How a CFSD Teacher Turned a Daily Walk into the Best Lesson of the Year

Kaden is all smiles during his daily construction walks with Mr. Suter.

Every day at 12:15 p.m., something quietly extraordinary happens near the Big Field at Canyon View Elementary.

Mr. Scott Suter, fifth-grade teacher, puts on a hard hat, a safety vest, and work gloves. His math student Kaden does the same. Together, they walk the perimeter of the campus construction zone and inspect the new sidewalks, the new rooftops, the heavy equipment, and the crews at work. And they learn.

Before they start their walk, they don their protective gear.

This isn't a class. It's not a club. It's a daily routine that started because Mr. Suter noticed something.

Back in January, when the bond-funded construction at Canyon View first began, Kaden was drawn to it. Trucks, forklifts, excavators, loaders — anything with wheels and a purpose. He would walk close. Sometimes closer than the fence allowed. Mr. Suter saw a teaching moment most adults would have missed.

So he made a plan. He got Kaden a hard hat, a vest, and gloves of his own. He set a clear rule: when we gear up, we go together. He turned a daily lunch into a daily lesson. And he invited the construction crews into the story.

The crews said yes.

"They have been super patient with us," Mr. Suter said. "They'll stop, they'll wave, they'll honk the horn for Kaden." When a worker from Kittle, the contractor on the project, learned about Kaden's love of the equipment, he offered him a seat in the cab of a forklift for a photo. The two of them, side by side, hard hats on, big grins. Kaden didn't want to drive it. He was happy just to be there.

Sitting in the forklift was a special treat for Kaden.

What started as a workaround for a safety concern has become something much bigger. Kaden has learned the vocabulary of a construction site: scupper, drainage, fire lane, grading. He has learned that the sidewalks being poured this spring will connect all the way to the CARE building, so students no longer have to drag instruments and backpacks across the sand. He has learned that fire trucks are too heavy for ordinary asphalt, so the fire lane has to be built with compacted rock underneath. He has learned, day by day, what it takes to maintain and improve school facilities.

Mr. Suter's classmates have joined in. Kids cheer when the dump trucks arrive. They wave at the crews. They ask questions. One of Canyon View's EAs, Mrs. Nancy Breckenridge, saw what Mr. Suter and Kaden were doing and brought in a full kit of professional safety gear as a gift from the Breckenridge Group, her husband's firm, and the architect of the project. 

Behind the safety of the Big Field fence, Kaden and Mr. Suter tracked Canyon View's sidewalk, drainage, and gravel installation from January to May.

The construction at Canyon View is part of the work funded by the 2022 CFSD bond that our voters generously passed, which is bringing improvements that will serve students for decades. New sidewalks and rooftops. Acoustical tiles in classrooms. A new ramp in the fourth-grade pod and a new sidewalk to the ramada, both built to meet accessibility standards. Fresh paint on canopies, fences, and gates. Kaden has watched almost all of it happen, hard hat on, walking the perimeter with the math teacher who decided that the best math lesson of the year wasn't in the textbook.

It was outside, at 12:15, every day.

After their daily construction walk, Mr. Suter and Kaden review what they saw and learned.

Thank you, Mr. Suter, for being a teacher who goes above and beyond for a student. And thank you, Kaden, for sharing your curiosity with us. We can't wait to see what you build with what you've learned.

Kaden enjoys learning about all types of vehicles. He'll often ask visitors what type of car they drive.