Southwest City School has a new outdoor classroom where an unattractive area used to be.
Karen Woods, a second-grade teacher at the school, was inspired and wrote a grant and received it from the McDonald County Schools Foundation.
She explained, "We had this dead area and it (couldn't) be used for anything. This was just ugly and no use." The area in question is surrounded on three sides by walls, one of which is mostly made up of windows looking into a hallway in the school. The area was just a grassy rectangle with one tree before it was transformed.
Teachers were sitting around discussing it one day, and Woods decided to write the grant. The grant paid for gravel, ground cover and picnic tables.
The school district put Southwest City first on the list to repaint, which got the walls inside the outdoor classroom ready for the new mural that was painted by Felicia Stites. It reads, "Bloom Where You're Planted." Woods said there will be artwork on the other wall as well.
Volunteers did the labor on the classroom. A junior high Ag class put together the tables and laid the ground cover.
"Jamie Kitlen and her husband, Rance, brought a Bobcat and moved all the gravel and spread it," Woods said.
She also noted teachers want to put garden areas in the outdoor classroom.
"It's a work in progress right now. A year from now it will probably be totally different."
The outdoor classroom is for use by the whole building, preschool through junior high, Woods said. It has some unique features as well. Since it is surrounded on three sides, it is a perfect windbreak in the winter, she said. It can be used year-round. Also, it seems to be sound-proof. The gravel base means there is no mud to worry about. The whole back of the school is fenced in, so the area is secure, Woods added.
"We're just starting to use it. It will get a lot of use," she said.
General News on 09/19/2019