| Updated: 8/07/2010 12:14 pm |
Published: 8/06/2010 11:59 am |
Teachers and staff at the new Dr. Don R. Roberts Elementary School begin their first contract day August 6. The celebration started with a ribbon cutting ceremony before touring the building, breakfast, and team building activities to build cohesiveness, vision, and purpose for the upcoming school year.
"We are going to challenge the children here. We want a rigorous curriculum, we want our parents to know we're going to love and care for their children, but we are going to challenge them to do their best," says Principal Barbara Anderson.
The school is named for Dr. Don R. Roberts, who served as director of Arkansas' Board of Education for five years and who came out of retirement in 1996 to serve as Little Rock's Interim superintendent.
The new elementary school will house students grades pre-k through five starting on August 19th.
Teachers and staff say the two-story, 147,000 square-foot building features a unique learning environment with the latest state of the art technology. This school has energy saving features like natural lighting and smart boards in every classroom. It also has two art rooms, two music rooms, a gymnasium, a large cafeteria, an EAST lab, and a state-of-the-art media center.
A unique learning environment will have classrooms grouped by grade level in "pods," each with a multipurpose room for gatherings and special projects. Interactive white boards linked to computers will be among the high-tech learning tools utilized by teachers and students in the classrooms.
The project has been in the works for three years, and the excitement of starting a new year in a new school has everyone looking forward to the first day.
"Everyone wants to be here everyone is excited this is the first time no one wanted summer to linger on they wanted to get in and today is the first day we're all coming together as a staff," says Literacy coach Ramona Geurin.
It's that excitement teachers and staff hope will create a fun and fulfilling learning environment for a successful school year.
The school is located off Cantrell and LaMarche Road in west Little Rock, and is the first new school to be built in that area in 30 years. Class starts in two weeks and there will be 900 students.
