Vision

Our school community is working toward building an outdoor classroom space that includes a greenhouse and casual seating with planters. As a mid-term goal, we hope to build in stages and have subsequent groups of students learn how to grow some vegetables and leafy greens for consumption by students at school lunches and barbecues or to be used by the Nutrition courses. We hope to show students the ease with which they can grow some foods for consumption and how to care for various plants in a greenhouse environment. In addition to food, we are also establishing pollinator gardens at our school, an adjacent parkette owned by the Town and our elementary feeder schools. The connections from the feeder schools to our project will hopefully carry on when the Grade 7/8s attend here.

Action

At this point, we have our concrete base for the outdoor space and have developed plans for our greenhouse in the Construction & Design Courses. We have begun to grow some microgreens in classrooms to expose students to the rapidity at which some edible vegetation can be grown. We have invested in small hydroponics growers to advance our progress and have provided supplies for tray seeding of flowering native species for Grade 7/8 students at feeder schools. We have also enlisted in the Adopt-a-Park and Adopt-a-Garden programs with the town to increase our footprint for flowering plants as part of the pollinator project. In this regard, we have also recently become members of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterfly Way to increase the number of pollinator gardens in our region.

Reflection & Celebration

We are just at the beginning of our project, but growing foods in the classroom have already increased the interest of the school community. Our Constructions class, the Life Skills for Special Needs class and the EcoClub have all become involved in this project and as word spreads about our long-term intentions with the outside space, there is excitement to have additional seating for the warm months.

This is also a great start to programming for our Special Needs Department. We have been discussing ways to enhance existing Life Skills programming and create activities that reflect employment options and experiential learning. Being able to monitor the growth of simple vegetables and flowers, later turning to fragrant herbs, and being one of the groups responsible for choosing and starting the future crops and flowers for each year creates valuable experiences, skill development and accomplishment for our students. We look forward to future aspects of this project!