Volume 3, No. 2. January 24, 2002
New Arrivals
It’s
triplet classrooms!
The Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida, announces the arrival of the Zoo
School Annex, January 17, 2003. Measurements for each of three classrooms: 900
square feet each (84 square meters), capable of holding about 40 students each
(though new state legislation limits school classroom size to 30 students),
one sink, one toilet, three computer spaces, a refrigerator space and cubbyholes
for the students’ jackets and books. Delivered by Roger Naumann of Naumann
Naturescapes.
You have to be attending fifth grade to use one of the coolest complexes among
zoos anywhere.
In 1996 the Brevard Zoo became an annex for nearby Sherwood Elementary as fifth
graders began spending one of their nine-week quarters attending full-day classes
at the zoo. The students simply moved their typical lessons to a classroom located
in a trailer on the zoo grounds and used zoo staff, environment and operations
to enhance those lessons. The curriculum on decimals, for example, used the
price tags in the zoo’s gift shop.
Sherwood has a high number of “at-risk” students, identified by the
number of children enrolled in the school district’s free and reduced lunch
program. After the partnership with the zoo started, truancy among Sherwood’s
students dropped, and standardize test scores improved, a trend that followed
the students into high school. Based on those successes, the school district
expanded the program to two more schools with large numbers of at-risk students,
and the Eckerd Family Foundation donated $500,000 to build three new classrooms.
Moving the classes from a trailer to a permanent structure was not enough for
the zoo’s Executive Director Margo McKnight. She designed three distinct
themed environments which were subsequently carried out by Naumann Naturescapes.
One classroom is a cave with stalactites and stalagmites, more than 300 fossils
embedded in the walls and the computer stations carved out of the faux rock.
Another classroom is a treehouse that sits atop two concrete trees with the
attention to theming so rich the trunks look like they are covered in moss.
The third classroom, McKnight’s favorite, resembles a swamp house, the
kind of clapboard shack on pilings one would find in Florida’s wetlands.
For last week’s opening events, about 200 invited guests, including some
of the original Sherwood Elementary Zoo School students, showed up under chilly
skies for a vine-cutting ceremony of the classrooms. That evening about 150
people attended a gala to help raise funds for a full-time position overseeing
the at-risk educational program at the zoo and for equipment in the classrooms.
In keeping with the event’s theme of helping students, the $50 per person
dinner was catered by students from two high school culinary arts programs while
the Brevard Symphony Youth Orchestra and Florida Institute of Technology String
Quartet performed.
The annex is the first part of a larger education center scheduled to open in
2004. The new center will house the zoo’s reptile collection, interactive
exhibits, office space for the zoo’s education department, two more classrooms
and a science resource library for area educators replacing a similar center
that closed 15 years ago.
©2002, Minton Enterprises
LLC
All rights reserved