Dominick Wallington was a student who finished all of grade school at Bienfait Weldon School but sadly passed away during the summer of last year.
The school has since made a temporary memorial room with a wonderfully decorated wall that has prayers and memories of Dominick on it.
The room, of course, will need to be used for something else in the future so Weldon School has since taken on the task of building an entire outdoor classroom that will be named after him.
“Our outdoor classroom is going to be basically a giant gazebo where we will have picnic tables that will amount to enough seating for one classroom,” said Janet Mann, who teaches Grades 5 and 6.
“It will be just an area where kids will choose to work if they want, or if a teacher wants to teach a class outside the building, it will be available for them. The outdoor classroom is expected to hold at least six picnic tables,” she added.
The school partnered with SK2 Custom Homes, who will be constructing and designing the building. Kevin Klassen, who works for and partially owns SK2 Custom Homes, was the one who got his company involved with Weldon School and he took high interest in giving back to one of the communities his company serves.
“The kids thought of SK2 first because we have been doing a lot with Gratitude and Give to Get, and one of the owners of SK2 Kevin Klassen, spoke to our kids about this and he really connected with them,” said Mann.
“Throughout the year we have had lots communication with Kevin and he would stop in every once in a while and speak to the kids. As such when we decided to do this he was our go-to person to get the structure built.”
Mann mentioned that the school community council (SCC) at Weldon were the ones that wanted to have this outdoor class room built, and they also had a lot to do with communicating with SK2 Custom Homes.
“Teachers and parents sit on that council and we do listen to input from our students and everyone seemed willing to build an outdoor classroom and name it after our past student Dominick Wallington, who passed away recently” said Mann.
“When Dominick passed away, I took it to our leadership kids and I told them about our idea, and they fell in love with it and wanted to make it a reality to have Dominick's name on the structure.
“We are just in the process now of putting everything together on paper and getting approval from the government to erect a new structure on school grounds,” she added.
For the official naming of the building, a few ideas were floated and are currently under discussion, and so far the school wants to go with the simplest approach and call the outdoor classroom The Dominick Wallington Outdoor Classroom.
Mann believes that Dominick made a connection with the students at the school even though he was wheelchair bound and tube fed. Despite that, the children would be a part of this day to day life by helping him get from place to place or by reading him stories.
“Dominick liked being outside, you could tell he liked having the sun on his face and he loved being talked to by teachers and students and he also really enjoyed stories,” said Mann.
The official plans for building the outdoor classroom are still in the works. Mann said that she hasn’t had time to measure the type of picnic bench that will be used but SK2 Homes has been working very efficiently to get the classroom built.
“We are not sure at this time how big the building is going be, but it is going to be big enough to put one classroom in,” said Mann.
The parents of Dominick are very happy with the outdoor classroom, and when Mann called them to let them know what was going on at the school with the outdoor classroom, his parents were not surprised by the school’s generosity.
