Student paint pathways aimed at helping younger ages learn

ROGERS, Texas (KWTX) - Older kids helping out the youngsters in the Central Texas community of Rogers.

A class of middle-school students are creating an interactive way for younger students to learn. It is a colorful project, with plenty of lessons, and the work to get this done has been going on since March.

“This whole thing has been a logistical nightmare. To be real honest, but it’s been so worth it,” said Missy Dolgener, the Rogers STEM teacher and coach.

Dolgener’s seventh-grade STEM class is putting together something called a sensory pathway for the elementary.

These pathways are basically a series of sidewalk paintings with guided movements children are supposed to follow. It is supposed to help with their cognitive abilities and lets them burn off some energy.

“Hopping, skipping, all that is really good for their brain, which in turn is going to help the academics in the classroom,” said Dolgener.

And it is not just the elementary school classrooms being helped.

Dolgener’s STEM students have been hard at work, figuring out how to get their designs from a paper concept to the concrete.

“We took, like, measurements of the sidewalk and we just put it on to paper and we had an idea of how big the sidewalk would be,” said Alexa Rodriguez, a STEM student.

And a lot were eager to see the project come to life.

“The (elementary) kids are out here too, and they look at you while you’re painting and they’re like, ‘oh that is so cool, that’s going to be so cool,’” said Rodriguez.

So as the students try to stay in the lines and keep the paint off their clothes, they are also getting a chance to see if what they have been working on for so long will work out well.

“Just learning how to work together, how to problem solve,” said Dolgener. “Too many times, I think in education, we don’t allow them the freedom to mess up or to make a mistake.”

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