Milestone comes together to build outdoor learning space for school

MILESTONE -

A project one year in the making will now provide a place for the students of Milestone school to learn outside in comfort.

Rebecca Carson is teacher at Milestone School, it was her fourth grade class that came up with the idea of building an outdoor classroom.

“The entire project was part of a deep learning cycle,” she explained. “Where they identify an issue either around their local community or around Saskatchewan that they then work towards solving. And then I work as a partner in their learning versus leading their learning and through that our outdoor classroom was built.”

The issue that the class identified was the difficulty of online learning. The students wanted to take advantage of the outdoors so they could have a physically-distanced class without masks and enjoy the outdoors.

“With online learning, a lot of the students have really struggled to be outside as much as their used to,” said Carson. “So having an outdoor leaning space will really help to benefit them in learning outdoors and getting as much benefit from that as possible.”

The project took a lot of effort by the children. The class was separated into multiple groups. Some handled organizing while others covered the other aspects of the fundraising, such as phoning businesses for potential donations, packing gift baskets that were raffled off monthly as well as many other roles.

“It was really hard to get all the fundraising done,” said Corbin, one of Carson’s students. “But it was really fun.”

In total, the class fundraised over $35,000 for the project. Work on the classroom finished on Friday.

“I’m glad that we got all the donations from local businesses and we’re supporting local businesses,” said Hunter, another fourth grader.

The project was only possible because of the local businesses that stepped in and provided the materials and time that the class needed.

“We had over $20,000 worth of equipment and building supplies and labor donated to the outdoor classroom,” said Carson. “All from locally owned businesses from around Saskatchewan, so it really has been a community effort from the very start.”

Carson also noted that the experience was great for the children, who gained valuable skills that they will use for the rest of their lives. All in all, the students are very happy their project is finally finished.

“I’m just really happy this came to reality and not just a dream,” said Kalie another student.