NASHVILLE, TENN. — Napier Elementary School in Nashville opened a new Storybook Trail and outdoor classroom area on May 16, 2026. The project was funded by a two-year, $75,000 PNC Foundation grant to Nashville Public Schools.

The outdoor classroom area gives students, families, and community members a place to read familiar stories together. The Storybook Trail currently features the story "My Voice is a Trumpet" and will display "Peace Is an Offering" in the future. The trail's design allows for other stories to be featured periodically, and the Napier community, including student leaders, provided input to select the stories.

"We want to give every student plenty of opportunities to grow as readers, and the Storybook Trail is an innovative, creative, and beautiful way to do that," Nashville Public Schools Superintendent Adrienne Battle said. The Governor's Early Literacy Foundation helped make the trail one of the first at an elementary school in Tennessee.

"Storybook Trails help bring literacy to life by creating spaces where children and families can read, move, explore, and learn together. At GELF, we believe literacy should be accessible to everyone, everywhere in Tennessee, and innovative projects like this help us continue building stronger communities through literacy," said James Pond, President and CEO of Governor's Early Literacy Foundation.

The outdoor classroom is funded by a PNC grant-making initiative that supports the development and enhancement of high-quality outdoor play and learning environments. The grant pool commemorates the 20th anniversary of PNC Grow Up Great, a bilingual $500 million multi-year initiative that began in 2004 to prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life.

"PNC-funded research by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) shows that young children are spending less time outside. Additional research suggests that outdoor pre-K play and learning benefit children's health and wellbeing, language development, cognitive and social-emotional skills and more. This project will help our future leaders gain developmental skills that will support the long-term vitality of our communities," said Mike D. Johnson, PNC regional president for Tennessee.