School Beautification
By: Winifred Rhea- Unruh and Ian Turner Introduction Children go to school all around the world, but some of the schools in the Wake County Public School System are having some issues, in looks. The paint on walls are peeling and plain, the baseball and soccer fields are overgrown and cannot be used for playing games. Also, some of the classrooms are boring and don’t get kids excited for learning. Don’t get me wrong, the teachers in the schools are doing their job by teaching kids, but the way the school looks can have an impact on how much they learn. “A well designed classroom is critical for effective learning. The University of Salford’s recent study shows that the classroom environment can affect students learning and academic progress by as much as 25%,” Read more at http://www.bbcactive.com/BBCActiveIdeasandResources/TheImpactOfClassroomEnvironmentOnLearning.aspx. Baseline Statement Currently the Wake County Public School System gets $1,474,984,133 (1.5 billion dollars) for all 177 schools and only $618,404 dollars of that goes toward grounds maintenance. This means that about $3,493 dollars goes to each school in Wake county for schools things like mowing the grass, weed control, fencing, gate repair, landscaping, tree service and trash clean up (Wake County Public School System, 2016). Our goal is to improve the Martin Middle school grounds by making a Grounds Beautification Day by the end of this school year! Why are we interested in this issue? We are interested in this issue because we feel that everyone should have the best educational life and that the decoration of a school should not affect student learning. We are also interested in this issue because we think it would be a great service project to clean up the Martin Middle Schools campus. Why should others be interested in this issue? People should care about this issue because it is important that every child gets a good education without the fact that the school looks nice or not. It is also important that the schools do look nice, so that the students get the best education they can. Participating in school beautification is also a great way to work together on a community issue. It teaches kids how to be a member of the community by giving back to it, as well as the importance of taking part in other initiatives. School beautification helps attract business investment and keeps people at the schools. Businesses and students are affected by how the schools look and how good they are. If a business is moving to a new location they will often look at the schools around that area to help make the decision. Parents also look at schools and decide if they want their children to go there. This is why people in our community should care about this issue. Body paragraph: The issue Schools in the Wake County Public School System may not have enough time, resources, or money to beautify their schools. When this happens and schools start to look bad, parents may start taking their children out of the schools because they think the schools are bad, too. This has been an issue in our district since the 1960s and 1970s after it merged with Raleigh City Schools. In the early 1980s Wake County started to revitalize old schools around the district that had very few students because parents did not want their children to go to them, partly because they looked so bad (Rhea & Regan, 2007). So, they came up with the idea to beautify the schools and make Magnet Schools so that people would want to come back to learn at them. So if our current schools get run down and this issue is not taken care of, the problem of schools looking bad and parents not wanting their children to go to these schools could potentially happen again. Many research has been done and many say that the way a school looks affects the students in the school. Here are several examples of how students can be affected by school beautification. One example is the evidence showing how students are affected by having nice, natural areas at school. Students who attend schools with nature on the school grounds have better concentration, academic achievement, reduced stress, an increased sense of well-being, cooperative social relationships, more creative and social play, and sustained physical activity (Chawla, 2014). Children have also been found to have better behavior, while they are in school. Another example is a study which found that young children who played in the woods or fields at their school also performed better on fitness tests than students who played in traditional playgrounds. Kids who play in the woods or on a field also have fewer symptoms of ADHD & behavioral disorders, lower rates of anxiety disorders and depression, and a better ability to cope with stressful life events (Chawla, 2014). If schools don’t have space for big open fields, they can always have school gardens, which also helps students. For instance, research has shown that school gardens can change student attitudes toward gardening, improve their peer relationships, and make them more confident in their science ability (Childs, 2011). The final example is that school beautification and clean up can reduce the number of kids getting sick during the school year, so that fewer school day will be lost from sickness. For example, “nearly 22 million school days lost each year to colds, the school environment can help prevent the spread of germs,” (GCA Services Group, 2017). These examples help people understand how the way a school looks affects the children who go there. Since schools that look good and have natural areas are so beneficial to students, it is very important for our district to help people with school beautification. Body Paragraph: The solution Lots of things are being done by the community to help with this issue! Recently a kindergarten class helped school beautification in their school by improving their schools look. Some things they have done were, making their playground have more color, painting the trash cans, and hanging cool little decorations outside. Other schools have made gardens with lots of fruits and vegetables, painted rocks, and outdoor classrooms. It is proven that when school look cleaner and nicer that the students will have better attitudes and will perform better in school. Students will enjoy going to school when they get to do things to help their schools looks. There are still schools that need help with this issue and we can improve the grades in Wake County schools. Schools are tackling this issue by creating “work days” where anybody can go. They will schedule the days on the weekend and people can be there as long as they want. During the workdays they create gardens, murals, paintings and anything that would look good on school grounds. You can get involved by going to the workdays or helping out around the schools. Conclusion: How We Can Improve The Grounds at Martin Middle School? Goal/Expected Outcome: To improve the Martin Middle School grounds by making a grounds beautification day by the end of the school year. Thegoal for our service project is to increase how the softball field looks. This is our main goal for our service project because the football field is in decent shape but the softball field like a pile of trash. With all of the weeds the softball field looked like we had a grass infield when it was not supposed to be. Softball is a school sport and you could run the risk of someone getting hurt if it is not taken care of properly. We will know if we achieve this goal because I am a baseball player and I know what a good field, decent field, and a bad field looks like. This service project will work by letting people know when the cleanup will be happening and what their jobs will be. They will get to the field on a weekend and we will hand out jobs that need to be done at the field and go to work! We will include water and it will all be organized. Parents or somebody will have to pick up and drop off their child at the softball field. It will just be Martin Middle School and no other organizations. This will improve how the softball field looks by a lot. References BBC Active. “How does the classroom environment affect learning?” 2010. 22 March 2017 <http://www.bbcactive.com/BBCActiveIdeasandResources/TheImpactOfClassroomEnvironmentOnLearning.aspx. Chawla, Louise. 2014. “Benefits of natural school grounds for health and academic achievement.” 26 March 2017 <http://lcbag.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/GOCOChawla2014-1.pdf>. Childs, Elizabeth. “Impact of school gardens on student attitudes and beliefs.” Iowa State University Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 2011. <http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1412&context=etd>. GCS Services Group. “Why a clean school can impact student success.” GCS Services Group News and Blogs. 2017. 27 March 2017. <http://www.gcaservices.com/news-and-blogs/2014/12/19/why-a-clean-school-can-impact-student-success>. Rhea, Anisa and Roger Regan. “Magnet program review.” Wake County Public School System. April 2007. 27 March 2017 <http://webarchive.wcpss.net/results/reports/2007/0618magnet_review_07.pdf>. Wake County Public School System. “Adopted budget: Budget for fiscal year July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017.” March 2016. 23 March 2017 <http://wcpss.net/cms/lib/NC01911451/Centricity/Domain/98/2016-17%20Adopted%20Book.pdf>.
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