By Izzy Requa, Staff Writer
In the days leading up to prom, most students were worried about dresses, tuxes, hair and nails, but for Exceptional Children’s teacher Joe Tyson and his students, the main concern was mulch.
“We did a school beautification project. We partnered with Earth Resources and we went out there and we weeded everything, then we cultivated it and laid the mulch,” Tyson said.
Earth Resources is a local company that provides stone, gravel, sand or soil for any construction or landscaping projects, and generously donated the mulch needed for the project.
“A big shout out to Earth Resources who donated all that mulch. It costs a lot of money and he hooked us up,” Tyson said. “He donated a lot of mulch to the project so my students could go out there and work really hard to get it done.”
Senior Raejahn Greeley was able to see and work on the project from start to finish.
“We got up, went out there, they brought in a lot of mulch and we went and laid it throughout the whole school,” Greeley said. “Watching them dump all that mulch was cool and when we were finished it looked really good.”
One of the goals of the project was to have the school looking great for prom, which proved to be a challenge at first.
“There were so many weeds out there. We spent an entire day weeding and then half of another day weeding. The cultivating was pretty hard because you have to take a hoe and rake everything up that was in there,” Tyson said. “Between the weeding and the cultivating, I’m pretty sure that everyone that worked in here that day slept very well that night.”
Although Tyson and his students’ main goal was to make the school look better, he was also excited about the opportunity to raise money for upcoming field trips they want to attend.
“I had been talking to Mr. (Tim) Albert for awhile about maybe seeing different ways to help raise some funds for my program,” Tyson said. “We had a partnership with Mr. Albert and he said if we go out there and do it all and make it look good then he’d give us some money to help pay for our trips. We use that money to help do miscellaneous things in the program.”
With the money Tyson and his students earned by beautifying the school, they are excited to start planning activities to do toward the end of the school year.
“We will be going to Jennette’s Pier in May and we will also be going out to the horse farm towards the end of May,” Tyson said. “Mrs. Sam (Iulo), she has the therapeutic horse farm, Mane and Taill, and we go out there towards the end of May and help her get it all ready and we also get to ride the horses and play with the horses, which is a lot of fun.”
The opportunity also served as a bonding experience between Tyson and his students.
“My favorite part was just talking with the students. We all got to know each other pretty well, because when you’re out there shoveling that much mulch, you kind of have to talk to each other,” Tyson said. “We were talking about life, and talking about different sports and pretty much talking about everything you could think of talking about.”
Overall, both Tyson and his students agree the project was a success and are grateful for the chance to take part in such an eventful experience.
“The fact that we could do this project and raise money for our program to be able to go on the field trips we want to go on, that’s just such a great thing,” Tyson said. “And we got to make the school look cool.”
Sophomore Izzy Requa can be reached at requais0227@daretolearn.org.
