A group of volunteers from Keep Knoxville Beautiful and the University of South Carolina spent Saturday, Oct. 20, building something new for students at Christenberry Elementary School.
"Keep Knoxville Beautiful received a grant from Lowe's Home Improvement and Keep America Beautiful to bring two new outdoor classrooms to two schools in North Knoxville," Keep Knoxville Beautiful executive director Alanna McKissack said.
The first outdoor project took place at Whittle Springs Elementary after the school's outdoor classroom started falling apart. Volunteers from Pellissippi State, UT, KUB and a local pastor came out to revamp the whole site.
But Saturday's task called for creating an entire outdoor classroom from scratch.
"So today we're doing a stage with some amphitheater style seating around it," McKissack said. "We wanted to have an outdoor area that the kids can really express their creativity and use as a learning space."
Kristen Jaggers is the community school's resource coordinator at Christenberry and said the whole idea is to broaden opportunities for student learning.
"It's a great opportunity for out students to get out of the 4 walls of a classroom to go outside, to enjoy the weather, to engage in nature, so we're really excited," Jaggers said.
The entire project took about three hours from start to finish. Jaggers and Keep Knoxville Beautiful plan to unveil the finished product to students in the upcoming weeks.