Lincoln Elementary

We all know that healthy students learn better. Unfortunately, our students are missing the connection that good nutrition is essential for good health and good health is essential for performing your best. Our project is to create a garden where we will not only teach our students how to grow food, but also how to live a healthy life. Our garden will provide a concrete opportunity to reinforce pride of doing something on their own and the life long benefits that good nutrition has on their bodies. Our goal for our school garden is to use it as an innovative teaching tool and strategy that lets our teachers incorporate hands-on activities in a diversity of interdisciplinary, standards-based lessons. Our garden will engage students by providing a dynamic environment in which to observe, discover, experiment, nurture, and learn. It will be a living laboratory where lessons are drawn from real-life experiences rather than textbook examples, allowing students to become active participants in the learning process. Through the garden, students will gain an understanding of ecosystems, an appreciation for food origins and nutrition, and knowledge of plant and animal life cycles. At the same time, they learn practical horticultural skills that last a lifetime.

Our school is a Title 1 Elementary school in one of the poorest urban areas in our state. Although they do face challenges living in a high poverty community, the students at our school need and want to be successful. They are hardworking and enthusiastic. Our goal is that our garden will not only inspire our students to take care of their bodies but will also inspire them to take care of our environment. In order to have a successful garden, our students will need to learn about healthy soil, clean water, composting and recycling. They will use the vegetables to make healthy recipes so they will be learning about healthy food choices in an effort to help combat childhood obesity. They will experience community service when we give to the local food pantry and homeless shelters. They will also learn about the benefits of living close to the earth and the peace and tranquility a garden can offer. It is our mission that they will take what they learn at school and implement it at home, growing healthy food for their family. Our students love learning and we are confident that the garden will bring new enthusiasm for learning to our school. Our students already look forward to coming to school and visiting the garden.

As administration, we know that the garden does the following for our students:
Addresses multiple learning styles, provide opportunities for interdisciplinary lessons, improves environmental attitudes, promote good nutrition and exercise, teach patience and responsibility, instills a positive work ethic, increase s self-esteem, builds classroom relationships, improves teamwork, strengthens school spirit, and beautifies the environment.

This grant will make it possible to purchase much needed supplies to help take our garden to the next level for our students. Our garden boxes have already been installed and the first seeds were planted in October 2013. This grant will help us achieve the objectives for the garden described above, including changing student eating habits, improving achievement and test scores, connecting students to the environment, fight childhood obesity, promote physical activity, and change students' attitudes towards learning.