Garden Classrooms

Oakwood Avenue Community School

Our gardens goals include:
-Allowing students to be physically active through gardening.
-Creating learning opportunities outside the class room.
-Teaching students about personal and social responsibility.
-Teaching students about health, nutrition, and how to care for their bodies.
-Teaching students the importance of caring for the Earth and environment.
-Teaching students about hard work and how to care for their property.

Edward Russell Elementary

We currently have an existing school garden that the American Heart Association funded. Their commitment to us is three years. We are in the second year. We have 10 boxes that the students constructed, filled, and planted. Our goal is to increase the size of our garden and involve more community members as well as student and staff. We would be purchasing more boxes to increase the size of our existing garden if we are awarded the grant money.

Torah Academy of Jacksonville

The main focus of building our garden is to teach our students how to own an idea, from concept to fruition. We constantly strive to instill the trait of responsibility in our students - teaching each class to be responsible for their own area of the garden, responsible for finding recipes we can try with the vegetables they grow and to ultimately take ownership of something that they created, nurture and love.

Richards School

Richards School in Newport, NH has developed a collaborative garden project that will encourage positive choices with food and hobbies among students, families, school staff and community partners. This network of individuals who offer horticulture expertise, strong work ethic, a desire to eat fresh foods and a hope to develop mentoring/mentee relationships plan to start this project in the winter of 2014 with creating seedlings. In the spring of 2015 the seedlings will be planted in raised beds. Students will learn to care for things in nature and for each other during the entire process.

Central Elementary

Currently, we have an outdoor classroom with 6 raised beds. Our students use these beds to grow the "parts of the plant". (For example, beets for roots in one bed, asparagus for stem in another, cabbage for leaves, etc). However, funds from this grant will allow us to add a circular "color wheel" garden. In this garden, the students will grow vegetables that are the colors in a color wheel. (For example, radish for red; carrots for orange; squash for yellow; lettuce for green; eggplant for blue; and turnips for purple).

Roy High School

"Why does my mom buy that stuff for me if it's not healthy?"

"My dad says we don't need that stuff (fruits and vegetables)."

These are actual comments from students I face everyday in my Foods and Nutrition courses. Other students don't know where their next meal is coming from. Parents and children are facing a nutritional crisis.

Harlem Renaissance High School

Harlem Renaissance High School (HRHS) and the Hunter College Liberty Partnership Program (HCLPP) created the garden and nutrition program with the goals of exposing an at-risk community to healthy eating, promoting environmental leadership, encouraging students to enter STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) disciplines and increasing access to green jobs.

Stony Brook School

Westford is a typical American community whereby the youth has been exposed to the convenience of processed foods and fast food culture. The goal of this garden is to educate our students on where food comes from, to appreciate real food to improve children’s health and wellness through nutrition.

Pan American Academy Charter School

Pan American Academy Charter School (PAACS) is a bilingual, International Baccalaureate (IB) K-8 school balancing a rigorous curriculum with an attention to the physical and mental health of students; nutrition and wellness are integrated into the classroom. PAACS serves a highly impoverished community that is primarily Latino.

Akiva School

At Akiva School, the 5th and 6th grade students have been learning about sustainability and the environment. The goal of our school garden is to build our own sustainable microcosm. By designing, researching, planning and maintaining the garden, the 5th/6th graders, and the rest of the student body will be immersed in creating something sustainable that gives back to the community. Each student is becoming an "expert" by researching either composting, lasagna gardening, invasive species, raising chickens, and which vegetables, herbs, and plants grow well in our region.

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