A Recent Update from Mr. Sessoms...

We were able to get an aerial photo of the proposed project site, and took it to the architect, Hite and Associates. We will be working with Brad Williams at the Hite office. Mrs. Connell explained her project to him, noting the 10 stations planned for the site, as well as the paving and the fossil reject pit. Mr. Williams has agreed to produce the plans at no cost, and has completed the preliminary plans for our review. I will post the plans on your ECCA bulletin board for your review and comments when I get our copy.

Mrs. Connell has applied for several grants and should begin hearing from them beginning this month.

Our next project meeting will be Monday, November 19th, the evening we return from the CAT trip. We will be meeting with the Pitt County Board of Education to present the project and get the Board's approval to proceed. This should just be a formality, but a necessary one. You are invited to attend the meeting which will be held in the Board meeting room. I will give directions and meeting time when Mrs. Connell contacts me.

First Planning Meeting

On October 11, 2007, we held our first official planning meeting at NW Elementary. We met with Mrs. Hilda Connell, Assistant Principal, and Ty Nelson, PE Teacher, to share ideas and discuss how to proceed.

We are going to begin with working to find a way to pave the walking trail with asphalt. The Construction Management faculty are going to talk with some CMGT Advisory Board members who work for contractors that do asphalt work to see if they would be interested in helping out. We are hoping to get this portion of the project donated or for a discounted price. Below are a few pictures of the track...

Above: The group takes a look at the track. It is a gravel trail that is overgrown with grass and weeds.

Left: Dr. Erich Connell walks around the track to do some investigative work

After the track is surfaced we will begin to work on the exercise stations around the track. We discussed at the meeting about doing four stations the children and adults will be able to use. We may be able to expand this and construct more stations, but we have to wait and see what kind of funding will be available.

We will also be planning a playground for the center of the track. While we will not be focusing on this portion of the project at first, we are going to begin coming up with ideas and meeting with some of the students at the school to talk with them about what their ideas are and what they want to see in their playground. Below is a photo of the current playground equipment at the school...

The art teacher at the school, Ms. Kim Lunde, actually had her students do a project about playgrounds without even knowing that we were starting on this project. What a coincidence! The students made playgrounds out of paper and they had some very nice ideas.

As the planning process continues, we will also be working with many other agencies and organizations to make this dream a reality. If you have any ideas you would like to share with us, you may post them as a comment on the posts that are made to this blog. We welcome any and all comments!

Welcome!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Northwest Elementary School Project Progress Blog!

This blog will track the progress of the SLC/ECCA sevice project at NW Elementary. We will be working to get the walking trail surfaced, constructing exercise stations along the track, and a little later we will be working on a playground for the middle of the track.

Dr. "Happy" Lu, the faculty advisor of Sigma Lambda Chi at ECU, suggested beginning this blog so that others not directly involved in the project will be able to see what is happening. I hope that as we progress, even the teachers at the school will share this with their students so that they will be able to see what they have to look forward to!

We are very honored to have the opportunity to work on this project with NW Elementary! The look on the faces of all the kids when they get to use it will be worth all of the work that will be put into this project!

Please check back often for more updates!