ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that teachers and students alike needed spaces to breathe, especially during units with masses of material in which instruction stretches over several weeks. Cities and towns build parks because people need spaces to rest and breathe. City planners must be able to see the non-financial, but very important, longer-term benefits of green space. The chapter shows that teachers also need to be able to see the longer-term benefits of green space that, designed correctly, green spaces are anything but lost instructional time. In a city, a green space could mean a pocket park that takes up only a small triangle of space near a corner, with only two benches and a fountain or a small area of lawn. In A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues suggest that no one in a city should live farther than 300 meters from a green space.
