Not about Porn On TV in Tucson - Today's news from the Baked Apple:

[havocmom]

It's about good teachers, lucky students, community gardens and all the subjects/ lessons that can be taught there. One teacher's enthusiasm and work for the projects led to a guest slot on Rachel Ray's show.

http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/278780.php

...
The school, which has a focus on inquiry-based project learning, long has incorporated some small gardens into the curriculum. In fact, by Principal Teri Melendez's count, there are a dozen gardens at Borton, most of them small plots belonging to specific classes.

Last year, Reed had a class garden, which culminated in a harvest celebration, including a stir-fry using the veggies they'd grown. She was there to guide their first experience with tofu.
Inspired, she successfully wrote a grant and the new schoolwide garden was built with community muscle, technical expertise from the Community Food Bank and a lot of soaking and digging, digging and soaking.
...
Students improve literacy by writing factoids about each plant — carrots, for example, apparently come in seven colors. The project also helps teach math, with students adding purchases, making change, weighing vegetables and charting growth.

I used to go by this school years ago, when the first garden went in. Knew there were some teachers and admin there who were doing tremendous good in a neighborhood that was not blessed with much money/opportunity.

Shortly after the first garden appeared, along the front of the school on a major traffic artery (there is a chain link fence to keep kids from wandering off into the road), we noticed other little garden plots being created on small city lots in the 'hood. Older people in the area who could offer pointers on raising food in a desert environment became involved with the kids. That made them useful again, what a gift to them and their community! And the quiet interaction in a garden can bridge a generation gap better than anything. The benefits grow like corn, squash, and beans, the 'three sisters' that sustained indigenous peoples for centuries.

The kids, and the community, are lucky the project is still going and getting bigger.

Too often, inner city kids don't get to connect with the earth and elements. Too often they don't really understand where food comes from. Too often, they are too far removed from the natural world, and are accustomed to the notion that they just have to put up with crumbs swept from other tables. The kids at this school are damned lucky.

A garden is probably one of the best places to teach. There are age-appropriate lessons in sciences, even philosophy, that are easy to demonstrate, and absorb, in a garden.

Could we spread this notion around? Could we use this in more places to teach natural sciences, math, and imagination? Could we use school or community gardens to teach that 'the way things are' is NOT the way we have to accept things staying? What if we could show our children how to change their little corner of reality? Could we empower more people to change 'the way things are' for the better by simply taking a patch of desert ground nearby and making it a natural factory for sustenance?

How many directions could change take if we showed youngsters how much change they could bring about themselves?

Plant seeds. Seeds grow more than plants. Seeds can grow imagination and solutions.

[ensho]

1. kick

nt

[havocmom]

2. Thank you

;)