Never have schools been under more pressure to hold lessons and lunch outdoors. Sending children back to school has been a difficult challenge for parents, teachers, and administrators alike. Naturally, we all want to keep children and staff safe from viral exposure while also providing a valuable education each day of class. Classroom design and old HVAC units are currently the biggest challenges to maintaining a safe airflow with student classes today. Scientifically, the least infectious place to hold class, lunch, and any other student body gathering is outdoors.
Of course, as any educator knows, going outside has its own set of challenges. Your equipment is essential to helping both organize and shelter students during socially distanced outdoor time. E-Z UP shelters are an essential element of your equipment when you plan an increased amount of time outside for students. These school pop-up tents make it easy for teachers and staff to provide shelter for children outdoors whenever necessary.
Let's explore all the ways your school can make essential use of E-Z UP shelter tents once they are in your supply room.
Shading Outdoor Classes and Activities
When you move many of your classes and activities outdoors, sun protection starts to really matter. Students may play in the field for 15 minutes of recess without trouble, but they need more extensive shade to learn and focus safely. Protect children from UV exposure, overheating, and sun damage during those safe-breathing outdoor lessons with the help of shelter tents. E-Z UP shelters are light and simple enough that any of your teachers will be able to set one up and attach it to stakes or pull one in before bad weather hits.
This makes E-Z UP school tents viable for sheltering your outdoor classes and for more versatile outdoor event planning needs.
Protecting Outdoor Food Service and Students Eating Lunch
Many schools are being pressured to move lunch outdoors. Eating outside significantly reduces the risks of raised exhalations trapped in the cafeteria. Holding lunch outside can be fun in good weather, but it also requires excellent resource and food-safety coordination. Just ask your cafeteria staff.
Enclosed shelters are essential for food distribution, and we also offer shelters with a transparent drop-down barrier that stops just above counter height for exposure-safe lunch serving. School canopy tents will likely become the best way to shade children as they eat at picnic tables outdoors.
Creating Socially Distanced Play and Learning Areas
It can be tough to keep children socially distancing when they want to play. Often, the best methods are to give them guidelines and visual areas to play in. Chalk on the pavement can represent how to play at socially safe distances, while separate pavilion shelter tents can help keep playgroups smaller by helping children limit how many are playing in the shade under each school tent.
Shelters can help keep many outdoor classes organized when children can see each other across the field and help identify when a child may be straying from their classroom group. Shelter tents can also help create a permanent outdoor learning space that children and teachers alike will learn to navigate during the school year.
Hosting Outdoor School Events
School events are back this year, but many parents may not want to gather in the auditorium to hold meetings or attend shows. So instead, you can take the entire PTA and event audience outdoors when it comes time to gather. From field day to budget discussions, outside is the safest place to bring people together for a school event, providing shade and a visually clear event structure.
Use your shelter tents to create a meeting space, stage area, or shaded festival when hosting these events outdoors. Canopy tents will shade your guests and students alike, protecting everyone from dangerous heat, UV rays, and blinding glare with a single helpful school innovation.
Sporting events are especially well-suited to school canopy tents because parents and students know what to do. At a sporting event, you head for the tent when needing hydration, shade, and good conversation. You can help get everyone in the mood for a celebration with school-branded tents and assets like banners and sidewalls that celebrate your school's identity.
School Emergency Preparedness
You may also need to break out the shelter tents in the event of an emergency. Many school emergency drills require children to file outdoors and gather in the fields and parking lots for an unknown amount of time.
Custom branded shelter tents and banners are the natural solution. Students can quickly identify the color and logo of their class to help them find where they are going. When each teacher, class, or department is designated a shelter tent that students can identify at a distance, your emergency preparedness goes through the roof. You can provide outdoor shelter, keep students organized, and even arrange for emergency services as needed.
Tents Your Teachers Can Put Up
Last but not least, every school should have canopy tents that teachers can put up alone or with one other person to help. These useful outdoor shelter tents can be wrapped inside or left open and breeze for the safety of the children under the shade. E-Z UP shelters have a unique accordion design so that anyone can expand or collapse a shelter tent as needed. You can count on E-Z UP as a solution any staff member in the field can handle.
Provide valuable sun protection, organization, and shade to your students during this trying time of social distancing at school. E-Z UP shelters are here to help. Contact us today to explore your options for fast, easy, reliable outdoor shelter tents for your school's outdoor activities and lunches.