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Education column: Teamwork, enthusiasm help make outdoor classroom reality

Once upon a time a teacher named Donna Stewart began Character Council at Cameo to teach students about civic duties and leadership and other important aspects of character. Along came another teacher, Kendra Peloquin, a special education teacher for gifted and talented (GT), and she asked to join the council. These two teachers made a great team; their students — the ones in the Character Council and GT classes — also made a great team.

One day, the Character Council was searching for ideas to improve their school with the money they'd earned by working daily at their school store. At the same time, the GT classes designed a plan for an outdoor classroom that included an outdoor seating area (picnic tables), garden boxes, pathways and areas for future components, like a weather station, a time capsule and bird roosting boxes.

Not finished yet, students designed areas for geological rock studies that could display different rocks and minerals; an archeological "dig" area, where teachers could seed an area with faux artifacts and the classes could "excavate."

Included was an area for native grasses and wildflowers and a groundwater-monitoring hole; a horticultural demonstration area and a musical garden. A sundial would grace a certain spot, and lessons could show children not only how to tell time using a sundial, but they could take turns being a human sundial to tell time. This special learning place would incorporate xeriscaping so that the outdoor classroom would not represent a lot of extra work for others.

Near the end of this past school year, the work to create this outdoor classroom began. The Character Council funded the beginnings of the Outdoor Classroom Project to make it a reality for all students at Cameo Elementary, so that they'd have an "outdoor space in which to learn and grow."

Willing adults — parents and others — and children came together as volunteers to begin their project. Working on Saturdays, they assembled picnic tables, constructed and painted a sign, built four garden boxes and began laying flagstone paths. As they worked, children talked excitedly about all the things they could do and learn in their outside classroom next year.

I find it not only gratifying, but also quite enchanting that we have teachers who are still driven by their calling for education; not discouraged by the more tedious, but necessary, aspects of education. They see every turn of events as an opportunity for learning, a challenge to be overcome; which can bring to life the joy of learning; which can reawaken in students that wondrous sense of curiosity about the world we live in. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a human sundial, but after "Googling" the topic and seeing the number of items that came up, I may just try it in my own backyard.

Anatole France said, "The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."

Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy is the instructional technology coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools and can be reached at [email protected]