Schools of the Week: Hunters Bend Elementary, Ravenwood High

Published March 1, 2022

The Schools of the Week spotlight is shining on Hunters Bend Elementary and Ravenwood High. We asked the principals of both schools to share a few things that make their schools special.

Hunters Bend Elementary

• Hunters Bend Elementary opened in 1995.
• The school is bordered on two sides by the Little Harpeth River.
• Hunters Bend Elementary students have the opportunity to participate in music, physical education, art, library and life skills classes in addition to their regular studies.

Students in third-grade teacher Anita Thrasher's class are using paper houses to learn about weather.

Using a pattern, students constructed a paper house. After building their model, they used a fan to see whether the house would fall in high winds.

"We were making the paper houses to see if they would stand up to outside weather and natural disasters," HBES student Mary Peyton Price said. "I was really excited to test out our house, and it was really fun."

Ravenwood High

• Ravenwood High has the most diverse student population among the high schools in WCS.
• In 2007, the RHS faculty presented an idea about teacher collaboration to the WCS School Board. That idea turned into Late Start Days.
• For 10 years, Ravenwood High has organized a school-wide fundraising effort to support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the school has give more than $100,000.

How much weight can a bridge hold? Ravenwood High architecture students are finding out.

Students in RHS Computer-Aided Design (CAD) teacher Hannah Burns' class are learning how to construct bridges after designing them on the computer. Once they are built, students will test how much weight each bridge can withstand before collapsing.

"We're going to test it by hanging a bucket from the bottom of it," said RHS student Nathaniel Johannesson. "It will break, but that's okay. It's for science. We've done good work on our bridge, and I have faith in it."