10 Mar 2024 Extraordinary extracurriculars
By Jessica Duff
The Pulaski County Special School District is committed to providing a quality and equitable education to all students, which includes lessons both in and out of the classroom. In addition to the in-class courses offered from Pre-K to 12th grade, PCSSD offers a number of extracurricular and club activities for students to join at many different grade levels.
A wide variety of extracurricular activities and clubs are offered at all schools in the Maumelle feeder. Each school has different opportunities for its students based on the interests of students and staff. This month, let’s highlight a few clubs at Pine Forest and Crystal Hill Elementaries as well as Maumelle High.
Pine Forest Elementary has two unique clubs that engage students to help the community and express creativity. First up is the Makerspace Club made up of about 20 students from third – fifth grade. These students meet every Tuesday after school to participate in STEAM-related activities. These range from crafts to coding to engineering and more! Club sponsor Courtney Reaves said the club is a great way for students to feel free to be creative and explore their interests.
“Hopefully those discoveries can lead to lifelong passions and/or future careers,” said Reaves, who is also the school’s teacher librarian. “I love that students have the opportunity to work collaboratively and problem-solve together. I hope that through these hands-on activities that we do, students will learn to communicate with each other in a positive, productive way.”
Also at Pine Forest, the Alpha Recycling Club allows Alpha students to collect recyclables from each classroom. The fourth-grade group is assigned to collect the items, while the fifth-grade group takes the items (in a new cardboard cart!) to the curb each week. The hope is that students learn to take care of the environment and make this a habit.
Just down the road at Crystal Hill Elementary, there are two more clubs that are very special to the school. Archery may not seem like a club, but at the elementary level this sport is a club offered to all students in fourth and fifth grade. Students learn about archery in P.E. and then can try out for the team in the fall. The CHES Archery team practices weekly and competes in four tournaments during the season. Crystal Wofford, club sponsor, says it is amazing to see the growth they have from that first practice to their last!
“Archery is competitive and teaches the students how to be humble,” said Wofford, who also serves as the school P.E. teacher. ”I also want to make sure they learn about sportsmanship and being a good team player.”
School counselor Kyeisha Soils leads the Friday Food Bags, which is a partnership with First United Church in Maumelle. This program is free and provides kid-friendly, nonperishable snacks for students to eat over the weekend. Volunteers from FUCM bring snack bags to Crystal Hill every Wednesday. On Friday, a small team of fifth-graders pass out the snacks that morning, which is usually about 125 bags for the whole school!
Over at Maumelle High, it’s all about the BUZZ, the Buzz Squad that is! This club serves as an opportunity for any student to get involved in creating a positive school culture. Their mission is to ensure that all students feel some kind of connection to Maumelle High. The Buzz Squad truly encourages all types of students to join and have a say in the school culture. These students promote upcoming events and provide whatever extra that they can do to help make things better. They’ll make positive videos and spread them around our school as well. They continually work with positivity in the face of adversity while overcoming the obstacles that come into play when planning projects that affect a wider audience. Ultimately, the students are learning leadership and problem-solving skills that will serve them once they leave Maumelle High.
PCSSD is proud to offer a number of unique extracurricular activities and clubs for students across the feeder. You can find a full list of extracurricular opportunities on each school website.
