Leaders at the private school on Walton Way have laid the groundwork for a nearly 40-acre satellite campus in west Augusta that aims to get its student body – and even children from other schools – back in touch with nature.
For its 75 years of existence, Augusta’s Episcopal Day School has been landlocked.
Not anymore.
Leaders at the private school on Walton Way have laid the groundwork for a nearly 40-acre satellite campus in west Augusta that aims to get its student body – and even children from other schools – back in touch with nature.
The pastoral property on Flowing Wells Road acquired more than six years ago by the Church of The Good Shepherd-affiliated school will soon be home to a multi-use athletic field, nature trails and open-air classrooms.
A groundbreaking ceremony for the nearly $5 million investment in “experiential learning” is set for 9 a.m. Friday.
Headmaster Ned Murray said the Flowing Wells Campus, as it will be called, will serve as a hands-on, outdoor adjunct to the school’s more-traditional urban campus, where each student is issued a laptop.
The land will provide a unique atmosphere for recreation, reflection and discovery, and will complement a school curriculum that emphasizes personal development, problem-solving skills and collaboration as much as test scores.
“We hear all the time from colleges and businesses about people coming out of our school systems these days,” Murray said. “These are young people – people with remarkable transcripts, 4.5 GPAs, high standardized test scores and very impressive academic résumés – who can’t think their way through a wet paper bag.”
″(This campus) creates a modality for learning and engaging knowledge that some kids can’t access through a book or a two-dimensional resource,” Murray said. “We believe it’s good for all children, but we really believe it’s going to be particularly important for kids with certain learning styles.”
The school, which teaches pre-K through eighth grade, has been raising funds and making plans for the property since acquiring a 30-acre tract out of bank repossession in late 2012. The property’s previous owners included former Georgia legislator Gene Holley and former University System of Georgia Regent Tim Shelnut. The school has added adjoining parcels, including a wooded 8.7-acre parcel purchased last year.
The Church of the Good Shepherd was chartered in 1869 as Augusta’s third Episcopal church and was the first to build in the Summerville area in 1889. The church opened Episcopal Day School in 1944 as a Christian kindergarten and day care facility for mothers working in the munitions operation at the nearby Augusta Arsenal (now part of Augusta University’s Summerville campus) during World War II.
The school opened to African-American students in 1962, nearly a decade before Augusta’s schools were put under a court-ordered desegregation plan.
The church’s rector, the Rev. Robert Fain, said he envisions the nature-focused campus being open to the entire community.
“There is a real opportunity to share this with a lot of kids, not just EDS kids or independent-school kids,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be great if eventually in those woods you could have some simple bunkhouses for kids who never get to go to camp, to sleep in a sleeping bag under the stars and be around a campfire?”
The Flowing Wells Campus is the school’s biggest expansion since it added eighth grade in 1988.
The school contracted with an Illinois-based consulting firm – WONDER, By Design – to plan the outdoors-focused campus. One of the most prominent features will be a stadium using brick-and-grass terraces for seating instead of bleachers. The field will be designed to accommodate everything from football to soccer and lacrosse.
The property’s south end will have a field that can double as overflow parking and serve as a venue for any number of events and activities.
“It’s not just for the school and the church, but for the community,” said Paul Simon, a church parishioner and retired businessman who is assisting in the project. “All the schools will be involved and invited to play and participate out there.”
Murray said the facilities provide a fertile ground to create a “community coach academy” for the city’s youth sports leagues, where league volunteers can receive values-based training for working with children.
The property abuts Rae’s Creek and has a nearly 1-acre lake where students can conduct STEM-related nature studies. Trail easements onto adjacent parcels will double as a cross-country course.
Scott Tomlinson, the school’s director of institutional advancement, said an adjacent 54-acre tract owned by the Jatho family is under conservation status, which ensures the campus will be shielded from encroaching development.
“They are wonderful neighbors for us to have,” Tomlinson said. “We have some additional protection on the back part of the property.”
Most of the work on the main campus will be grading and road construction. The property’s former structures have been demolished except for a small home that will serve as a caretaker’s cottage.
An open-air classroom called the “Inquiry Studio” will be one of only a few new buildings constructed at the site. However, long-term plans could see the addition of a “forest school” facility for pre-K and kindergarten students on the nearly 9-acre parcel that was recently acquired and is undergoing review by city planning and zoning officials.
The forest school concept, one of the fastest-growing trends in early child education, relies on teaching personal, social and technical skills through interaction with nature instead of electronic devices, Murray said.
“We’ve so overprogrammed pre-K and kindergarten; when it becomes bureaucratized, you suffocate the life out of it,” Murray said. “So now we’re treating preschoolers in our system as though they are fourth-graders-in-training. The way we learn best when we’re 4 and 5 is not like that. It’s more about exploring and wandering, and the natural world is the best classroom there is.”
Murray said the future campus already is yielding dividends. Every grade is developing a multidisciplinary project based on the campus, which last year alone was the destination for 65 field trips on the school’s two Wi-FI-enabled buses.
The natural setting also helps fulfill the school’s mission to nourish students spiritually as well as intellectually.
“We believe, theologically, God is speaking in that natural creation,” Murray said. “Our kids’ faith and relationship with God is going to grow not just from sitting in chapel or in a religion class, but by spending time in the natural world.”
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