WORTHINGTON — Students and staff at the R.H. Conwell Elementary School on Monday celebrated 100 days of school, 88 of which have been in-person.
The small public hilltown elementary school, which has classrooms with multiple grades in them and non-unionized teachers, started school in-person this fall. However, school started not in the building itself, but in large tents outdoors.
“Every classroom had their own big white tent,” said Gretchen Morse-Dobosz, the superintendent and principal of the Conwell School.
Education in tents continued to the week of Thanksgiving. However, this large amount of outdoor learning wasn’t unusual for the Conwell School, as Morse-Dobosz noted that the school has had outdoor learning as part of its curriculum for years.
“There’s reading and writing happening outside in the woods. We have gardens. We have chickens,” said Morse-Dobosz. “The state frameworks are woven into this outdoor learning experience.”
The school plans to teach the students in tents this spring as well, and to also start school next fall in tents.
Currently, there are 49 students doing in-person learning and 12 students doing remote learning at the Conwell School. The in-person students are divided into a kindergarten class, a first and second grade class, a third and fourth grade class, and a fifth and sixth grade class. Preschool is not being offered this year.
The school went fully remote twice this year because members of the school community had close contact with COVID-19 cases. However, the school itself has had no COVID-19 cases.
Morse-Dobosz also noted that every teacher returned to work at the school for the current school year.
“(We’re) genuinely happy to be here, all of us, the staff and the children,” said school office manager Lisa Ouellet.
As part of Monday’s celebrations, students wore hats marking the milestone and engaged in celebratory activities. For the fifth and sixth graders, this involved the students teaching for a total of 100 minutes — on subjects that included karate, BMX bike riding, operating an excavator and how to make a trailer with iMovie.
“It’s a lot of things that they’re interested in outside of school,” said teacher Chris Cleland, speaking before the students did their presentations.
He also said that the children have been very excited for and worked hard on their presentations.
“I’m definitely excited to see what they come up with,” he said.
Cleland said he’s thankful that the school has been able to be in-person, and he thinks the students are thankful for it as well. Maryse Pommenville, who works alongside Cleland, also agreed with his assesment of the students’ thoughts.
“They want to be in-person,” she said.
For their celebratory activities, the first and second graders created a banner announcing the 100-day achievement and wrote thank-you cards to those who’ve helped make it possible to get to 100 days of school, while the kindergartners did 10 kinds of exercises 10 times each and wrote out the numbers from 1 to 100.
Morse-Dobosz also thanked the first and second graders for their part in keeping school going.
“Without your help with keeping your masks on and washing your hands and putting the hand sanitizer (on), we wouldn’t be able to be here,” she said.
Because of the good weather, students in the third and fourth grade classroom celebrated the 100 days a day earlier, on Friday. This celebration featured students making fire with flint and steel, cooking food outside and making shelter. However, the students found that making fire with a flint and steel was not easy.
“Only like three people got their fire to actually start,” student Julia Bertera said.
Another part of Friday’s festivities was the layering contest, which student Cordelia Woodard won by wearing 11 layers of clothes
“Everyone was wearing crazy amounts of layers,” Woodard said.
On Monday, the students then wrote about their experiences.
The kindergartners also used Friday’s good weather to make 100 snowballs, although there was no subsequent snowball fight.
“We aren’t allowed to throw snow in school,” said kindergartner Greta Schneeflock.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.