Eight-grade students at PCMS recently completed the construction of a floating duck sanctuary at Laughter Pond.

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

MILL SPRING—What started as a troubling discovery during a spring science class has blossomed into a hands-on conservation project that’s given eighth graders real-world experience while providing shelter for some unexpected pond residents.

Students in Leslie Rhinehart’s STEM Environmental and Conservation exploratory class at Polk County Middle School kept finding duck eggs thrown into Laughter Pond during their spring 2024 data collection trips. The domestic ducks living on the pond — birds that had somehow found themselves relocated to the water — needed a safe place to nest and rest.

With the school year ending, there wasn’t time to tackle the problem immediately. But when the class returned to the schedule this spring, Rhinehart’s new group of eighth-graders took on the ambitious challenge of building a floating duck house.

The project became a comprehensive lesson in planning, budgeting, and construction. Students helped draw up plans, built a scale model, and spent class time calculating costs and materials. Working from their blueprints, they determined exactly how much lumber and hardware they’d need—a lesson in precision that would prove crucial.

Rhinehart won a 2023 grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, which funded the project and made the classroom concept a reality.

Students then learned hands-on construction skills, taking turns with a skill saw, drill, impact driver, and jig saw. The budgeting exercise proved particularly enlightening.

“The budgeting was an eye-opener to the cost of materials,” Rhinehart said. “We had to make all the cuts count and not waste.”

But the project’s value extended beyond carpentry skills. Rhinehart hopes the experience instilled something deeper in her students.

“I hope that when they pass by the pond that they are proud of the work they did on the little duck house and, more importantly, I hope they learned a bit of stewardship to the other creatures that find themselves relocated and fending for themselves,” she said.

Getting the finished duck house from the school track to Laughter Pond required a team effort. Several faculty members helped guide the completed house from the school track down to Laughter Pond, where Kelley Tomblin and Josh Trejo joined Rhinehart in wading into the water to position the creation.

“My fellow teachers helped me move the duck house the last day of school, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when it floated effortlessly on the pond,” Rhinehart said.

The floating sanctuary now provides domestic ducks on Laughter Pond with a safe haven — and serves as a visible reminder of what students can accomplish when classroom learning meets real-world problem-solving.