A saw hummed noisily, paintbrushes glided along hallway walls and wheelbarrows rolled along the bumpy lawn of Reo Elementary as more than 180 MSU students worked to make a difference in the Lansing school.

The project, Outreach to Teach, is the final community service project this year for SMEA at MSU, said Erin Kruizenga, president of the group and special education senior.

“I think it’s important to be involved in the community, because being at a college campus, you know people think they’re in their own little town,” she said. “It’s important to reach out to those around us. They’re right there too; they’re going through everything with us.”

SMEA is a pre-professional organization associated with the Michigan Education Association that works to prepare future teachers by engaging in professional development and community service.

Outreach to Teach is an annual event in which SMEA chooses a local elementary school in need and develops a close working partnership with the administration and teaching staff in order to assess renovation changes to be made within the school, Kruizenga said.

For Reo, this meant landscaping, building benches, creating reading nooks, providing bean bags and new bookshelves, painting murals to brighten the classrooms and hallways and even building a tree fort for reading in one classroom. The group worked from 7 a.m. to nearly 7 p.m. to complete the project, Kruizenga said.

“We got a lot of recommendations for Reo last year,” she said. “We went out, looked at (it) and thought they needed some real help. We talked to the principal two or three times last spring, e-mailed over the summer, attended a staff meeting in September to get feedback from the teachers about what they needed in their classrooms and would visit about once a month to make sure they knew what was going on.”

Fifth-grade teacher and Lansing resident Diane Knapp has worked at Reo Elementary for almost 17 years and said SMEA had put an enormous amount of effort into the project since first contacting the administration last spring.

“It’s amazing to see the amount of effort that’s gone into this,” Knapp said. “They’ve been really helpful and they’re always in contact. We just appreciate the amount of effort that’s gone into this because we’re just a little city school tucked back in here, and if you were driving down (Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.) you’d never know we’re here. We’re a little hidden, but this makes us feel like all of these people now know where we are and they’re willing to give up a Saturday to come and do this for us.”

Knapp also said the project means a lot to the school, one which doesn’t receive a lot of attention on a regular basis.

“We’re one of many small schools,” Knapp said. “We’re just a small fish. It’s an economically challenged area. All of the students are disadvantaged, every one of them. Probably about 95 percent of our kids have free or reduced lunches, so this is so special to them.”

Kruizenga said SMEA received community support and funding for the project, including a $4,500 grant from ASMSU and a $2,000 grant from the Michigan Education Association as well as many local business donations.

ASMSU is MSU’s undergraduate student government.

Education sophomore and SMEA member Kait Gustafson spent Saturday painting murals in Reo classrooms and said the event was important to her, especially as a future teacher.

“In our four or five years we’re here at Michigan State I think it’s important to reach out and give as much as we can back because (the community) is doing so much to help us as MSU students,” Gustafson said. “As future teachers, I think we can all understand how appreciative these teachers at Reo Elementary are going to be when they come in Monday and see their classrooms all painted with murals.”

Knapp said the students have been anxious to see the changes made in the school and a ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held Monday to recognize SMEA’s contributions.

“I just want to see all of the kids’ faces when they see the improvements,” Kruizenga said. “The little bit you’re doing just means the world to them.”