Communique Middle School Gardening Club

       --Program Details--

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Our most recent initiatives have included opening up the gardening project to our whole school (grades 6, 7, & 8) through a gardening club.  One recent accomplishment has included winning a blue ribbon for out submission to The Philadelphia Flower Show.  This success has motivated a lot of students to get involved in the garden.  We have also expanded the garden plot to serve the "Box Lunch and a Book" summer program.  Vegetables from the organic garden have been included in the healthy box lunches provided for low income families in the area.  We are also working on an initiative to enable the students attending this program to become involved in the gardening process.  It is very exciting to watch the program grow (no pun intended:)). For the past fifteen years, our class has been using an organic gardening plot to use as an outdoor learning lab.  In this age of high-stakes testing and mega-screen  time, school gardening helps students connect with one another in addition to creating life long learners.  The nature of my program, Communique, is interdisciplinary and we use the garden to provide hands-on opportunities to meet the standards across the curriculum.  For example, a section of the garden was dedicated to colonial herbs.  Plants such as "lambs ear" thrived here and while studying colonial times in History class,

students are fascinated to learn that the native Americans taught the colonists to use these furry plants as shoe insoles or even

 diapers.  The garden allows for them to see things through the eyes of the colonists.  In Art, while we study painting in the plein air style, young artists bring their easels to the garden to capture its beauty on their canvases.  The scientific applications are quite obvious but more importantly our garden has encouraged real-world problem solving skills.  

 Gardening provides children with authentic learning scenarios that can easily be tied to any standards, federal or state.  Our school garden has created a environment  where kids can hold casual conversations and build genuine relationships.  It continues to foster academic growth, leadership, positive environmental attitudes and a sense of wonder.  These are not values our world can afford to lose.

 With the help of our school's fabulous buildings and grounds crew, we will continue to share our "square foot gardening" learnings with the rest of our school and our community.  We have come a long way in using the school garden to promoting the brains, bodies, and souls of our future.  I look forward to applying successes learned at the ESY Academy to further develop the program.