Third grade boys at Paton-Churdan Community School spend part of their library time recently pounding nails into a plank of wood. The school’s “maker space” within the library has become a place where reading coexists with doing, with students encouraged to play around with everything from hot glue guns to iPads. It’s not uncommon to see students taking apart a toaster. ANDREW McGINN | JEFFERSON HERALD PHOTOS“Look at this, he’s coding,” Principal Annie Smith says of kindergartner Ean Hobbs, playing a game that teaches a key aspect of computer programming.Paton-Churdan librarian Jenny Fisher (left) assists a third-grade student with a soldering iron in the school’s “maker space” within the library. The space has grown from a tote of hand-me-down Legos to tools and robots. ANDREW McGINN | JEFFERSON HERALD PHOTOSNot your average library sign: A sign warns Paton-Churdan students to get a teacher before first using the saw in the library’s maker space.

QUIET, PLEASE? That’s so 20th century

Library time at P-C turns into a free-for-all of creative play

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

There’s that scene in “The Empire Strikes Back” where a dejected Luke Skywalker doubts he can raise his sunken X-wing from a murky swamp on Dagobah merely just by willing it out.

Yoda says otherwise.

“You must unlearn what you have learned,” Master Yoda implores him.

That’s also pretty much the best and only way to describe what’s going on within the walls these days of the Paton-Churdan Community School.

Fifth-year K-12 principal Annie Smith is daring her 205 students to think beyond the tests, drills and assessments that have become so common in America’s system of education.

When a P-C third-grader walks up to you in the library and proudly points out where on her hand she sliced herself with a box cutter — while using the library — it’s clear they’ve embraced the most famous Yoda-ism of them all:

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

“So often,” Smith explained recently, “kids don’t know what they want to do when they leave here.

“We hope this helps.”

For the older students in grades 6-10, it’s being given an hour each week to work on a “passion project” of their own choosing.

“We hope we find what motivates and excites them,” Smith said.

There are students tinkering with an old Chrysler Town and Country donated by a community member.

Others are playing guitar, sewing, studying astronomy and even making balloon animals.

“We have someone building a tree house,” she said. “We didn’t say no to anything.”

Naturally, though, these older students have a great deal yet to “unlearn,” as Master Yoda might say.

“What do we need to do to get an A?” Smith said, repeating the question she most often heard this fall when students were asked to identify their passions.

“No,” she said, “there are no grades.”

“The first battle,” Smith said, “is getting them to unthink.”

That’s where P-C’s “maker space” for younger students comes in.

Now in its second year, it’s not uncommon to walk into the school library and see a kid taking apart a toaster just to see what’s inside, or sawing away on a hunk of wood.

“One of her favorite things to do is to use the soldering iron,” Smith said of her own daughter, who’s in second grade.

Library time for elementary students at Paton-Churdan has never been more dangerous — before your very eyes you’ll see kids dismembering the status quo.

Cuts and burns heal.

No longer limited to perusing the library’s collection of “Boxcar Children” books, students using the school library are free to try their hand at driving nails with a hammer or to play a game that teaches them coding.

“It’s really just free reign,” said school librarian Jenny Fisher, who clearly represents a new breed of librarian. “It allows them to really shine.”

You won’t hear Fisher shush the students. Instead, on this day, she reminded them not to use the saw without her.

“It’s organized chaos,” she said.

The thought behind the maker space is to simply encourage creativity, if for only 45 minutes per week.

“We need people to be problem solvers in society,” Smith explained.

“I have a $100 bill for a kid who can build a hovercraft,” she said.

Smith hopes the whole experiment — from the maker space to the passion projects — results in P-C being able to one day farm out teams of young problem solvers to area businesses.

“I’d really like to use this as the catalyst for what’s next,” she said.

The maker space started innocently enough.

“We started with a tote of Legos I had from my boys and some duct tape,” Smith said.

In July, Fisher secured two separate STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — grants for the space, enabling P-C to get a workbench and tools and a programmable Lego robot.

Next on their wish list, Smith said, is a 3-D printer.

Fisher actually works as a media specialist in both of Greene County’s school districts — she’s at P-C on Thursdays — but when asked if any other school has anything similar, she quietly shakes her head no.

Coincidentally, Paton-Churdan this year has more students open-enrolled in than out for the first time ever, according to Smith, a Greene County native.

Approximately 26 percent of the student body at P-C, Smith said, are students open-enrolled in from neighboring school districts.

As it turns out, that sunken X-wing rising from the swamp water with some unconventional willpower in “The Empire Strikes Back” is a good stand-in for Paton-Churdan itself.

Once content to graduate senior classes of just eight and 10, class sizes are now into the 20s.

It’s barely enough to brag about — all P-C high schoolers still take at least some classes in Jefferson at Greene County High School — but it’s also just enough to keep the momentum going.

“We’re here because we love it and we believe in it,” Smith said.

She believes students are choosing Paton-Churdan because of personalized education and an overall family feel.

“Instead of thinking like a factory approach, we want it to be unique to them,” Smith said.

Naysayers point out it’s easy to have a cozy, family atmosphere when there are so few students. Surely, they say, more students will lead to more problems.

Smith disagrees.

“Once you’ve built that culture,” she said, “the family just grows.”

Again, to quote Yoda, “Size matters not.”

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