Lake Placid Elementary School second-grade teacher Laura Clark poses Wednesday, March 9, next to the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic displays she created for students. (News photo — Lauren Yates)

LAKE PLACID — One Lake Placid Elementary School teacher has turned the school’s lobby into a bulletin board of Olympic facts where students and adults can learn about perseverance, sports and this village — home of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Winter Games.

Second-grade teacher Laura Clark, like Lake Placid, has a connection to the Olympics. Her parents — Lake Placid Hall of Fame members John and Laura Viscome — were involved with ski instruction around town, and having Olympians over for dinner wasn’t abnormal at her house while she was growing up. So when the 2022 Olympic Winter Games started in Beijing, China, Clark said she wanted to give LPES students an idea of what the Olympics are, the different countries that compete, and how the U.S. and other countries stand in the Olympics.

Clark transformed the windows of the school’s lobby into an Olympic and Paralympic education center with construction paper crafts and print-outs of facts and photos. One part of the window was filled with a tally system for medals, with a list of competing countries next to paper representations of the medals they received. Photos of Olympians zoned into their sport dotted the glass. Clark’s Olympic fact of the day, which changed each day of the week, was taped to the door that leads into the school’s halls.

When the Olympics ended, Clark tore it all down. But when the Paralympics started last week, she decided to continue her efforts. The school is highlighting the theme of “perseverance” this month, and Clark thought the Paralympics were an appropriate representation of the concept.

“I just think it’s important for the kindergarteners up to the fifth graders to have some kind of inkling of what these people can push through and do,” she said.

The Lake Placid Elementary School 2022 Olympic and Paralympic display (News photo — Lauren Yates)

Clark tied this month’s theme in with her project by giving a handout to every classroom, asking students to think about times they’ve shown perseverance. Some answers were cute — like one student who said they got in a fight with their brothers, sister and cat — and others showed a deep understanding of what perseverance means — like one student who had to process a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Clark said the Paralympics have helped students to critically think about perseverance.

Adults are learning from Clark’s project, too. Administrative Assistant Michele Kulina reads Clark’s facts of the day over the loudspeaker each morning, and Principal Sonja Franklin said a parent recorded one of the announcements — which informed students that the Federal Correctional Institution in Ray Brook was first used as the athlete village during the 1980 Winter Olympics — and posted it to their social media. People responded to the fact saying they were happy to learn more about the history here.

“As adults, we’re learning a little bit of something just vicariously through the kids,” Franklin said.

Clark said she enjoyed researching the facts of the day, especially during the Olympics, when she could find connections to Lake Placid.

Clark said she thinks it’s important for local families to learn about the Olympics, and she wants to help out students and families who are newer to the village form a connection to the area. She learned from her parents that a love of Lake Placid doesn’t have to be bred here.

The Lake Placid Elementary School 2022 Olympic and Paralympic display (News photo — Lauren Yates)

“My parents came from Westchester, but they loved Lake Placid,” Clark said.

She still remembers a bus pulling up to her house, picking up her dad and taking him to teach ski jumpers like Jay Rand and Chuck Berghorn. He even helped out British ski jumper Eddie the Eagle, Clark said. Figure skater Sonja Henie’s coach had a regular seat at the Clark table for Sunday night dinners. The Italian bobsled team also dined with the Viscomes before the 1980 Olympics, when Clark was a junior in high school. Clark’s mom wrote for the Lake Placid News during the 1980 Olympics, too. Clark thinks her mom’s love for the area inspired her to write “Odds and Ends,” a column that ran in the News for more than 40 years.

Clark has carried on their love for the area and the Olympics — literally and metaphorically. Clark carried the Italian banner in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics. Now, her bulletin board at the elementary school is passing the Olympic torch on to the students she’s teaching every day.