Several Edgeworth Elementary students learned a thing or two about life as part of a project to make them and their fellow young Quaker Valley learners a little wiser.

Learning support teacher Melissa Martinelli and academic specialist Gina Gordon worked with 10 fourth graders last year to create a Wisdom Corridor.

Students interviewed 10 adults, including teachers, guidance counselors and custodians. They then took that information, as well as photographs of interviewees, and created a display of knowledge gained outside the classroom.

The project was recently finished by the now fifth graders, also known as the Wisdom Squad.

“It gives a narrative of their experiences and what they have learned through their life lesson,” Martinelli said. “I was thrilled with how everything turned out. The students exceeded all of our expectations in terms of the stories they got from the adults that they were interviewing.

“They worked really collaboratively to design the hallway from scratch. Because this is a brand new project, we really had no expectations or ideas about what the final product would look like. The students really worked nicely together and they were creative in their thinking (and) just very impressive in their thought processes that they used to put all this together.”

Students got to select the adults they wanted to interview. Squad members Mac Meagher and Ivy Arnold spoke with guidance counselor Jessica Jackson.

“Her life lesson is family matters,” Ivy said. “It was a lot about how they’ve always been there for you, and they are the closest people you’re going to get to know your whole life.

“I really like our guidance counselor, and I have seen her quite a few times. That’s a pretty big job that you have to step up to. There must have been a lot of wisdom and experience behind that, and I wanted to know more.”

Mac said participating in the project made him feel proud.

“This is like a memorable moment in your life,” he said about asking the questions. “It felt great to know that you can have that moment in your life. I learned that when you’re talking to your parents or someone like that you don’t need to have a one (word conversation) like ‘How’s your day? Great.’

“You can always have a conversation that’s longer than that and go deeper. It makes me feel proud of myself and the other Wisdom Squad members because of this project (is something) we’ve spent a year on, and it was a lot of time.”

Student Lizzie King interviewed art teacher Greta Biddle. Her lesson was to not focus on perfection with projects while you are still learning.

“It was nice to get to know the adults more than just having a normal teacher,” Lizzie said. “It’s kind of (like) having them as more of your guardian instead of having them as just a teacher.”

Other squad members were Emily Doz, Finn Miller, Zarrah Gill, Alex Moyer, Carole Kurmufashe, Carson Skaggs and Reeves Windle.

The school hosted a grand opening celebration for families and friends on Oct. 20.

“It feels really good to know that we accomplished this much, and that people can walk down that hall and see what we’re working on,” Ivy said. “Although lot of people don’t take much time to read it. They’re zooming through the halls, but it still feels really nice and I love walking through it and getting to point out which one I worked on.”

Martinelli said the school learned about the wisdom project from educators at Avonworth School District, which had completed one last year. Quaker Valley joined as a cohort with other districts at the encouragement of Edgeworth principal Carol Sprinker.

The idea was from the Out of Syllabus Project, an initiative of Project FUEL and FUEL Foundation to document, design and celebrate the wisdom to teachers through stories of their lives and lessons, according to outofsyllabusproject.com.

“Students, when they’re just going through the normal course of their learning content, might not have the chance to learn from that wisdom,” Martinelli said. “It gave students an opportunity to ask teachers questions and learn from their wisdom outside of the normal content areas that they teach. … We’re hoping to add to (the corridor) in the coming years with a fresh Wisdom Squad.”

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