WISE COUNTY, Va. (WJHL) – A teacher in Southwest Virginia decided to take a chance to help her school. She applied for a grant through Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and thanks to her success, her students will reap the benefits.
The money from the grant will help build an outdoor classroom that students at Wise Primary School will enjoy for years.
“Why not just try it?” said Wise Primary third-grade teacher Jessica Bolling when recounting her decision to apply.
“It was a grant that we received from the Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, and their project is called Class Project,” Bolling said. “We received roughly about $5,000 to help take care of any building materials that we needed or to go towards anything that we really needed for that project.”
The outdoor classroom will be large enough for about 30 students. As of Wednesday, Bolling said the site doesn’t look like much, but she said the potential is there.
“We’ve already laid like the foundational walkway,” she said. “And what we have left to do is to clear out anything that’s fallen throughout the winter and the windy spring months. And then we’re going to add with the help of our career technical center, and they’re going to install a platform decking area.”
The students are getting the community involved in the donations as well, using student-painted birdhouses to decorate and raise more money.
“The birdhouses initially were going to be a smaller part of our project,” Bolling said. “Maybe just like a couple throughout the woods that we’re planning our project for. We got the idea to kind of have a drive to include the community, and the students and everybody else that wanted to get involved.”
