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They were halfway down the hill when one of the students stopped. He pointed at the ground—at a thin line of dirt cutting its way toward the pavement, and said it looked familiar. As the class gathered around, he started explaining what he had seen at home—how soil from his yard moves when it rains, traveling down the slope of the driveway and into the drain. What they were studying wasn’t abstract anymore. It was something he had already noticed. Something he could describe in his own words.

The class had come outside to work on erosion. Not from a worksheet, but from the landscape just beyond the school building where the ground dips, the soil shifts, and the evidence is easy to overlook unless you’re paying attention. Now, more students were paying attention.

They followed the path of the dirt.
They pointed things out to each other.
They started asking questions.

The lesson moved forward, but differently than planned. Mr. Smith has been teaching for 25 years. Eighteen of those at Benteen Elementary. He’s seen how learning can change when students are given the chance to connect what they’re studying to what they already know—what they’ve seen outside, what they’ve experienced at home, what they’ve noticed without realizing it mattered. When those connections happen, the learning stays with them. Not just for the lesson, but beyond it.

Outside, the classroom feels less contained. Students bring their own observations into the work. They test ideas out loud. They build on each other’s thinking. The focus shifts from getting the answer quickly to figuring something out together. You can hear it in the way they talk. One student explains soil types—not just repeating terms, but describing how they work. Another connects a concept from class to something they’ve seen before. They’re not just completing the assignment. They’re making sense of it.

Creating space for that kind of learning takes intention. It means using the environment around the school. It means giving students time to notice, to question, to connect. It doesn’t always follow a straight line. But when it works, it lasts.

Later, when the class moved on, the student was still thinking about it. Not just the lesson. But the hill in his yard, and where the dirt goes when it rains.

This is one of many moments at Benteen Elementary where students connect what they’re learning in school to the world around them.

Moments like this don’t happen by accident. They happen when teachers have the support, tools, and space to create learning experiences that connect to students’ lives. Across classrooms:

• 97% of teachers report feeling more prepared to teach science
• 98% report increased job satisfaction
• 99% report a positive academic impact on their students

And for students, that shift carries forward—students in Out Teach classrooms are nearly twice as likely to see themselves pursuing a STEM career. As schools prepare for the year ahead, you can help make more moments like this possible.