OWASSO, Okla. –
A U.S. Army recruiter from the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion - Oklahoma City volunteered to build an indoor playground at The Artisan School in Owasso, Oklahoma recently.
Staff Sgt. Cody Pybas, assigned to the Owasso Station, Tulsa Company, dedicated his spare time and efforts into the project after receiving a request from the owner to build a platform for the students.
“The project is for the Integrated School of Learning (held at The Artisan), that’s where my children go and my wife works there as the lead teacher,” Pybas said. “The owner asked me if I could build a platform for the kids to play on, she said she would pay me and I told her she didn’t need to do that.”
Cody’s children also attend summer art classes so volunteering his time there was also an opportunity for him to see his family.
“You know my kids go to that school, my son loves playing on the jungle gym and things like that, so I said how about I just volunteer my time,” Pybas said. “And you know I love doing woodworking, so it was kind of two birds, one stone, so over a week and a half period I was up there building it.”
The Artisan’s owner, Shannon Eddington, started the program some years ago before moving to this new location in Owasso. The Owasso Integrated School of Learning is just one of many art classes held, spanning all ages.
“We’ve been in business for almost three years, art integrated learning means that the kids are involved in every aspect of their learning process, from creating the lessons, learning the materials, and producing the results,” Eddington said, “It’s very, very hands on, the learning our children do is all dexterity, fine gross motor, building hand muscles, coordination, so the playground was perfect, it is something they can hang from, slide down, and climb on, which is exactly the type of integrated learning we encourage at our school.”
Shannon expressed tremendous gratitude towards Pybas and his family.
“We literally could not have done this without him, and even the things we tried to do we had to stop and call him to come help and fix it,” Eddington said while smiling. “But it’s phenomenal, we are grateful for the quality of the build, because it is such a sound structure and we just couldn’t have done it without him, he’s pretty phenomenal.”