Cold Springs Elementary STEM Teacher Karen McReath with her student, Emmett Franks, exploring the site of the school’s soon-to-be outdoor STEM classroom on Monday, April 24.

BREMEN — Cold Springs Elementary students will soon have the opportunity to get their hands dirty while putting their STEM education into practice after receiving a $5,000 grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority to help fund the creation of an outdoor classroom.

Through a collaboration between TVA and the Tennessee STEM Innovation Network, the 2022-2023 STEM Classroom Grant Program has awarded $1 million directly to public educators within the TVA service area and is estimated to benefit more than 130,000 students. More than 450 applicants applied but a TVA press release said preference was given to applicants who incorporated the company’s primary focus areas — environment, energy, economic development and community problem solving — into their proposals.

Cold Springs Elementary STEM Teacher Karen McReath was named one of the program’s 238 recipients and received a $5,000 donation based on her desire to build an outdoor classroom to provide students a hands-on environmental science experience.

Cold Springs School Board Representative Wayne Myrex said the grant is particularly impactful for Cold Springs. Unlike other schools in the Cullman County School District, who can receive funding via their local municipal governments, Cold Springs is the only K-12 school within the district located in an unincorporated area of the county.

“They’ve [other schools in the district] got other funds they can get from the town,” Myrex said. “We don’t have the resources everyone else in the county’s got.”

The future classroom will feature raised flower beds, water filtration systems, weather stations as well as a frog habitat and butterfly garden where students will be able to witness the life cycle and transformations of tadpoles to frogs and caterpillars to butterflies. Cold Springs Elementary principal Micah Rice said he is most excited to “see [the] kids get their hands dirty,” using these amenities because he recognizes the long term impact early STEM education can have on students.

“It’s encouraging to see a first grader building a lego project or a third grader planting a flower, working in a garden bed or learning about a decomposing log or something. Right there is the next scientist, right there’s the next engineer, right there the next artist or whatever it may be,”

McReath said the lessons she plans to teach in the outdoor classroom will not be new. She has used her classroom to describe the theory behind them and students have even been able to witness butterflies emerging from their cocoons using small cups as habitats. The new classroom will simply be a space to allow students the opportunity to witness nature in action.

“They’re going to get to really see it and experience it, not just read about it,” McReath said. “The kids are going to just flourish. They’re going to get to take what they’ve learned outside, and when they read about it they can go ‘a-ha, I get it.’ Really, that’s the reason we’re looking forward to this. It’s those a-ha moments.”