I slink into my fourth block class, already tired and bored, ready for the school day to end. I plop into my desk and can feel my eyelids drooping. I sluggishly begin to pull out my class materials from my backpack. It is hot, I am tired, and I do not want to spend another 90 minutes locked up in this classroom.

We should be allowed to have classes outside in order to give us a jailbreak from the classroom. After four and a half hours of sitting in the white-walled boxes that are PHS classrooms, the last thing we want to do after lunch is spend another hour and a half trapped in another rectangular cell.

With summer fast approaching, the classrooms have becomes death traps of strange smells and oppressive heat. The windows in the 30’s building offer only a crack of ventilation and rooms in the 10’s and 20’s buildings have no windows at all, causing classrooms to become  putrid saunas in the warm afternoons. Having classes outside would not only smell better, but feel better for teachers and students. If we had class outside, instead of inhaling questionable aromas and dripping in sweat from the sweltering classrooms, we could breathe a breath of fresh air and enjoy the cool breeze.

Having class outside would also increase our awareness. After lunch, we have a low tolerance for pretty much everything. Entering a fluorescent-lit, rancid, hot classroom is not only uninviting, but turns us off from wanting to do anything in class but leave. The great outdoors would provide a serene learning environment where we could learn in an enjoyable space and maybe even enjoy what we are learning.

Teacher could easily coordinate timeslots to occupy outdoor spaces on campus, such as the quad or the courtyard by the 20’s building driveway. In order to limit disruption to other classes, outdoor lessons could be carefully selected activities that require little interaction between us students. In terms of distractions, we are exposed to opportunities for distraction everywhere we go. Having lessons taught outside could reduce the feeling of boredom and prompt us to pay more attention to our teachers than our cell phones.