Our Students Were Learning Remotely Before the Pandemic

During the pandemic there’s been a ton of focus on the challenges of remote learning for kids. Yet in normal times kids experience something similar that gets zero attention: the physical remoteness of schools from the rest of the community. Our decision to build schools on the remote edge of town hasn’t just impacted the transportation budget: it’s limited the possibility of our teaching and learning. As an educator and Strong Towns member, I also see how these decisions impact the quality of my teaching.

The town I work in is a perfect case study. For a town of only 24,000, Ridgefield, Connecticut has a small but vibrant core thanks to 200 years of the traditional development pattern. Main Street and the surrounding environs feature a gorgeous library, independent movie theater, award-winning restaurants, multiple parks, an independent bookstore, coffee shops, and two world-class museums. Main Street was also the site of the largest inland battle in Connecticut during the Revolutionary War (the eponymous Battle of Ridgefield), and the town takes immense pride in this history. 

Left: Main Street the week of Christmas 2020 as I grabbed a coffee before work. Right: Town Hall, located in the heart of Main Street, gets decked out each Memorial Day (this particular picture is from May 2019). You feel that wonderful sense of place when you’re downtown.

Ridgefield Schools Used To Be Part of the Community

Prior to 1970, the core schools—Veterans Park Elementary, East Ridge Middle, and Ridgefield High—were located downtown, within a ten-minute walk of one another. (The Board of Education occupies the former high school.) Kids could walk or bike to school, easily head to field trips at local museums, and independently access everything the town had to offer. Unfortunately, Ridgefield’s land-use choices after World War II are an all-too familiar Strong Towns story. Although everyone agrees Main Street is great, nothing like it was built anywhere else. And like many communities across the country, Ridgefield moved its new schools out to the cheaper land at the edge of town. 

Ridgefield’s schools used to be downtown. Today, the children who attend school at Veterans Park and East Ridge still have biking and walking access to downtown without needing a car ride from a parent. Image Source: Google Maps

My school, Scotts Ridge Middle School, is one of those schools on the edge (quite literally: we’re almost at the New York state border), and the built environment does everything it can to isolate Scotts Ridge and its students from town. There are only two access roads: North Salem Road (aka Route 116) and Ridgebury Road. Both are so narrow and high speed that it’s impossible to safely walk or bike on them.

Image Source: Google Maps

Medieval engineers could only dream of moats as effective as North Salem and Ridgebury roads. Students at Scotts Ridge need a car or bus to access anything. Even crossing the street to Richardson park is dicey. Images via Google Maps Street View

Community Connections are Important to Education

Scotts Ridge is a gorgeous building with a great culture, but its location robs us of the opportunity to easily engage with the rest of the community. And community participation is a key goal of education.

One of two sky bridges at Scotts Ridge Middle School. Huge windows and views of Western Connecticut’s foothills make it a wonderful building to teach and learn in. But the decision to construct beautiful school buildings and place them on the outskirts of town was a mistake.

According to the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the primary purpose of a history class is to help young people make “informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society.” And the C3 Framework, the guiding document for social studies teachers across the country, lays out a similar vision of local civic engagement that fits perfectly with the Strong Towns mission:

[Students should] collaborate with others as they communicate and critique their conclusions in public venues. These venues may range from the school classroom to the larger public community. Collaborative efforts may range from teaming up to work on a group presentation with classmates to actual work on a local issue that could involve addressing real-world problems.

But neither the NCSS or C3 Framework connect the built environment to our curricular goals. How can we push our students to engage with their community when they’re physically isolated from it? Think of how engaging it would be for kids to walk to an internship at the Keeler Tavern Museum or for a civics teacher to have his class attend a Town Hall meeting without securing and paying for a bus. These are the types of experiences that stick with kids for a lifetime and encourage them to improve the world around them.

I can’t wait to have all my students back in school. Kids are meant to learn together through social interaction. But I hope when this version of remote learning ends, we can start thinking about the normal ways the built environment isolates them. We don’t just want our students to learn to read or write, we want them to use those skills to make their communities better. If collaboration and civic engagement are our ultimate goals as community members and educators, then we need to start thinking about how our built environment actively prevents both. 

Cover image: Ridgefield High School and and Scotts Ridge Middle School. Image via Wikimedia Commons

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About the Author

Tom Broderick is an 8th grade social studies teacher in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He loves history, hiking and sampling every craft beer he can find in the state. You can find him on Instagram at @oldenbarnavelt.