When the sun shines and the air is fresh, Mr. John Hall likes to take his classes out for nature walks.

Junior Chance Wikaryasz has Hall for Psychology 2 this semester and enjoys the walks.

“I like how they get us out of class,” Wikaryasz said. “They stop us from doing the norm.”

Hall has been taking his classes on nature walks since he worked down in Florida. He started to do the walks at Kearsley in 1999.

Hall originally used nature walks to help his American Literature classes learn and study the Romantic period.

Romantic authors wrote a lot about nature, and Hall felt the best way to get the point of nature across to his students was to have them see and do as the authors saw and did in their writings.

“Students need to transcend into the text,” Hall said.

To further investigate how to “transcend” students into the text, Hall read about Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory.

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner performed scientific studies and theorizes that people have multiple intelligences.

Of these multiple intelligences, one of them is called bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. This intelligence involves using the body to solve problems. It connects the idea that mental and physical processes are connected.

Hall uses these facts and other explanations in defense when he gets questioned by his supervisors.

Some students like Wikaryasz wish more teachers would take their classes on nature walks every so often, but Hall wishes the opposite.

According to Hall, if more teachers did nature walks, then the walks would lose their uniqueness and purpose.

If all the teachers did nature walks, then students would get bored with the walks and not learn what they are supposed to gain from them.

However, other teachers have taken their students outside for walks for the same purpose as Hall. Some of these teachers are Mrs. Kandi Cousins, science teacher, and Mrs. Laura Hall, English teacher.

Cousins takes students out to witness ecology and biology concepts in action and to perform some experiments.

Mr. Hall has always had a passion for long-distance walks; he would even take long walks in the deserts of Iraq when he was deployed there. He wanted to share that passion with his students on these nature walks.

“Kearsley’s landscape represents struggles in the daily lives of the students,” Hall said. “But once you pass those obstacles, the beautiful scenery shows the beauty of hard work paying off.”