'My heart is so full': Grandview students are first to visit Ivy Tech outdoor classroom

First graders Gavin Lawson and Catherine Young took turns looking through a microscope at plant stems and corn kernels.

Gavin had looked under a microscope before because his brother used to have one, he said. But Catherine, like most of her Grandview Elementary School classmates, had never used one.

“It was really fun,” she said. “I bet you could put a piece of grass inside of it and it would look so cool.”

Tuesday marked the first official school field trip to the new outdoor learning lab at Ivy Tech Community College’s Bloomington campus, where 60 Grandview Elementary first graders learned the anatomy of plants and potted flowers to bring home to their families.

The trip supplemented the students’ curriculum while helping Ivy Tech staff further the goal of making the space at 501 N. Profile Parkway a comprehensive outdoor classroom.

Ivy Tech volunteers first broke ground last May for the outdoor lab. Since then, the space has been open to the public but has never had as many visitors as it did on Tuesday. Sarah Cote, who has led the project, said the space will be available for more field trips and youth organizations this summer and next school year. It also acts as a learning space for Ivy Tech biology students.

The project began last year as a passion project for Cote, who was a professor and department chair of biology and biotechnology before she became the dean over several departments at Ivy Tech.

So far, different organizations around the county, such as the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County, have funneled about $31,000 into the project, Cote said. The George E. Archer Foundation, which provides grants to support youth gardening education, also recently donated $10,000.

While some first graders planted red, orange and yellow flowers for what will soon be a “floor is lava” play garden, others read books and learned vocabulary words such as “cotyledon” and “abscisic acid” with Ivy Tech student volunteers.

Grandview Elementary was recognized last year as one of 88 STEM-certified schools in Indiana. Each quarter, students focus on a new unit called a STEM web, first grade teacher Heather White said. Their final STEM web this school year, called “planting, growing and blooming,” prepared the students for the field trip, she said.

“The kids have learned about the parts of flowers, they’ve planted, done diagrams and watched videos,” White said. “All the students, but primarily the primary grades, are beginning to get that hands-on feel, and I think that excites them for the future.”

While the students get plenty of STEM experience in school, many students at Grandview come from lower income families and may not get the same opportunities as students from other areas if not for field trips, she said.

“It gives these kiddos an opportunity that they maybe wouldn’t have otherwise,” White said.

Nearly 50% of students at Grandview were considered economically disadvantaged during the 2020-2021 school year, compared to about 35% of students in the entire Monroe County Community School Corp., according to data from the Indiana Department of Education.

While future first grade classes will continue to visit the outdoor learning lab on field trips, White said, the current first graders will be able to see how the space grows as they grow.

“With our school being right down the road, knowing that these kids can come over here and watch this process that they’ve started grow … my heart is so full,” she said.

In the next few years, the outdoor learning lab will feature a gravel play pit, outdoor dollhouses, a magnification station, plexiglass plant root viewing stations and several gardens for butterflies, bees and birds, Cote said.

Although the lab is open to the public, most people who have visited so far are just people who walk by and notice it, Cote said. In the future, the space will have scheduled programming for youth organizations, such as Boy Scouts of America.

The space will also feature wooded walking trails, a native tree arboretum and a picnic pavilion in hopes of attracting visitors of all ages, she said. Work on the lab will continue through the summer.

“Hopefully, this place is going to look a lot different this time next year,” Cote said.

Contact Christine Stephenson at cstephenson@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Grandview Elementary students learn about plant biology at Ivy Tech