Nature

“Can we please go outside?!” my students begged. “Allow me to be your fully-formed pre-frontal cortex,” I told them. “In five minutes, you will be cold just sitting still, and none of you actually wants to sit in the snow.” An unusually long and unseasonably warm fall last year meant ...

The conversation goes like this: “I saw you having class outside today.” “Yep! Great day!” “Don’t students get distracted outside?” Or … “I would do that, but I have PowerPoints.” Or… “I would, but I have 35 students.” Or… “What do you do with students who don’t want to?” I ...

My first sunburn of the year is always from teaching. I inherited my father’s skin, so it doesn’t take much sun for me to burst into flame, and that first warm day of spring I take all my classes outside, find a patch of grass to sit on, ...

It was a spectacular morning on Emory’s verdant quad. The early October air was just offering the hint of crispness that announced the imminent arrival of fall. The grass, roped off for re-seeding (a detail some students thought revealed loving care for the soil and others thought revealed a ...