When
the pandemic forced his school to go to online learning, fifth-grader Bergen Manzella spent six hours a day staring at his computer screen. "My eyes were drooping a lot and red. I was really tired staring at a screen, not being able to move around that much," said Bergen.
His mother, a math tutor, didn't like what it was doing to him. The truth is, even before remote learning, she was seeing her son come home from school tired and wrung out.
"That more sterile environment in an indoor classroom can be fatiguing," Brynn Manzella told CNN.
So she decided to homeschool him. Around that time, Manzella heard about another teacher holding an outdoor class once a week in her Loveland, Colorado, neighborhood with other elementary school kids.
The class came at the perfect time, said Manzella, because her son needed more outdoor time to explore and socialize with other kids in a safe way during the pandemic.
"I think it creates an opportunity for kids to be really resourceful and to think outside of the box."
