LEVERETT — As Leverett Elementary School sixth grader Layla Roderick maneuvers along the multivine traverse, grabbing ropes dangling from above while moving her feet on a taut line extended between trees, Vi Salacuse ensures her classmate stays safe by being the spotter on the ground.

The multivine traverse, along with the ships crossing and tension traverse, are parts of the Mohawk Ironworkers Walk, an element of a low challenge course, set in the woods near the elementary school. Students in the upper grades are beginning to use the ropes course once a week this fall, both for experiential learning and for social and emotional instruction.

“This is a really cool and special section we get to play with,” says Sadie Graham, the school’s physical education teacher, who brought sixth graders to the site for the 45-minute program.

Graham is bringing back to life a former ropes course, first developed in the late 1990s, using many of the same trees, with a $15,000 grant from the Leverett Education Foundation.

“If we didn’t have the Leverett Education Foundation, we wouldn’t have been able to do it,” Graham said. “It would have been an insane amount of fundraising.”

Since beginning her tenure at the school in 2019, Graham had hoped to get the last phase of a low challenge course complete, observing that she was lucky to get to rehabilitate an existing site.

“I’m fortunate that the town values education,” Graham said.

The main impetus of having the low ropes course is to offer social and emotional support of all students, in which they can gain higher self-efficacy and better decision making, and get to explore, in small groups, how to reach out to each other for support.

Working closely with the students, Graham tells them to protect their heads and to utilize skills they learned inside the school in case they fall.

“This is the first time spotting and putting that piece into action,” Graham said.

Foundation continues to give out grants

The unveiling of the low challenge course for students, with Graham working with students in third grade and older, comes as the Leverett Education Foundation is working to boost its fundraising and support more initiatives. The foundation is open to grant ideas from all teachers.

Since 2020, the foundation has raised and awarded over $70,000 in grants to help meet the cost of curricula and programs at the school, including projects that otherwise wouldn’t be adequately supported through what the town can provide.

“In the first few years we focused on special projects,” Foundation President Steve Weiss said. “We are now trying to expand that to be more flexible in the grants we can offer.”

The foundation emphasized support for outdoor learning, especially in the midst of the pandemic with temporary outdoor classrooms, and the Garden and Greenhouse Program, along with the library bird nook. Now, the foundation wants to make sure the outside educational space becomes a fixture. “We are also looking to help school build a permanent outdoor classroom,” Weiss said.

There is also money for professional development opportunities for teachers and staff, development of a social justice curriculum, purchase of supplies, equipment and software, start-up funding for a summer Garden & Nature Program and the establishment of a principal’s discretionary fund for unanticipated outdoor learning and nature-based education opportunities.

Already, 150 households, businesses, and organizations in Leverett have provided money, and during the fourth annual fund drive, the aim is expand the donor base, both in Leverett and in surrounding communities, and have a greater pool of resources.

“We believe that what we’ve accomplished so far has not just benefited our elementary school, it’s become a communitywide movement to address one of the biggest issues facing our town, and others like it,” Weiss said.

Back on the ropes course, the sixth graders also use the All Aboard, where they stand on small wooden platform, the challenge getting progressively harder as they coordinate and problem solve to stay on it; Whale Watch, an oversized wooden seesaw where they try to balance it, without either end touching the ground, even as they pass each other.

The repeated success on the Whale Watch is something that Vi, 11, attributes to building partnerships with her classmates. “Everyone was communicating with each other,” Vi said.

Layla said the best part of the low challenge course is the Whale Watch and the Mohawk Ironworkers Walk.

Jackson Bajnoci, 11, who has used a ropes course at the Morse Hill Outdoor Recreation site in Shutesbury, liked his time after moving through the Mohawk Ironworkers Walk.

“This is pretty cool,” Jackson said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.