Tehachapi News

No boundaries to learning

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If necessity is the mother of invention, then Mother Nature is the inventor of a Cummings Valley classroom.

On Friday, Cummings Valley Elementary School dedicated the district’s first “outdoor classroom” in honor of a retired educator who believes today’s students have much to learn from Mother Nature.

Barbara Penner retired two years ago, after working with the student council for several years to secure approval and funding for the project.

“This was her vision, this was her plan,” said current student council coordinator Kelly Sherwood. “We are all so excited to honor her. She was a fantastic teacher in this district, very involved with the kids.”

“I certainly didn’t expect to be honored in this way. It was such a team effort,” Penner said, crediting the parents and students that helped to raise funds for the student council project.

“It was a lovely presentation today,” Penner said.

Penner said misses the students and staff at Cummings Valley School.

“I told the staff today that I’ve got to come back and start volnteering. That’s the fun part,” she said. “You get the joy of being there and you can leave when you want.”

Principal David Spencer said that many of the original students that worked with Penner are now seniors and juniors at the high school.

Spencer thanked Old Towne Nursery for donating the landscaping and signage for the dedication plaque.

“They were so very generous,” he said.

The classroom consists of a shaded area with fiberglass tables recycled from a fast food restaurant remodel.

“This was installed on a tuppence basically,” district superintendent Richard Swanson said. “It was a real effort of getting the absolute most for your buck.”

More than 30 years ago, Swanson began his career in the field of environmental and outdoor education, and considers himself a “strong advocate” for the project’s creative educational possibilities.

The school will be able to use the classroom 4-5 months of the school year, Sherwood estimated.

Sherwood said that the new classroom will help students engage with Earth science projects through first hand observations, and that new opportunities will also carry into many other subjects.

“The students think it’s really neat,” she said. “Different teachers have different ideas of how they would like to utilize it in their teaching curriculum.”

Art students can enjoy the outdoors while sketching a tree or a still life as they learn the concepts of lines and shading. Studying patterns, geometry and leaf sorting can be incorporated into a math lesson using leaves.

“Science is all around us,” Sherwood said.

Now, so is Mother Nature.