The MSU Student Michigan Education Association, or SMEA, took on the school as its annual Outreach to Teach event, a community service project the club does every year, said vice president Kristy Williams.

Since last semester, the group raised about $5,000 to give the school a new look through fundraisers at local restaurants, clean-ups at Munn Ice Arena and Breslin Center as well as earning a $1,000 grant from the National Education Association and a subsequent $1,000 match from the Michigan Education Association, Williams said.

“It’s like an ‘Extreme Makeover: School Edition’ is what we’ve been calling it,” she said.

Williams and SMEA president Gary Scott began touring three or four elementary schools in the area last spring — meeting with teachers and principals and looking up information on how needy the students at each of the schools were, including how many were on free and reduced lunch programs, Williams said. Sheridan was chosen for the makeover project in May 2010.

The school originally was founded as a one-room schoolhouse and has had numerous additions during the last century, so the wings have different styles and tile colors, she said.

“The teachers were looking for consistency,” Williams said. “It’s pretty mismatched and we can’t fix that, but the freshening up will (help it) feel like it’s a more welcome place.”

Acheson said the staff were “thrilled” to be chosen and the teachers have been dreaming up plans for their classroom throughout the school year.

“The amount of work they’re doing and the numbers of volunteers is just unbelievable,” she said.

All of the teachers were polled on what they would like in their classrooms and many requested more storage space, Williams said. At least one SMEA member was assigned to each room or area in the school, she said.

“(Many) teachers were concerned about stuff they have in the classroom with no place to put it,” Williams said. “Home Depot is building almost all of our storage ahead of time for free.”

The library was one of the biggest projects of the day with volunteers reorganizing books, painting murals of book characters and rearranging the computers, Scott said. The members projected images from their computers — including characters from Arthur, Madeline and Dr. Seuss books — from their computers onto the wall before painting them in, he said.

“I know that the teacher has the biggest smile on her face that we are here,” Scott said.

Elementary education senior Bethany Cook worked on a Clifford mural in a kindergarten classroom Saturday morning. Number and alphabet lines were going up on the walls nearby.

“We want the learning environment for the children to be as best as it can be,” Cook said. “They’re going to be ecstatic.”