GENTRY — Students from Gentry’s Intermediate School enjoyed getting out of the classroom and into the mud during the third annual “Mud Dogger” event on the school playgrounds Friday. The event was a PTO fundraiser to help teachers pay for needed school supplies.
The playground area was turned into a muddy obstacle course in which students crawled through the mud under outstretched lines, made their way through mud-filled tires, climbed over barricades and slid on their bellies or backsides on a “slip and slide” in plenty of muddy water. Following their fun in the mud, students rinsed off some of the mud in a plastic swimming pool which was soon filled with muddy water and were then hosed off and dried with towels before heading back inside and changing into dry clothes.
“Our Mud Dogger event was a fundraiser that was started two years ago by our PTO,” said Keeta Neal, principal at the intermediate school. “This is our third annual,” she said, explaining that “money raised is used by our PTO to help teachers with classroom needs … and the class with the most money donated in each grade will receive a pizza party.”
“The money PTO raises also funds our PBIS Reward Store for our students. PBIS is a positive behavior intervention system we use to reward good behavior. We had several sponsors this year and the prizes for students were pretty amazing,” Neal said.
The school’s maintenance department was instrumental in helping set up the muddy course, and parents attended and helped out, too.
“The students and teachers all had fun,” Neal said.