Crane School

We have three gardens on our campus: the upper garden classroom beds and chicken coop, the lower garden- a traditional garden plot, and the Crane Country Farm- a hydroponic garden, designed with the goal that they serve as a collection of outdoor classrooms to teach our students an appreciation of nature, put the fundamentals of the scientific method in to practice and encourgage healthy food choices. 

Our ideal garden program is primarily about food production and gardening, but it is also designed as a classroom space to include curriculum-based lessons, using the garden as a hands-on outdoor lab for “digging” into science, social studies, math and English. We want our students to learn through feeling the soil on their hands, through failed experiments, fast-growing beans, and cucumber taste tests. Whether cooking, exploring or measuring the circumference of a pumpkin, we want the garden to be an impressionable tool and place for students to connect the dots between purposeful hard work and patience in allowing a seed to grow into a mature fruit with the joys of community building and heathy eating.  

Established in 2014 the Crane Country Farm functions as the source of our weekly salads in our hot lunch program and weekly afterschool farmstand. Currently, I run this program with parent volunteers and our students have very little time to participate in garden activities and food prep. Our population of students live in a reality where their economic priveledge distances them from the benefits and character that come from sustained work, accountability and risk taking. They are on an end of the spectrum in that they have access to amost everything with the exception of adversity and grit. I hope the garden can become a place for that necessary growth.