With the help of a local foundation, St. Francis Xavier recently opened a sensory pathway, a set of interactive stickers in the hallway that allows the students to be physically active.
The students will be able to take breaks throughout the day to use the 10-by-50-foot pathway. It gives students the opportunity to do a variety of movements, such as hopping, crab-crawling and marching.
"Sometimes it gets boring or it's tough to sit in the classroom for extended periods of time, and so if you can give them a way to get some of that energy out in the form of brain breaks, I think that's a great way that's going to help them academically as well," Principal Jordan Tobar said.
The sensory pathway formally opened Wednesday.
It was funded by the Pink Star Foundation, a local foundation Ron and Peggy Talken founded to honor the memory of their daughter, Mary Corinne Talken, known as Corrie. Corrie died in a boating accident in 2014.
Tobar and Corrie met at St. Francis Xavier, where they attended kindergarten through eighth grade, and they became close friends. Peggy asked Tobar what the Pink Star Foundation could do for the school, and Tobar said the children would benefit from a sensory pathway.
"I heard a preacher one time say, 'You can spread either happy and good ripples in life, or you can spread the bad ones, but each ripple will reach seven people, and those seven people will put out the bad or the good, so you have to choose what ripple you want to put out,'" Peggy said. "I'm going to put out good ripples."
The Pink Star Foundation has raised money through a daddy-daughter dance and a fundraiser. Peggy said the fundraiser last summer exceeded her expectations.
"That turnout was tremendous, and the money that we raised was more than we anticipated, and so that's allowed us to do a lot more things like this," she said.
The Pink Star Foundation will host another fundraiser Aug. 29 at the Capital Event Center called "Corrie's Birthday Bash 2020."
The Pink Star Foundation began as a way to help the elderly because Corrie was the activities director at a nursing home, and it was her passion. While the elderly are still her first priority, Peggy said, the foundation is evolving to help many different people.
"Corrie had so many different passions that it would just be wonderful if we could just take some of that money and put it in different places," Peggy said. "She loved this school, so this means the world to us - because now our grandchildren are going here."
After Corrie died, about 2,000 people from the community attended her visitation, Peggy said.
"We heard story after story about how she has such a good heart and such a good soul," she said. "We had no idea that she had touched that many people."
Peggy said she used to believe that when she dies, God will tell her why he took her daughter's life. But she doesn't believe that anymore.
"When I am up in heaven, my savior and my beautiful daughter won't care," she said. "What I'm going to care about is that I survived it, and I took Corrie's spirit with God's blessing and I'm spreading it."