What exactly drives us to build gardens at Albany schools and then lead kids out to them? Why would we bother with those time-consuming fundraising initiatives, like selling seeds each winter, and those time-consuming chores in the garden, like weeding and watering? And what is the big deal about growing some of our own lettuce and tomatoes, when it’s right Continue reading
Category Archives: Contact with nature
Why garden? Why the Vegetable Project? (#6)
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Posted in Contact with nature, School garden, Teaching
Garlic scape season arrives in local gardens
If mainstream grocery stores shape your understanding of food, you may not be familiar with garlic scapes. Backyard growers and shoppers at occasional earthier grocers, such as the Honest Weight Food Coop, however, look forward the moment when hardneck garlic plants are ready to yield their scapes. We cut ours down this year on July 2 at Myers Middle School, a week or so later than some years.
Many thanks to old friend Lorraine Doyno Evans for passing along this recipe for garlic scape pesto from Fruition Seeds in Naples, N.Y.
Raising garlic, of course, is about much more than adding a dash of taste to what you eat for the Vegetable Project. It’s a part of harnessesing the power of exposure to nature, such as by gently encouraging getting hands dirty, to give a hand to Albany kids with great needs. We create opportunities for at-risk high school students with paid internships to do real business with adults. We give teens first jobs during the summer, set high expectations and help the teens meet those expectations. We partner with classroom teachers where the going is tough.
These efforts take resources of the human and financial kinds. Please click here https://vegetableproject.org/about-us-2/many-ways-to-participate-and-contribute/ to learn more about the many ways to participate and contribute.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Contact with nature, School garden, Teaching, Uncategorized
Working for kids in Albany schools
Another school year is winding down. Another growing season is shaping up. And the Vegetable Project continues to build hands-on learning opportunities, seeking more than anything else to make a difference in the lives of kids with great needs.
We know from our own experience and from voluminous scholarly research that contact with nature can be a force for good health – physical, mental and emotional – and thus support vital outcomes that range from sense of purpose to Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, School garden, Teaching, Uncategorized
The healing power of gardens
Please take a look The Healing Power of Gardens, a posthumous publication of an essay by Oliver Sacks, the late physician/writer, in this morning’s New York Times.
We try from time to time to answer such questions as Why a garden? Why the Vegetable Project? And Why do we work so hard to get kids outside? And Why build outdoor classrooms at Albany Schools? Dr. Sacks does it for us even better than we do.
What does healing have to do with teaching and learning? Well, for starters, it could make an incredibly valuable contribution in in-school suspension rooms in schools where we work, where disillusioned, disengaged and angry students, each with a personal story behind all of that, spend time when they disturb the peace of hallways and classrooms.
–Bill Stoneman
Living schoolyard for children’s health
The Oakland, Calif., school district intends to transform asphalt-covered school grounds into “living schoolyards” that promote children’s health and wellbeing.
The initiative, in partnership with The Trust for Public Land, Green Schoolyards America and the Sierra Club, ties in with plans to “address the challenges of the future related to climate change” with environmental literacy.
“We expect it to change the way they view the world,” says Kyla Johnson-Tramwell, district superintendent, in a statement issued by The Trust for Public Land, “and give them a deeper appreciation for the natural environment around them.
With hope to develop an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School here in Albany, we say, “Pretty cool.”
Especially glad to see the connection made between contact with nature and wellbeing and by extension between wellbeing and the kind of outcomes we all want to see in young people.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Contact with nature, Outdoor classroom, Teaching, Uncategorized
Buy seeds to support the Vegetable Project
Start your own garden this year, maybe in a couple of planters on the back deck, or maybe add a few square feet to that special space – for the beauty you’ll create, for the hope you’ll inspire and for the stewardship of our environment you’ll provide. And please support the Vegetable Project when you do by buying High Mowing Organic Seeds from us from now until Friday, March 15.
