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Printer-Friendly ModeStudents help renovate school
SRCI grant funds beautification, literacy project for elementary school
February 12, 2007 —
Most college students would use $10,000 to shop, travel, or pay off student loans. It might be surprising, then, that five SVSU education majors were recently awarded $9,900 through the University's Student Research and Creativity Institute to help fix up an elementary school.
Carlie Hacha, Patrice Giltrop, Megan Smith, Jen Crnkovic, and Kim Welter comprise the executive board of SVSU's chapter of the Student Michigan Education Association (SMEA). The five future educators decided last summer that they wanted to initiate what they call a "beautification and literacy project" for a local school. The benefactor of their decision will be Merrill Park Elementary School, located at 1800 Grout Street in Saginaw.
Merrill Park's lockers and walls are peeling paint, the school's woodwork needs some stripping and re-staining, and the playground's sandbox has been regrettably transformed into a litter box by stray cats.
"We recently got our picture taken there in a classroom that was just being opened up because they got a new teacher," Giltrop says. "The room looked like it hadn't been opened up since the early '80s."
In fact, the school has not undergone any refurbishment since it opened in 1968. At that time, there were only five approved paint colors for the school's walls.
"Harvest gold, blue bell, white-white... well, you get the idea," says Dianne Dalton, the school's principal. "Carlie did her education fieldwork here, and I am really pleased that she came to me with this proposal. I mean, making physical improvements isn't the end-all be-all to academics, but it's something our kids can be proud of."
The project will begin in late March, when SVSU art students will be painting four or five sports murals in the gymnasium and re-painting another mural near the entrance of the school. Merrill Park students will be asked what they'd prefer on the murals beforehand.
The official maintenance portion of the project will take place April 27-29, when students, teachers, parents, and other community members will volunteer to re-paint the lockers and walls, re-stain the woodwork, and replace the sand in the sandbox with fresh woodchips. Volunteers will also do some landscaping; shrubs and colorful perennials are already being picked out.
The SMEA team is hoping for at least 200 volunteers per day.
"Yeah, I'm gonna help," Merrill Park fifth-grader Mark Bryant says. "And then I'll be in the newspaper, and I'll say, 'Hey, look dad, there's a picture of me cleaning up the school with Miss Carlie.'"
Merrill Park is a school where 89 percent of the 350 students qualify for free or reduced lunches. The school's social worker, Alvin Schexnaildre, believes that successful education in a low-income school is especially dependent upon a school's atmosphere.
"Physical environment is extremely important," he says. "I think the least we can do is make their learning place more appealing. You go into school buildings that are beautiful and you just find yourself wanting to do the work and learn."
The five SMEA members will not only be leading a team of volunteers to make physical improvements to the school, they also will be directing the documentation of the three-day project.
The school's pre-K-5 graders will conduct on-site interviews, take photographs, draw pictures, and write stories to illustrate the transformation of their school.
Approximately half the budget will go toward the publication of their documentation efforts.
"Anyone can go into a school and make physical improvements," Hacha says, "but to have educators go in and use the improvement project as a learning tool... that's what makes this different."
The team of five thinks preparation for the service project has also helped them grow as future educators, showing them that an expensive job can still get done with a bit of ambition and the resources at hand. After all, they've written a grant, calculated a budget, gained approval from the Saginaw School District, and worked alongside professionals in their field to put $10,000 worth of plans into action.
"You can do a lot with $10,000," Hacha says, "but at the same time, everything adds up in a project like this. It's hard to eliminate what you can do and what needs to be done. I mean, if we had the money... we'd give to these kids endlessly."
Contact Hacha at cmhacha@svsu.edu to volunteer.
