Burleson, Priceville students head outdoors for learning

By By Jonathan Stinson, Hartselle Enquirer
Students and teachers at FE Burleson Elementary School celebrated Earth Day by announcing their plans to open an Outdoor Classroom with the help of the Alabama Wildlife Federation, General Electric and other members in the community.
The outdoor classroom program is part of the Alabama Wildlife Federation’s conservation education effort and is aimed at providing students with a place to learn through hands-on activities about the world around them.
Each classroom consists of different workstations, such as raised gardens, a pond and an amphitheater, that are designed to give the children a different look at the environment around them.
The first step of the plan for the school’s outdoor classroom is the building of a pond that will consist of a stream, pool and a waterfall.
Sherry Calvert, the principal of FE Burleson, hopes to have everything completed in about a year. Calvert is the person who is credited with having the vision for the outdoor classroom.
She hopes that it will help get kids outside more and away from their video games and television.
The pond will be built in one day and every student will be able to participate. Each grade level will have its own set of responsibilities that range from laying the design of the pond to digging the pond and filling it up with water.
To help with the pond building, the Alabama Wildlife Federation partnered with Lee Vought of Vought Water Gardens, located in Decatur, to help.
Vought builds all of the ponds for the Ponds for Kids program, which is part of the Outdoor Classroom program. He said he will generally do 25 ponds per year at locations all over Alabama.
Vought feels that the ponds provide more than just campus beautification because of the educational value they add.
Vought said that generally these ponds would cost about $9,000, but because of volunteers the cost to the school is only around $3,500.
In order to come up with the money the school held a fundraiser and enlisted the help of the parents and corporate sponsor G.E.
The fundraiser pitted the girls against the boys and had them compete to see who could collect the most pennies.
Carolyn Leeth, who is the grandmother of second grader MiKayla Hawkins, said she just wanted to write a check but her granddaughter would not let her.
The girls ended up beating the boys; together they managed to raise $1,300 in pennies. Debbie Queen, who is in charge of bringing everything together for the project at Burleson, said it was a little tricky cashing all of the pennies. They were heavy and the Coinstar machine was not very receptive to them.
G.E. also donated $1,250 and plans to have about 15 workers volunteer their time to help complete the construction.
Kevin Terry who is the chairmen of G.E. volunteers said he believed the program was great because of the experience it provided for the kids.
The Outdoor Classroom at Burleson will eventually look similar to the one located at Priceville Elementary School. Priceville recently had a dedication ceremony to officially make their campus a certified registered classroom.
There are currently 140 registered Outdoor classrooms in Alabama, but only 19 classrooms are certified, according to April Waltz who coordinates the Outdoor Classroom program for the Alabama Wildlife Federation.
Waltz said on average it takes a school about three years to go from being a registered classroom to a certified classroom. Priceville took the certification one step further and became a certified schoolyard habitat, a designation that is presented by the National Wildlife Federation.
Lila Johnson, a first grade teacher at Priceville, is the chairwoman of Priceville Outdoor Classroom Committee. She has been working on the project since it started four years ago and said that she was glad to see all her hard work pay off.
Johnson has spends the summer months, while the kids are out of school, performing maintenance on the Outdoor Classroom site. Her husband, Sonny Johnson, built the bridge that crosses the creek and he set up the sundial located next to the amphitheater as well.
Johnson she will use the classroom at least once a week when weather permits. She manages to tie what the kids can observe outside and the things they learn inside the classroom together by showing them how to apply one concept to different situations.