Through an outdoor classroom and new environment and experiences, Wando’s Parent Teacher Student Organization sets up a fundraiser to achieve an overall improved atmosphere for students and faculty.

President of Wando’s PTSO, Arianna Solinger explained the thought process and where the proceeds go with this fundraiser.

“Since we’ve never done it before, we didn’t really know what to expect. Now that we have our totals, we’re going to finish an outdoor classroom that is going to be on the path between the CAS and Wando, so we’ll be outfitting that with benches and media, and basically everything they tell us they need to have an outdoor classroom, and then teachers will be able to reserve it for their classes,” Solinger said.

This fundraiser was completely digital. PTSO thought that an online fundraiser would be best because it was something that they had never done before. Instead of doing more events with the proceeds, PTSO wanted to put all of the money towards something bigger that students can use in the future.

“Maybe in years to come, we might look at doing events or galas or things like that, but we just kind of want to start small and see what happens,” Solinger said

Since the projects have not been started, there is still a long way to go before the PTSO can feel like they have completed their goals “So far, since all we’ve really done is gather the money, we haven’t done any of the projects yet. I think that sense of accomplishment will come when we are able to fully launch the outdoor classroom for the first time maybe this spring,” Solinger said, “That’ll probably be the first time we actually feel like we did something with it, because until then the money just sits in account and that’s not very rewarding.”

The outdoor classroom has been an idea for a couple months now, but with the help of the Architecture club they are finally getting started.

“There was an architecture club started this year and we knew they were looking for projects. We had tossed around the idea of an outdoor classroom last year, but we just didn’t have the funding for it… So that’s kind of what started the need to do the Together One Tribe fundraiser, as we realized we could do bigger projects if we could raise more money,” Solinger said. Architecture club member Mary Caroline Harris introduced the idea of the outdoor classroom to the Architecture club, where they would brainstorm ideas and eventually come up with blueprints for this outdoor space.

“Right now, we’re just kind of trying to come up with something simple, we want it to be pretty basic because it’s gonna be outside and exposed to elements, but we just want to have some cool untraditional, seating…and whiteboards,” Harris said. “I sent out a survey, and that’s what most people asked for.”

In hopes of getting a lot of use out of this classroom, the PTSO and Architecture club are working together to get this space constructed as soon as possible. “We should have our final plans and models done by Christmas at the very latest, but it’ll definitely be done by [the end of the school year],” Harris said.

This outdoor classroom is something that has been done before, but the first one did not have the best success, so Harris hopes there is a different outcome with the one that is being built now.

“I hope that people actually use it and it doesn’t sit like the last one in the woods and fall apart,” Harris said. “We haven’t completely figured out how it’ll work, but basically we’re thinking that we’ll just [have teachers] reserve it for each class period.”