Please click here for a printable list of our offering brochure and order form, Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, Outdoor classroom, School garden, Science, Teaching
Myers outdoor classroom project advancing
The Vegetable Project has begun development of the outdoor classroom that it proposed creating at Myers Middle School. We purchased and assembled seating that can swing back and forth between benches with backs and benches with tabletops.
With conviction that a change of scenery now and then, and especially one that bolsters contact with nature, can transform academic lives, we will be Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, School garden, Teaching, Uncategorized
Make a difference in the lives of Albany kids
The Vegetable Project has been working to create hands-on teaching and learning opportunities in Albany schools since 2009. With help from friends like you, we will build more lessons in the year ahead the joy of discovery. We will ensure that more students learn a bit about where our food comes from. We will work with professional Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, Outdoor classroom, School garden, Teaching
Schools tackle social/emotional learning outdoors
The Philadelphia School District has embraced the outdoors and contact with nature as a means of meeting deep student needs beyond anything the Vegetable Project has spoken of. The big city school system pays Outward Bound $340,000 annually “so students can climb tall trees, take nature walks, and complete physical challenges in one- and multi-day expeditions, all in the name of social and emotional learning,” according a great article at philly.com.
Maybe, however, we should put building high ropes courses on our to-do list, too. An Outward Board staffer says in a video clip with the article that her charges “are working on figuring out how to face challenges and come out on the other side.” Goodness knows algebra classes have limited success in helping kids figure out how to face life challenges, such as that very class. Talk to educators in our schools about daily challenges and you’ll hear plenty about kids who are not so good at continuing forward when things are difficult.
Or as a Philadelphia high school teacher is quoted saying, “As soon as they feel like something’s tough, they shut down.”
Pushing past a fear of heights, however, even as it sets the heart pounding, can help kids reassess how much they can really do.
Plentiful research suggesting a link between contact with nature and myriad measures of wellbeing, such as resiliency, makes a good case for our efforts to move some teaching and learning outdoors. Building an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School, for example, is high on our to-do list. We’ll keep our ear out for word about what Philadelphia schools accomplish putting all its ninth graders and many other students through an Outward Bound program. It’s not surprising, however, that early experiences point to students gaining confidence in their ability to face adversity.
–Bill Stoneman
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Invitation to make a difference in lives of kids
With this holiday season upon us, I am writing to ask you to consider making a gift to the Vegetable Project. It’s as easy as clicking here to initiate an online payment.
The Vegetable Project has been working to create hands-on teaching and learning opportunities in Albany schools since 2009. With your help, we will make touching and tasting and really doing a bigger part of students’ learning experience. We will bring more students aboard as members of our teaching team. We will develop an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School. We will make a difference in the lives of students who are not thriving in the main school program.
With gardens at Myers Middle School and Albany High School, we lead kids outdoors to drop seeds in soil and to pull carrots and garlic out, to leave science class recitation about producers, consumers and decomposers behind as we introduce them to the real things, and to capture nature’s power to build equanimity. With produce from those gardens and sometimes just a bit of seasoning and other times real kitchen experiences, we overcome resistance to trying unfamiliar tastes. And with constraints that come with a locale that has four seasons, we build teaching and learning opportunities around hardy plants that make it through cold months in simple greenhouses and tender plants that grow under indoor lighting.
The Vegetable Project, led entirely by volunteers, does all of this and more in classrooms, after school and through paid employment of teens, during the school year and over the summer. And it does this with a particular focus on students with the great challenges in their lives, who typically pose the greatest challenges at school, who would benefit most from touching, tasting, doing and having more contact with nature.
Please learn more about the Vegetable Project at https://vegetableproject.org and https://www.facebook.com/vegetableproject. Please support our work to build hands-on teaching and learning opportunities, to reach more kids and to create an outdoor classroom at Myers that will make taking classes outside occasionally an irresistible option for teachers.
We are a 501c3 nonprofit corporation, making your contributions deductible to the extent allowable based on your specific circumstances.
Thanks very much and Happy Holidays!
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Compost, Contact with nature, Four-season growing, Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, Planting, School garden, Science, Soil, Teaching, Uncategorized