City, school collaborate for inaugural planning program
Third-grader Gabriella Stotts held two pink boxes with purple roofs. As she walked on top of White River, she paused and looked around. Then Stotts placed the boxes on a large map one block away from the Hamilton County Courthouse.
“It’s a school for girls,” she said.
The buildings were Stotts’ contribution to Box City, an extensive unit teaching Promise Road Elementary School third and fourth grade students about planning and the city. The idea came from Noblesville Planning Director Christy Langley as one way the department can be more proactive in the community.
“This is a great way to help students learn about the field of planning in an engaging way,” she said. “Box City is a great tie-in to the project-based learning curriculum that Promise Road Elementary uses.”
Box City Coordinator Phil Hagee, who serves as a long-range planner for the City of Noblesville, said this was the first Box City program in Hamilton County.
“This project will introduce kids to urban planning and get them involved with the city,” Hagee said. “This gets them thinking about being civically engaged, to be involved in government – to think about the history of Noblesville. It was 100 times better than I envisioned it.”
Hagee said planning for the unit was a long process and took several months. The project included a presentation by Hamilton County Historian David Heighway, mock city council, scale design of downtown Noblesville and Box City and explanation of permit requirements, zoning issues, architecture and design procedures.
“You learn things most kids don’t,” fourth grader Oria Boyd said. “I look at things differently. Streets like (Ind.) 37 weren’t just built and have been there very long.”
“I didn’t even know how the city was made but now I think it’s really cool,” Christopher Mattingly, a fourth-grade student, said.
Ira Goldfarb, Noblesville sewer water specialist, said the program provided students a look at how the government works and how various departments like planning, engineering, sewer water quality and fire work together.
“It engages them in the bigger picture of what living in a city like this means,” he said. “We’re trying to get their input to what a city needs to survive. How those all interact to go together.”
Fire Inspector Darrel Cross spent Oct. 8 approving occupancy permits of buildings and homes. Just like the real process, Cross inspected blueprints, site plans and buildings.
“It’s a really good experience for the students to start learning the process,” he said. “Cities have different zones and it makes sense to zone a city.”
The project has encouraged students to question the layout of their city.
“I wonder why Potter’s Bridge is all the way over there instead of on the corner,” Trista Spice said.
“I’d move Hamilton Town Center to a different spot, closer to downtown,” Alissa Earl said.
The background for Box City was based on the question, “How can we as historians inform others how our county has changed?”
Since the school opened last year, Promise Road has utilized project-based-learning experiences to further the classroom experience and the four C’s: community, collaborating, creativity and critical thinking.
“As a hands-on experience this was PBL at its finest. They took knowledge they had obtained and applied it to a real life scenario. They researched the history of the city and how it’s grown,” third-grade teacher Kayla Holcomb said.
Teachers said this lesson was above and beyond what they thought it was going to be.
“They really had to think a lot deeper to what matters to people in the city and why,” Stephanie Hamilton, third-grade teacher, said.
“Every project starts with a driving question. What do you want the students to learn? It keeps them focused,” Principal Kelly Treinen said. “It started on day one … It was an expectation when we opened up. Our goal is create a 21st Century learning environment.”
In preparation for Box City, Treinen said students did research and heard from longtime local business owners about how the landscape and processes have changed.
“It’s a connection with the community. It builds our knowledge beyond the four walls and to our community,” she said. “It’s incredible the amount of information these kids learn.”
Treinen said the PBLs are based on state standards but “dive deeper” into the subject.
“It’s not just a fluff activity,” she said. “It is tied to standards. They learn things that extended their thinking and solidified them.”
Treinen said upcoming PBLs are “farm to table” in kindergarten and “how to reduce your carbon footprint” in fifth grade. Previous PBLs include an Indiana tourism project in which fourth-grade students created an interactive map of every county. Treinen said the project was adopted by the state DOE and is available on its Website. Third-graders visited IMI to learn about rocks and minerals and then created presentations to the company. A handful of students were then selected to present their research at IMI’s conference in Indianapolis.
