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
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
Won’t you consider volunteering with the Vegetable Project?
We create hands-on teaching and learning opportunities with plants as a means of making a difference in the lives of Albany kids with great challenges.
Volunteers are invited to
Please drop a line to [email protected], message us at facebook.com/vegetableproject or text 518-728-6799 if you would like to get involved, learn more or just visit one of our gardens with one of us.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Four-season growing, Greenhouses, School garden, Uncategorized
Contributing to the Vegetable Project is as easy as buying High Mowing Organic Seeds from us from now until Tuesday, March 20.
You can view our offering and place orders online, through farmraiser.com, which supports fundraisers built around healthy eating and local products.
Or if you would rather do business on paper, maybe so you can invite friends and family to go in on an order with you, that’s okay, too. Please click here for a printable brochure describing what we are offering. And then print an order form. Please get orders to us, with cash or a check, by Friday, March 16, so we can complete necessary handling.
Either way, the Vegetable Project receives half of all sales in our eighth annual seed sale fundraiser. You will have your seeds in time for the coming season’s planting. And you will be supporting our four-season growing and our work to create hands-on teaching and learning opportunities in Albany schools, by providing us with funds for supplies, tools and equipment.
And rather donate the full cost of seeds or more? That’s okay, too. Just click on the Donate button at our web site to make an online contribution.
High Mowing’s seeds are organic and free of genetically modified organisms, which we think is important. And based in Vermont, many of its seeds were raised in the Northeast, meaning they’re especially suited to thrive in the kind of conditions that have.
The Vegetable Project reaches out especially to kids with the greatest needs. These are kids in Albany schools who are challenging and disruptive, who do not respond well to admonitions like “sit still in your chair” and “look up at the board.” We garden, prepare tasty dishes with what we grow and teach about scientific method. But most of all we engage kids. Working at two Albany schools so far, we have four programs: a year-round after-school Garden Club at Stephen and Harriet Myers Middle School, development and assistance with plant-related classroom activities and curriculum at both Myers Middle School and Albany High School, a paid garden assistant internship mentoring program for at-risk students at Albany High and a work site for a city summer jobs program that gives high school-age students a first exposure to employment.
In addition, we are building development plans for an outdoor classroom at our middle school home, with a greenhouse, a shaded sitting area, a fruit tree orchard and naturalized space where science classes would conduct meaningful scientific investigations. The completed space should be as irresistible to art or history teachers as it is to science teachers, thus increasing kids’ time outdoors in fresh air and amid greenery, which research shows supports wide ranging healthy outcomes.
Happy gardening. And please help us spread word about this great offer.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Contact with nature, Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, Planting, School garden, Science, Teaching, Uncategorized
Contributing development of an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School to the Albany City School District is a substantial project, but we think well worth the effort if it gets kids outside more often and closer to nature and learning with their hands. As with any volunteer initiative, however, widespread community participation is crucial to its timely completion. Thus, we would be so pleased if you would be part of it, maybe by sharing ideas, or possibly a bit of knowledge or elbow grease or perhaps introducing to us to other people or resources. Involvement can surely range from helping to address regulatory requirements and estimate construction costs to planning longer-range funding requirements to drafting detailed plans for specific elements to communicating and to fundraising.
We have built a list of pieces of the project we could really use help with. Here is a bit about one big item:
We need to bring electricity from the school building to any greenhouse that we build to power a fire alarm. We dearly hope to bring water from the building to a more central location, for watering our garden and likely to create simple food prep capabilities. The school district facilities folks estimate that an electrical conduit will cost about $20,000 and that extending water will run about $10,000. It appears that we need serious help with this from a licensed professional engineer or architect. We will need to organize our plan into a building permit application to the state Education Department.
Know someone who might lend a hand, at least to help us get our bearings?
—Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, Uncategorized
The Vegetable Project, which has been digging in the dirt at Myers Middle School since 2009, proposes further developing space around its gardens to create an outdoor classroom for the school. The idea is that an outdoor classroom would serve as a living science laboratory, a place where English classes might be encouraged to write and art students might be given a chance to observe. In each Continue reading
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Posted in Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, School garden, Science, Teaching, Uncategorized
Potted strawberry plans await planing.
Fresh air lessens symptoms of both attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression, according to environmental psychologist Louise Chawla. And kids who spend time outdoors often develop better social skills, says Sarah Leibel, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
These and other research findings make a great case for taking teaching and learning outdoors when possible, concludes the New York School Boards Association in its Study Break series https://soundcloud.com/user-308199334/go-ahead-fool-with-mother-nature-the-outdoors-is-an-effective-learning-tool, which provides quick audio suggestions to school leaders. And an Continue reading
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March 18, 2017 in Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, School garden
The Vegetable Project wants to do much more at Myers Middle School than just dig in the dirt with kids. In fact, we propose building an outdoor classroom at the school to support a whole new dimension to teaching and learning.
The possibilities for such a development include amenities like these:
We would like to tell you all about our thinking and planning that we have done thus far. We would like to show you a rendering of our initial ideas by Albany landscape designer Jason Schultz. Please join us if you can on Sunday, March 19, from 4 to 5:30 p.m., at the home of Julia Farrant, 38 Brookline Avenue in Albany, for food, friends and conversation.
Can’t make this gathering? Stay tuned. We’ll organize additional opportunities to learn about this exciting project.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Greenhouses, Outdoor classroom, School garden, Teaching
At Myers Middle School.
A big challenge in school gardening in this part of the world is winter. Children are at their desks, but the soil is frozen. Thus, we are please to report great help that the Whole Kids Foundation is offering us to build a workaround.
As part of an annual school gardening Continue reading
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Posted in Four-season growing, Greenhouses, Planting, School garden, Uncategorized
The school leaders at Saint Anne Institute have kindly offered use of a beautiful heated greenhouse on its campus to Albany High School and Abrookin Career and Technical Center. And as slightly captured in the accompanying photo, we have begun exploring how to put this great opportunity to use.
With as much as 1,000 square feet of heated and sun-lit space about 10 minutes Continue reading
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Posted in Four-season growing, Greenhouses, Planting, School garden, Teaching
Strut your stuff in a stylish Vegetable Project T-shirt for $15. It's a great way to show you support creating hands-on learning opportunities for Albany kids.