1st-grade teachers turn desks into Plexiglass Jeeps for awesome 'off-road adventure'

DELAND, Fla. - While preparing their classrooms for the first day of class at St. Barnabas Episcopal School, two first-grade teachers kept looking at the newly-installed sneeze guards and thought they looked a little too sterile and scary for first-graders. 

“I just wanted to make it a warm, inviting environment they’ll be OK being in for the majority of the school day,” Patricia Dovi said. 

A coworker shared a picture of what a kindergarten teacher in Texas did, turning desks into Jeeps. 

“When I saw the Jeep, it just made my heart feel like, 'Oh my gosh, you can do this and make this fun and exciting for the kids,'” Dovi said. 

She drives her own Jeep Wrangler to work every day. In past years, she says her students always loved peeking out the classroom window to see if she took the doors off or put the top down. 

Dovi immediately wanted to turn all the first-grade desks into Jeeps so she showed the picture to the other first-grade teacher, Kim Martin, and immediately got her on board. 

“We created Jeeps for an off-road adventure here in first-grade. Keep your hands inside the vehicle, stay inside the vehicle. The vehicles allow them to take their masks off while seated inside the vehicle,” Martin said. 

With the help of Dovi’s mom and aunt, both retired teachers, they created and customized 40 Jeeps complete with tires, headlights, grills, bumpers and license plates. 

Students saw their Jeeps for the first time at Meet the Teacher Day and were handed keys to their Jeeps. 

Martin says both the kids and their parents were blown away. 

“They were like looking for the ignition. They really thought they could drive. The parents, you could almost see them do a sigh of relief, like 'this looks doable. This looks like a safe environment you’ve provided,'” Martin said.  

“One of them even came in and said, ‘I get it, it’s the windshield’. It just makes me feel like everything we worked for totally worked, not like this is part of coronavirus, it’s part of my Jeep,” Dovi said.

Their students start their big Jeep adventure Wednesday. 

Martin and Dovi can’t wait. 

“To see them come in and get excited made me get more excited,” Dovi said. 

And, their thankful for the teacher in Texas, who they’ve never met, who generously shared her Jeep template with them.