Birchwood School

Our school garden is designed to help our students grow healthy food so that they can eat the fresh vegetable and herbs during lunch. Our school is a school that services the emotionally handicapped population for the Clarkstown Central School District. The students often have difficult home environments. Many do not have the means to eat a well balanced meal. The teachers in our program do not have a traditional lunch period. We eat lunch with our students. Our goal during the lunch period is to enhance nutrition. The students create meals utilizing the vegetable that they have grown. In addition the garden enhances the level of rigor in the classroom by offering hands on opportunities to learn about the water cycle, autotrophic nutrition, the processes of photosynthesis and respiration as well as a host of ecology topics such as pollution. It also introduces the subject of alternative energy sources(sun) and expands on the concepts of renewable and nonrenewable energy. The students are able to use interpersonal skills to work in cooperative groups, fostering positive peer interactions. They will also be able to engage in activities that will foster the main concepts of ecology(the study of how all organisms interact in their environments. All topics are essential to mastering the health curriculum, environmental science and living environment curriculums. Please consider our school for this wonderful grant, as we are concentrating our efforts on completing a greenhouse project, that will allow our students to master our curriculum in a hands-on, outdoor, field work capacity all year round. We would like to be able to create a greenhouse for these at risk students. Students will also gain a tremendous sense of accomplishment as they see the fruits of their labor, helping self esteem and high levels of self worth.