Ritenour Middle School Students Transform Courtyard into Interactive Learning Space

For the first time in recent memory, the courtyard at Ritenour Middle School is a bustling living, learning space designed and built by students. This school year, seventh grade Design and Modeling students in Project Lead The Way (PLTW) led a transformation that brought chickens, a garden and outdoor learning area to life through teamwork, innovation and hands-on experience.

RMS Principal Angela Chatman couldn’t be prouder of what the students accomplished.

“Our revised school vision centers on student agency and empowerment, and this transformation is a living example of that,” said Chatman. “From designing solutions in PLTW to caring for our chickens, students aren’t just participating, they’re leading.

“This space reflects our belief that learning should be hands-on, purposeful and rooted in community. It’s more than a courtyard—it’s a symbol of the culture we’re building where students take ownership, contribute meaningfully and know they belong,” Chatman said.

The project began in the first quarter with research and planning. Students interviewed staff and peers to hear ideas and preferences of how the community wanted to use the space. They were tasked with creating a space that supported the housing of the school’s new chickens, raised garden beds and a gathering area that promoted outdoor learning. 

The PLTW students were divided into teams that created detailed design proposals based on their research. The top four were displayed during parent-teacher conferences, where students, families and staff voted on their favorite model.

The winning design came from Joanna Ramirez, Bri Mejia, Olivia Negrete and Amy Velasco-Ramirez. Their vision included a chicken area away from high-traffic doors, twinkle lights for evening events, a cozy seat swing, strategically placed trash cans and vegetable beds in the sunniest corner of the courtyard. A future pond for expansion near the chicken coop was also fan favorite.

During second quarter, students focused on designing a functional chicken coop to replace the prefabricated small coop that the school used when they first adopted eight chickens in the fall of 2024. They studied blueprints, interviewed staff and peers with chicken-raising experience and used what they learned to create 1:6 scale models. Ten teams presented their designs to the school community, and a model made by Aliyah Brown, Valerie Thomas, Kimberlyn Esquivel and Zaniah Edwards earned the most votes.

Their winning coop featured a lift-up nesting box for easy egg collection, a litter tray to make cleaning easier and plenty of shaded space under a tree to protect chickens from heat and hawks. Their model also garnered votes for it’s “cuteness factor” that included tiny inanimate fuzzy chicks in the coop.

Students say they learned a lot from the research and design process.

“I was surprised how much math we had to use,” said Edwards, adding that each facet of the project involved using fractions, ratios and scale. “It wasn’t as easy as we thought.”

Third quarter focused on the construction of the new chicken coop. DarMond Smith, Jonathan Gomez, Daniel McKenzie and J.D. DeManuele took the lead on building. They measured, sawed and assembled each part, learning through every challenge. 

Students said the hardest part of the construction was the constant re-measuring and correcting.

“There was a lot of redoing,” Smith said, adding that building the doors was the most difficult task.

PLTW teachers Sean Snedeker and Mandy Harvell said the yearlong project with multiple phases completed by different classes was a new level of authentic teaching and learning for them.

“This is the first time our PLTW program has taken on a major project for the school,” said Snedeker. “And we had 100% more engagement from students because they saw the real value of their work.”

By May, students turned their attention to the final touches of this year’s project as they built six raised beds that will be used next year for vegetables and other plants. They also built a fence around the chicken area to prevent them from roaming into an open area of the courtyard that would make them vulnerable to hawks.

In addition to the contributions from the PLTW classes, students in the Chicken Tenders/Sustainability Club feed the chickens, clean the coop and collect eggs daily. Susan Heidorn, a seventh grade math teacher who has expertise raising chickens, led the effort at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year in helping the school adopt chickens, start a student club to support them and put together the school’s first small chicken coop.

RMS currently has six chickens—Rocky, Remi, Milky Way, Cookie, Brownie and Chicken Little. Two original members of the flock, McChicken and Cornflake, were lost early on by a hawk, but the coop has made the remaining flock much safer with a Mr. Wiggles that blows in the courtyard and several reflective CDs that hang from the tree.

Students often use their “Paws for Applause” rewards to bring eggs home or collect food scraps for the chickens, Harvell said. This summer, members of the Chicken Tenders/Sustainability Club will keep the chickens and garden growing strong.

When Chatman walks past the courtyard during the school year, she sees more than a project; she sees pride. “When I see it bustling with students and teachers, it brings me so much joy.” 

Next year, the PLTW students will continue to improve the courtyard space, focusing on the vegetable beds, gathering area and making improvements to the chickens’ living area.