Heather Cunningham, third grade teacher at Buffalo Ridge Elementary School, spends time working with a few of her students.

Article and photos by Elean Gersack

It’s all in a days work … or maybe not. Heather Cunningham, a
third grade teacher at Buffalo Ridge Elementary School, set her sights
high on re-designing her classroom to help evolve student learning and
spent much of her summer working on the task.

In June, Cunningham was accepted to attend the Create Something
Great Think Tank conference, where more than 70 Douglas County School
District teachers and administrators took part collaborating about
innovation in the classroom.

At the conference, Cunningham presented a prototype of a
re-invented classroom and was selected as one of just five $1,000 grant
recipients. “Heather collaborated with her students to write the grant
proposal seeking their input on shifting the learning environment. She
asked them to redesign the classroom after they did extensive research
on ‘Maker Spaces’ and innovative learning environments. The students’
voice as well as Heather’s vision for learning environments that was
research based was the reason she was selected as a grant winner,”
shared Mary Murphy, secondary curriculum coordinator for DCSD.

Cunningham sees huge importance in creating special spaces that
allow for students to use hands-on, STEM, and layered approaches to
learning. For example, in her new Maker Space, students might use
Play-Doh, paints, Legos, stop motion, or video to creatively tell about
the main idea or other theme in a literacy unit.

Maker Spaces are like learning centers with tools. “I like to
think of it as a collaborative design center where kids can explore,
create, tinker, and build innovative products that correlate with what
they are working on in class. It’s a space that allows them to think
outside the box. Actually, it encourages them to break apart the box
and redesign it into something better. It also allows for
differentiation and the freedom to use various learning styles,” shared
Cunningham.

“I appreciate that she is using her classroom purposefully and
finding ways to integrate the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic
into greater learning,” said parent Lisa Recine.

Representatives from the district will meet with Cunningham over
the course of the year and help her with the evolution of her new
classroom. Cunningham hopes to incorporate a robotics kit, a Lego story
starter kit, and/or purchase MinecraftEdu to help teach units on
renewable energy, life cycles, rocks and minerals, to name a few.

Cunningham is excited that the district sees the importance of how
teachers can take learning to a higher level. “I want to evolve with my
kids and changing from traditional teaching is the only way I can see
we do it. That’s why we are here. I love my kids so much – it’s for
them,” said Cunningham.

Cunningham is starting a Lego drive for her classroom. Please
contact Ms. Cunningham at e-mail if you have
Lego pieces or Lego mini figures to donate for her class. Items can also
be dropped off at the front office at the school.

The new Maker Space in
Ms. Cunningham’s classroom was part of a prototype she used that
ultimately helped her to be selected for an innovation grant for her
classroom.