month: December 2023

This opinion column about outdoor learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
As part of a new program, every third grader in Albuquerque Public Schools spends a day at the Los Padillas Wildlife Sanctuary just outside the city. There, a wide variety of local landscapes are packed into five acres: a meadow, piñon, juniper and cottonwood trees, an arroyo and even a pond — a rarity in the desert.
“All the way into October they can fish in the pond with a net,” said Monie Corona, an environmental education resource teacher for the district. “There’s cattails, dragonflies. For the kids to feel like they’re playing, but they’re actually learning — that to me is the key thing.”
The sanctuary borders the black mesas to the west and to the east and the Rio Grande bosque — a term for a forest near a river bank. To the south is the Pueblo of Isleta, one of New ..