By James R. Lowell Healthy Lion cub reporters | Green spaces improve test scores and are good for students’ physical and emotional health, according to experts.

But finding green spaces in a school setting is hard. Finding them inside a classroom is harder. How can we avoid missing out on green spaces in a city school?

“When kids don’t spend enough time outside, they can run the risk of getting sick, both in their body but also in their minds,” Dr. Roxanne Jovadi, a pediatric resident at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, told Healthy NewsWorks reporters in a 2021 interview. “Mood can be affected. It can make you anxious, depressed or sad, lonely, have poor social development, those kinds of things. Also, you get vitamin D when you go outside in the sun, and that’s good for your health.”

In addition, a study by the University of Illinois found that green spaces improved student test scores.

Unfortunately, there are few green spaces around Lowell. So how do we make sure the need for green spaces can be met for students on a daily basis?

Healthy Lion cub reporters from Mrs. Martin’s third-grade class thought about that question and came up with some ideas.

Mrs. Martin’s reporters are doing a call to action. They challenge the staff and students to work on adding more green spaces to the school community.

Here are some ideas of how more green areas can be added to the school environment:

• Create a green space outside in the courtyard; add a greenhouse.
• Turn the courtyard into an outdoor learning space. 
• Fix the windows to see outdoors. Right now they are blurry and it’s difficult to see anything outside.
• Buy plants to put on the windowsills of the classrooms.
• Buy green plant decals to put on the windows and decorate all the windows in the classroom to make it look like you’re looking outside.
• Draw green pictures to post around the school.

What do you think? Is this something we can do next school year? Hopefully next year, we will see more green spaces around the school.

Illustration by Ava, Wm. Rowen E.S., 2023–24.