After two years of anticipation, Dragons moved into their new lair.
The new Pierce Terrace Elementary School opened in February with a ribbon cutting and much fanfare as students moved into their new Department of Defense Educational Activity 21st Century School.
At the ribbon cutting in the fall of 2017, students sang “Hurry Up and Dig” to the crowd and sung a new song at the ribbon cutting called “Welcome to Our School.” It was evident in the faces of the students singing just how proud they were to be showing off the amenities that make their new school unique.
“If you look at the Department of Defense and the over $4 billion they’ve put into schools in the last few years, it really shows the commitment to our students,” said Thomas Brady, director of DoDEA. “We’re trying to prepare our students to be able to face challenges in life through collaboration.”
Collaboration is probably the most critical aspect of the new Pierce Terrace. Everything inside the school is set up as open concept, meaning the walls are mostly there for structural purpose, not to divide classrooms.
Each grade level is set up in a “neighborhood” with four classes of each grade all visible to each other with shared resources in the middle. Each class can see and interact with each other if needed, then share books, activities, tables and learning kitchens with the other classes in their neighborhood. This fosters a sense of shared learning and maximizes the use of shared resources, rather than them sitting unused for most of a day in individual classes.
The $31 million school also boasts a large library connected to a media and music center, where students can learn a wide range of skills for the future. There’s also outdoor learning areas, massive playgrounds and sustainability practices, such as windmills, solar panels and electrical usage tracking for each classroom.
“We’re proud to have been a small part in the future of each of the students at Pierce Terrace,” said David Dodds, Charleston District’s chief of construction. “Our team worked hard with our partners to get this school up and running quickly so that the students could begin to take advantage of the amazing features that go into these new DoDEA 21st Century Schools.”
Pierce Terrace Elementary School is one of two elementary schools on Fort Jackson, serving PreK through second grade children of soldiers stationed on base. The newly constructed school is nearly 74,000 square feet and can hold 325 students.