On Jan. 28, 2023, Auburn Day School opened its doors to the community for the new year, but they have much more planned going forward with the help of some recent additions to the school.
ADS is a preschool for children between the ages of one to five during the academic year. The school, which opened in 2020, has recently added two new classrooms, a nature trail, teacher spaces, more bathrooms and the Imagination Station space.
The Imagination Station is a flexible, multi use STEM area that ADS students are able to use every day. For the public, this space is open on the fourth Saturday of each month.
“It was completely sold out. And then some,” said owner and director Katie Murrah. “It was a great way to start the journey with the Imagination Station.”
Murrah hopes to use these public openings to show what the students have actually been learning in class. The theme of the event was “Arctic Adventures”, and students were able to do activities and experiments they had done back in the fall.
“They did experiments to see how blubber can keep you warm. They built groundhog burrows under the snow, you know, they used our pegboard wall. They did ice fishing in our dramatic play area. They used our light table to build some art patterns looking at pictures of the Northern Lights. They made tracks in the ‘snow’ using salt and they used different spheres to make different tracks,” Murrah said.
While concepts such as the Arctic might seem complicated, her team wanted to show how these concepts can be very digestible for young students.
These lessons were put together by the ADS team which includes expert educators with degrees in education, social work, biomedical sciences, music education, child life, human development and early childhood.
Auburn undergraduate students also work on this team as assistant teachers. However, despite all of ADS's expertise, Murrah wants to show that her school’s curriculum is something that can be adopted by any early childhood educator or parent.
“We’re the only STEM preschool in Alabama, and the only one I know of in the south… It's unique, but I’m hoping to make a ripple effect through the community," Murrah said.
Murrah hoped that through these public openings, people could see how accessible ADS’s lessons are instead of thinking certain topics are too big or complex for preschool-aged children.
“Hopefully adults will say 'I could do this,' or other teachers might say 'I could do this in my classroom.' And we want to say 'yes, yes you can,'” Murrah said.
Looking forward, Murrah hopes for ADS’s continued growth. The school is adding another nature trail in the back and the front space is going to be repurposed to function as an outdoor classroom.
The school was recently nominated for a grant, and if this grant goes through, the school is planning to add a butterfly garden, a weather station and a racetrack to the outdoor classroom. While the school is growing here in Auburn, Murrah is also hoping to expand her school’s curriculum even further.
A team from the school has put in a proposal to present at the Visible Learning Conference in Orlando, Florida, this year. If accepted, this team will present on collective teacher efficacy, or “the idea that a group of teachers working together can meet student needs and impact student achievement,” according to Murray
For people interested in enrollment opportunities at Auburn Day School, there are Summer STEM Camp options open now for children aged one to eight. Tickets are available online for their monthly meeting. Tickets for children under 15 are $10, and adults, parents and guardians are free.
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Davis Brasfield, senior in psychology, is a news writer at The Auburn Plainsman.
