Buchtel masonry students build flower boxes for Akron school
The wood panels around the garden beds at the front of Helen Arnold Community Learning Center had crumbled to the point that staff didn’t put much effort into gardening anymore.
Principal Lamonica Davis was sitting at an Akron Public Schools board meeting one night when she had the perfect idea for who could remedy that problem: Buchtel CLC students in the school’s masonry program.
Davis saw a presentation about the program at that meeting and thought they should come to Helen Arnold elementary. She pitched the idea to masonry program instructor Matthew Simpson.
“I said anything that’s a real-world project, I’m all for,” Simpson said.
The students this week installed the boxes they designed and built over the last two months in Simpson’s lab at Buchtel high school.
It took them two days and multiple hands to fit the pieces together, a bit like playing with 250-pound Magna-Tiles, constantly digging dirt out from one end or pounding the other to make each piece level. It was as much math and problem solving as it was hands-on dirty work, Simpson said.
Students are constantly asking him when they will use what they learn in school, he said. This was their chance.
For senior Mekhi Rice, it was much an exercise in soft skills as it was math. Working with other people on a project like this required communication, he said, and a lot of patience.
Those are skills, Mekhi said, that he learned first at Helen Arnold. He wasn’t the best student, he said, and didn’t always behave, either. But the teachers and counselors at Helen Arnold didn’t write him off, he said.
“They talked to us one-on-one,” he said. “Asked us, ‘How are you feeling?’ Asked us about our emotions every day.”
Now, Mekhi has a full-ride scholarship to Kent State University in the fall. He credits those Helen Arnold teachers for laying the foundation for him to go on to academic success.
“I really appreciate them, how patient they were with us,” he said.
As part of the flower box project, Mekhi and other Buchtel students met with Helen Arnold fifth graders to talk to them about middle school and having a plan for after high school, and staying away from things that would get in their way.
Senior James Bethune, who also went to Helen Arnold, said he told the students not to fall behind in school.
“Just listen to your teachers,” he said. “Be on top of your work.”
Davis, the principal, said the kids were listening intently.
“To hear it from their peers made a world of difference,” she said.
The masonry program at Buchtel is one of the pathways under College and Career Academies. The lab in the school allows students to learn to mix and pour concrete with rebar and make stencils out of plywood. They spent two months designing and constructing the panels used at Helen Arnold.
The program’s juniors built smaller versions of the boxes, with just one panel on each side. The seniors built longer ones that said “Helen Arnold”
and others that had a flower design.
Simpson said it was important for the students to not only learn realworld skills but also give back to their community. Mekhi said he would love to see the Helen Arnold students get to paint the boxes and make their own memory.
Davis, who said the new boxes make her smile every morning on her way into school, said she knows her former students’ legacies will now live on at Helen Arnold for years to come.
“It makes your day so great to see our name on it. Our kids that went here did something for Helen Arnold,” she said. “They gave back to APS.”