Donwood School outdoor spaces set for overhaul

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This article was published 30/11/2022 (1136 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An infusion of cash is on its way to Donwood School to allow the school to develop outdoor spaces for school and community use.

Over $145,000 will flow into this project after a group of educators from the elementary school secured a grant from the provincial government’s Teachers’ Idea Fund, after months of researching and drafting the grant application.

“We were very excited when we heard,” teacher and project lead Hannelore Wurmann said. “Also because we were the only ones in our division who were accepted.”

Funded projects in the 2022/2023 period must focus on promoting the mental health and well-being of students and educators.

Wurmann said the school has been chipping away at its outdoor space for about 10 years, trying to plant trees, gardens and other things to make a more positive space for kids. Staff were encouraged to take their classes outside more often, sometimes for whole days outdoors.

“And we’ve been reporting such big changes in attention and focus. Sometimes with that accruing, we were seeing positive results in reading and writing,” Wurmann said.

Those observations fall in line with a slew of pedagogical studies, which find holistic benefits ranging from improved motivation, social and cognitive development, and mental and physical well-being.

“So, we were debating how to make our outdoor spaces more accessible. There’s a few of us who are willing to go out, but it can be really sunny and hot out there. For a big chunk of the year, the sun’s just beating down on us. In other areas, it’s super windy: we have this wind tunnel just coming through northwesterly, just blowing right in,” Wurmann said.

The group of teachers — which includes principal Darlene Martineau, vice principal Nicole Ziemanski, Kirby Feuer, Dominik Vann, Amy Northcliffe, Julia Schroeder, in addition to Wurmann — resolved that the space needed to be more comfortable for long periods.

The teachers have proposed building structures to shade their classes and community and wind-breaks to ease blowing gales.

They also intended to work with Indigenous elders and knowledge keepers in the community to “provide opportunities for land-based, Indigenous-centred learning.”

“We know about the impact of residential schools in some of our families. There’s generational issues, and we want our school not to look so institutional,” Wurmann said.

Wurmann said she’s hoping these efforts will connect the community to the school, show its students a more inclusive set of worldviews, and not least, help students feel represented at school.

Lots of work still lay ahead for Wurmann and her team of educators. Soon, they’ll begin looking for consultants to find landscapers and designers. They’ll have to reach out to the community to find elders and knowledge keepers and others whose input may be able to help shape the project.

Wurmann said they wanted to get the news out partly to broaden their reach as they draw in a community of people to realize the project.

Students will also get a chance to get their say with a “design project challenge,” Wurmann said.