Our Lady of Perpetual Help School is breaking ground on Tennessee’s first Arbor Day Foundation-certified outdoor classroom, with teachers and parents to attend a use workshop May 21.
The facets of the classroom, named Nature’s Place at OLPH, were designed last year by seventh-graders who attended the groundbreaking ceremony this year as eighth-graders.
“There’s a piece of every one of them in this and that’s just so beautiful,” said OLPH kindergarten teacher and parent Vickie Stovall. “It’s so beautiful that they got to see it before they left eighth grade.”
Our Lady of Perpetual Help School officials gather for the groundbreaking of Nature’s Place at OLPH, an outdoor classroom certified by the Arbor Day Foundation. From left are Father James Vick, eighth-graders Thomas McGuire, Dean Magat and Connor Simpson, project engineer Matt Stovall of Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon, Father Mike Creson, volunteer Larry McInturff, principal Jeri McInturff and math teacher Angelicque Melton.The design was rendered by her husband, Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon architectural and engineering firm Vice President Matt Stovall.
He said he worked for one year to integrate students’ ideas of water features, native flowers, a vegetable garden and amphitheater onto the courtyard-like property, a former convent yard more recently used for al fresco lunches.
“The parents just really embraced it,” said middle school math teacher Angelicque Melton. “It will be a useable resource for the parish and the school.”
Melton said student-drawn scale drawings for the design are part of math curriculum standards.
The entire project has come to fruition with donations.
Construction of the entrance, with a trellis and vegetable garden, will begin this summer, and the whole design is expected to be done by fall.
In the future, plans that expand around the property’s perimeter will be implemented, too.