Students spruce up Oakland school

The odor of fresh paint filled the hallways in the Oakland Elementary School as volunteers painted walls, the gym, murals, and likely none of these soon-to-be teachers will ever teach inside this particular school, let alone in or near Lafayette.

Indiana Student Education Association's Outreach to Teach project picked Oakland Elementary School as its annual rehab project and targeted about $24,000 worth of improvements to the school.

For the college students, Saturday's rehab project was a chance for the college students to learn to give back to a community, said Mark Shoup, state coordinator for Indiana Student Education Association.

“You become a teacher, you become part of a community," he explained. “This is as much for the kids (college students) as it is for the school.”

When a school district hires these students, the district makes an investment in these young teachers. It is, therefore, important that they make an investment in the community, Shoup said.

It's a lesson not lost on Kelly Reed, co-chair of the Outreach to Teach event and a St. Joseph College senior who enters the job market in May.

“Almost everyone here are college students that are studying to be teachers,” Reed said.

The outdoor's to-do list included landscaping, painting the curbs outside and restriping the parking lot, explained Jennifer Smith-Margraf, a Jeff High School teacher and co-president of the Lafayette Education Association. Inside, there was a lot of painting, as well as assembling new furniture for the school.

Caitlyn Marksbary, a Vinton Elementary teacher, and the Lafayette Education Association board nominated Oakland for the project. The school, which was converted back to an elementary school just before the start of the school year. It had been a high school for five years.

Smith-Margraf said, “Our executive board immediately thought of Oakland since we had just re-opened this building and knew that the corporation was going to be able to put some funds into it, but probably wasn’t going to be able to do everything that you would ideally like to do in an elementary school.”

Layne Lumley, student president of Indiana Student Education Association and a Ball State senior who also enters the job market in May, said Reed's committee visited all the nominated properties in the district before deciding on Oakland.

“It’s who is the neediest. Who can we make the biggest impact on?" said Lumley, who is from the Lafayette area.

Shoup said students from every college campus in the state that has a teaching program were represented in Saturday's volunteer workforce at the school. Additionally, there were some college kids who are not teaching majors and just signed up for the fun of it, Reed said.

Smith-Margraf noted that the mob of workers included teachers, members of the Indiana State Teachers Association, and even area high school students.

Lumley said, “This is our big event of the year. This is what gets people really excited.”

Next year, Lumley and Reed plan to be teachers somewhere in the state, but when the Outreach to Teach project rolls around next spring, they plan to be there to give back to whatever school district receives the bid.