Fairfield fifth-graders earn volleyball net

FAIRFIELD — Early in the school year, fifth-grader Taryn Roemen noticed a disparity at the middle school playground: her grade was the only one without access to a volleyball net at recess.

After taking her concerns to Associate Principal Matt Jones, Roemen was given a challenge: gather 50 signatures from students and staff expressing support for the equipment, and it would be bought.

"I saw how much people like volleyball and it just wasn't fair that we did not have a net in the playground, when they had one on the other side of the school,“ Roemen said. ”So I started going up to people talking about the whole volleyball net thing. I saw it was really popular, so I started a petition."

After gathering 54 signatures and waiting for volleyball season in the spring, that volleyball net is now installed at the middle school. Jones said it was popular from the start.

“Their first day they had of recess having it, we about 30 kids ready to play volleyball,” he said. “We did 10 on a team and had 20 play at one time, and the kids had a ball.”

The associate principal said the challenge was meant to teach important lessons.

“We want kids to work for things that are important, we want them to understand that work matters, communication matters,” Jones said. “She wasn’t going to ask and just get something. We said, ‘OK, have a proposal, get some signatures, get some people who are going to support your idea,’ … and she did that.”

The challenge was also an authoritative way to encourage communication, according to Jones.

“We want our kids to know that their voice matters, adults do listen to them,” he said. “I think sometimes kids (think,) ‘Nobody listens to me,’ but that’s just not true. You can make a good positive impact and good, positive changes.”

Jones said he felt the endeavor was a success.

“Through this process she was able to communicate with a lot of people and involve them in the process and get a lot of people excited about it,” he said. “I don’t want things to be too easy, you should have to work through things and persevere, because that’s when things are really valuable. Good things are not usually really easy to do, sometimes it’s hard. But she had fun with it and she did a good job.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com