- April 17, 2024
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Florida Hospital Flagler CEO Ken Mattison visited the new Rymfire Elementary Flagship Medical Lab on Friday, May 1, and said it was well worth the $7,000 of equipment that the hospital donated to help make it possible.
(For a photo gallery from the classroom visit, click here.)
“One of the aspects of improving health is education,” he said. “When I get older, and I need someone to take care of me, it may very well be the students in this class.”
The lab, he said, helps increase interest in the health care field among young students. And that’s exactly the kind of “Classrooms to Careers” thinking that inspired Rymfire’s Medical Lab, as well as the rest of the flagship programs in other Flagler Schools.
“We don't do little things in Flagler County, we do things big,” said Rymfire Elementary Principal Paula St. Francis.
She beamed as she visited the classroom with Mattison and other teachers. The lab is an open classroom with no chairs. Instead, students sit on a large periodic-table rug for instruction from Academic Coach Donelle Evensen and then stand at rolling, red platforms with their clipboards. The lesson today was on snot.
“Raise your hand if you knew your snot was healthy,” Evensen said to the class. The students giggled and then got to work analyzing the sticky green substance in a plastic cup. Some of them whispered to each other that it appeared to be Jello, not snot. But they played along and followed the steps of the scientific method to run tests.
The new lab is the centerpiece for Rymfire’s Flagship Program that focuses K-6 classroom lessons on medical sciences, health and fitness.
The community is invited to tour the Rymfire Medical Lab at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 12.
Community partners
Many people outside of the school district help make the lab possible. Dr. Steven C. Bower and Florida Hospital Flagler Chief Nursing Officer Robert Davis were instrumental.
In addition, the Flagler County Education Foundation’s Innovation Grants program provided a $10,000 grant, half of which will be provided by the Florida Consortium of Education Foundation matching grants program.
Additional medical and dental professionals have donated time and materials. Dr. Jeremiah Mahoney donates a day of his time to present dental health information to students in kindergarten and first grade. Dr. Ken Davis, a local chiropractor, donated a model of the spine, X-ray boxes and samples of X-rays. Dave and Desiree Chalice, owners of Peak Fitness & Rehabilitation, provided an after-school fitness class for students in grades 4-6.
'We started on a piece of notebook paper'
Jacob Davis, 9, says learning at the medical lab is “pretty much amazing.”
“Most of the time, you have a test on the desk, and you're listening to the teacher, but in this one you're moving around the room and you're testing out things,” he said, adding that he’d like to be a dentist some day — not a doctor. “It's easier to fix teeth than a super-rare disease,” he said.
Jacob was one of the students on the Principal’s Advisory Committee, which helped Rymfire Elementary School Principal Paula St. Francis decide how the lab would look.
Another student on the committee, 12-year-old Sydni Leon, said, “It’s amazing. We started on a piece of notebook paper, and now it came to life.” She added that the lab “makes you think about what you want to do when you grow up.”
