Tiny Hands, Tiny Home, Huge Success: Grants in Place Update from Meadows Valley, Idaho

Devon Barker-Hicks’ “Tiny Home Project” at Meadows Valley School received a $1,000 Grants in Place award in support of a project that featured eighth graders working with the high school shop class to build an 8 x 24 foot tiny home. During this place-based project, students studied housing in their region and around the world. Students also studied green living, grant writing, the trades, construction, and re-purposing. The students sold the tiny home in a silent bid.

This Grants in Place award was made in collaboration with our Northern Rockies Hub, Teton Science Schools, and the Place Schools Network, of which Meadows Valley School is a member.

We are pleased to provide this final update on “Tiny Home Project” from Ms. Barker-Hicks:

"The support from the Rural Schools Collaborative was the beginning of our Mountaineer Tiny Home (MTH) project. Without the start-up money, we would not have gotten this project off the ground. We began our project as our town was struggling to find housing needed for our community. We wanted to study the housing crisis and build a tiny home as one possible solution to the crisis.

We were able to do just that. We were able to build a tiny home, while writing grants, collecting donated

materials, and studying housing locally and globally throughout our project. We were able to present at month city meetings and to our school board on the process of the MTH. We also partnered with the senior shop students to help the 8th-grade students with the construction. We sold our MTH on May 19th. We are using the profits to pay it forward to our community by helping to purchase new ADA compliant playground equipment for the city park. We cannot thank everyone enough who was involved in this project. You all helped us build the ripple.

If you would like to learn more about our project, here is the link to our MTH podcast- https://anchor.fm/devon-barker-hicks/episodes/Building-the-Ripple--Mountaineer-Tiny-Home-e2u54f

In the fall of 2019, the students will return to school to partner again with the City of New Meadows to learn how to install the playground equipment, create informational signs for the park, and take an active role in their rural community."

Devon Barker-Hicks has received the 2019 National Signature Project Award for her place-based project, "Build the Ripple." She is the second National Signature Project Award recipient, following last year's selection, Andrea Wood, from Moorcroft, Wyoming. Check out the full story.

Barker-Hicks is a native Idahoan of Basque heritage with 20 years of experience teaching children from 3rd grade through high school. She earned a BA at the College of Idaho, a Masters in Teaching at the University of Idaho, and National Board Certification in 2001 and again in 2011. Devon currently teaches middle school English Language Arts and Social Studies at Meadows Valley School, with a focus on place-based education.

We encourage you to read two earlier updates on "Mountaineer Tiny Home": Update 1 - Update 2.

Thanks again to Teton Science Schools for supporting our Northern Rockies Grants in Place.

We invite you to learn more about our 2018-19 Grants in Place program! Also, we encourage you to check out our web section on the value of place-based education.