An Urban School with a Rural Heart

            Tulsa’s Remington Elementary School is not unlike most any other urban school in this city or most any other city - at least on the inside. Open the front doors, however, cross over the concrete parking lot and you can take a walk on the wild side.

            Remington, one of the 80 schools in the Tulsa Public Schools system, Oklahoma’s largest school district, sits in southwest Tulsa on a campus that is unlike any other in the city. Its enrollment of about

 300 students, 86 percent of whom qualify for the free/reduced lunch program, is 44 percent Caucasian, 33 percent African-American, 16 percent Native American, 6 percent Hispanic and 1 percent Asian.

            Those are merely statistics. The heart of Remington lies in its teachers, administrators, support staff and, most important, its students. When speaking with any of them, it doesn’t take long to realize that Remington is a place far removed from the hectic sights and sounds of the city.

            Ten years ago, Remington staff and volunteers had an idea. They wanted to turn the school’s 20-acre campus into an environmental center. With a lot of hard work, sweat and luck they did just that. The process served as a catalyst for transforming the curriculum and building a community of learners.

            As they dreamed of the future of Remington, the staff tried to imagine what this little school would look like, feel like and sound like in 10 years. Teachers were excited about transforming this site, tucked into the far southwest corner of the Tulsa school district, into a learning laboratory.

            Those involved knew that Remington’s greatest strength, at least on the outside, was the undeveloped 20 acres that surround the school. It seemed only appropriate that Remington, named after noted artist and sculptor Frederic Remington, become a blank canvas to be transformed into a work of art.

            There was plenty of work to be done. The plan was ambitious. It included restoring the wetland, creating trails through the wooded areas, providing an outdoor bird sanctuary complete with bluebird and martin houses, building raised gardens, introducing a track box – a box of sand that records the imprints of any animal that passes over it – erecting a gazebo, opening an outdoor classroom, constructing an observation deck, planting an arboretum and providing fish, birds and animals for the school common areas and classrooms.

            True to the cliché, success breeds success. Many groups and individuals volunteered to join with Remington and share in its vision. Once the projects began, the momentum was remarkable. In fact, by the end of the fifth year the 10-year plan was all but complete.

            The project was not without its setbacks. Two catastrophes, which could have robbed Remington of hope, actually renewed its spirit.

            First, vandals tried to destroy the trails by removing the landscape timbers, covering the paths with debris and demolishing the gazebo. Undaunted, partners, parents, students and teachers rolled up their sleeves and restored the trails, making them better than they were before the vandalism.

            No sooner had that crisis been met than one of Oklahoma’s famous tornadoes hit Remington, destroying a portion of the school and ripping through the trees. The school system took care of the bricks and mortar damage. Volunteers, staff and students were again ready to repair their outdoor lab, but conservationists encouraged the school to leave the trees as nature left them, creating new habitats for animals.

Students and staff learned valuable lessons through the hardships, the most profound of which was how important it is to preserve and stay focused on the dream.

The transformation of the 20-acre site was the foundation for revitalizing curriculum and instruction. Using Susan Kovalik’s “Integrated Thematic Instruction” (ITI), teachers taught all subjects using hands-on science provided by the enriched environment at the site.

After three years of teacher training and collaboration, Remington was chosen as a visitation site for the ITI International Best of the Best Conference. Teachers and administrators from every state in the country and many foreign countries visited Remington and experienced the excellence that exudes from this small campus.

Remington was awarded Oklahoma’s “Keep America Beautiful” award. Pam Bonwell, one of the school’s third-grade teachers, was named Oklahoma’s Conservation Teacher of the Year.

Great things have happened for the Small School with Big Ideas. The students are taught to love and respect nature and each other. Because of the dedication of staff and students to recycle, promote conservation and become involved in service learning, Remington was named Oklahoma’s Supreme Court School of the Year in 2004.

That dedication was rewarded when two teams of Odyssey of the Mind students represented Oklahoma in the world competition in Boulder, Colo., in June 2005. One of those teams won first place and received the Renatra Fusca Award for Creativity.

The school has recently joined forces with Program CREATES, which fosters learning in a natural setting as a springboard to creativity and sensitivity for the environment and humanity.  We were awarded a $100,000 grant by an anonymous benefactor for the purpose of infusing arts across the curriculum.

The connection between nature and creativity and between nature and citizenship becomes more and more evident as the work continues at Remington. As students learn to care for the environment, it translates into caring for each other. The beauty and awe of natural science parallels the beauty conveyed through art. Frederic Remington would surely be proud of his namesake.

Remington continues to evolve as it continues to dream. The school was recently awarded an Environmental Protection Agency grant that will allow it to share its wealth of opportunities with the 3,000 other fifth-grade students in Tulsa Public Schools.

The energy, enthusiasm and excitement have never waned at Remington. Although an urban school, Remington Elementary in Tulsa, Okla., has maintained the grassroots attitude of a rural community. The students continue to learn to learn, learn to choose and learn to relate with others and their environment.

Remington, indeed, is the Small School with Big Ideas.