By Gary Ogle
gogle@wbcowqel.com
Even though it’s the heart of their summer vacation, several Buckeye Central students didn’t mind at all being back at school this week. They even seemed to enjoy it.
Brandon Mann, Don Wurm, Kendra Stahl, Millie Fee, Nick Fike, Carson McCarthy, Adam Krebs and Victoria Thimmes gathered on school grounds for a planning session with teacher Marianne Williamson regarding the new Outdoor Learning Center.
“It’s an outdoor learning lab, or learning center. Really, it’s a nature center,” Williamson said, noting the influence of the Crawford Park District and the Lowe-Volk Park Nature Center. “They (Crawford Park District personnel) will be advising us where to put trails and observation centers. We’re going to set up tables and benches to do outdoor work in the shade.”
Williamson and her students had drawings of the building outspread out on the concrete pad poured by Studer-Obringer and surrounded by the frame of the building.
“Today the purpose of this group is to design meal plans for the GE volunteers who are going to construct the pavilion on Aug. 16,” Williamson said. “One other community activity will be to do trail blazing and finish the structure if we need to.”
The students have been involved in that project from the beginning and wrote the grants that funded it. Victoria Thimmes talks about some of the input they had as to location and even design.
“We chose to put it on higher elevation. Now we don’t have to worry about flooding,” Thimmes said. She said having access to electric and water were also critical in planning stages. The facility will have Wi-fi for access to the Internet and lighting will allow for after-dark activities.
“We’re going to get the big stuff fixed first,” Timmes said. “Then we’ll move on to the little things.”
The entire process began more than two years ago when the district superintendent asked staff to take a different teaching approach.
“The first year we were challenged by to do PBL – problem-based learning,” Williamson said. “In our case we found a real-world problem on the property, a weed-filled bio swale.”
Even while the classes were studying butterflies and other biology-related activities they began to discuss ideas for improving the grounds and environment for the new school. Williamson brought up the idea of a garden but the students had even bigger things in mind.
“The Class of 2018, they started this when they were in seventh grade. They wanted to increase the aesthetic value of the property,” Williamson said. “It grew into 17 proposals to improve the property.”
Students even accepted and took on the process of grant writing. That resulted in partnering with the local GE Lamp Plant, the GE Foundation, the Community Foundation for Crawford County, the North Central Electric Peoples Fund, the Buckeye Central Endowment Fund, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for grants totaling more than $36,500. Studer-Obringer is also helping with contributions in kind.
The result will be a lab/study area not just for science classes, but other classes and an area for the entire northern part of the county to enjoy and use.
“We anticipate maybe English classes coming out and doing some reading,” Williamson said.
Millie Fee shared what it means for her class to be so involved.
“It’s going to mean a lot, mostly to the freshman class going into high school now, because knowing that we worked on it for two, almost two-and-one-half years knowing that (it was) something that most people said could never be done,” Fee said. “Knowing that now that years later we’re building an Outdoor Learning Center that not just the school can use, but the entire community it’s going to mean a lot, not just for our class, but for everyone around us.”
Williamson said the outdoor lab will be in use for the approaching school year. She anticipates some type of grand opening event for the Outdoor Learning Center in the fall.