Visiting the dean’s office can often feel intimidating, but at Ponderosa Middle School the experience has been transformed. Students waiting to meet the new Dean of Students, Sam McCormick, or to see school Ponderosa Counselor Brittany Clark, will now sit in a freshly redecorated space designed to feel more like a student lobby than a detention room.
Dean secretary Elizabeth Eubanks, with the help of her husband, spent time during the week and on weekends before school and started painting and refreshing the backroom behind the front office.
Photo: New Dean of Students Sam McCormick outside his office during the first day of school for 7th and 8th graders at Ponderosa Middle School Wednesday.
Together, they painted the once-green walls, brightened Eubanks’ desk with a coat of white paint, and added a hand-painted mural to make the space welcoming.
A glossy, iridescent rainbow-pink window tint was also added to give students privacy while inside the health room with nurse Larissa Fain and health aide Jessica Kennedy.
“So a lot of the kids came in this morning (Wednesday), they were like, ‘Is this detention?’ I’m like, nope. Not anymore. This is more of a student lobby,” Eubanks said. “Instead of having all the kids up at the front office all the time, it keeps the parents, visitors and kids separated. We had sick kids going home, behavioral kids up front and parents coming in, it was kind of a bad mix.”
“The goal is they come in here escalated but to deescalate into a calming, positive environment rather than what looks like a dungeon or a jail cell. I wanted it to be inviting and to be comfortable here and the students are enjoying it so far.”
