The handful of strawberry plants that we brought to Myers Middle School a few years ago spread like wildfire for some time. But then, for reasons we never figured out, they died way back the last two years. They did not produce berries and they did not produce the runners that start new plants.
Fortunately, things are looking much better this spring. Plants look healthy. Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, School garden, Science, Teaching, Uncategorized
Considerable research suggests that contact with nature can ease stress, help keep attention where it belongs and sooth emotional pain. A particularly notable paper, published earlier this year, reported on students focusing better in a standard indoor classroom after a lesson taught outdoors than after a lesson in the standard classroom. Insights in these findings could be really important in schools where we work.
And so we develop ideas that would take classes outside, if only for a single class period, and pitch them to teachers. We think that putting teaching and learning in an outdoor setting occasionally could help with the social and emotional underpinnings to successful classroom outcomes. And we would posit that social and emotional needs often pose the biggest issues for students who disrupt and then fail classes with a resounding thud.
Problem is, taking a class outside, with really energetic students, who generally ignore boundaries, feels like a risky proposition to many teachers. And understandably so. It takes some faith to believe that even the most challenging students could become easier to work with after a turn or two or three, even if things look even worse initially.
Maybe it’s too easy for outsiders like us, without direct responsibility for students’ conduct and test scores, to say that it will work. But we still would encourage a couple of thoughts. One is that research, while hardly definitive, paints a compelling picture of the good that seems to come from contact with nature. Another is that command and control efforts in traditional classrooms are not especially successful with the most challenging students.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Contact with nature, School garden, Teaching, Uncategorized
Many thanks to the Honest Weight Food Co-op for a great piece about the Vegetable Project in the current edition of the Coop Scoop Magazine. Pick up your own copy at the store, at 100 Wavervliet Avenue in Albany, or click here to read. And a big thanks to the Co-op for all sorts of great support, year-in and year-out.
–Bill Stoneman
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Posted in School garden, Uncategorized
We can do something in and around the garden that does not happen in the classroom often enough: capture attention with a moment of pleasant surprise. Take, for example, what happens when we offer a taste of leaves and stems from a live plant.
Some students, of course, cheerfully pop the greens in their mouths. Many Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, Planting, School garden, Teaching
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 Boxtops for Education, 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 so cheap in the supermarket?
Please see our first take at answering these questions and then another and then still one more. And here is another try.
Vegetables can be a tough sell, at least when alternatives full of sugar, salt and fat Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, Planting, School garden, 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
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 Boxtops for Education, 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 so cheap in the supermarket? And why do we try to keep it up all year long?
Please see the our first shot at making sense of these questions. And then another try. This time, however, please consider the experience of a number of Minnesota educators as presented in a couple of great videos by the Jeffers Foundation, which funds development of school gardens in the Gopher State and teaches teachers how to use the great outdoors as a classroom.
—Bill Stoneman
Comments Off on Why a garden? Why the Vegetable Project? (#3)
Posted in Contact with nature, Four-season growing, School garden, Teaching, Uncategorized
New research continues to strengthen the case for devoting school resources and time to connecting kids with greenery. One paper just published describes an experiment that found students better focused on instruction when they’re back in the indoor classroom after a lesson outside in a more natural setting. Even the sight of trees and natural landscape from classroom windows, according to the authors of Continue reading
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Posted in Contact with nature, Teaching, Uncategorized
Our thoughts about developing an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School began with the idea of building a structure that would provide some shade, where classes might gather. It is critical that we learn from the experience of others who have gone down any of the same paths we are looking at.
Thus, it would be very useful if a friend would reach out to teachers and building leaders at the Thomas O’Brien Academy of Science and Technology (TOAST) and seek out thoughts on the pavilion built there about five years ago. The important question to ask is “what would you do differently if you knew then what you know now?” Asking if teachers like the pavilion won’t tell us much. Asking if they use the pavilion might get us slightly closer to useful information. But really we want to know why they use it or why they do not.
This, of course, is just one of several pieces of the project we could really use help with. Please visit here to learn more about this project and the thinking about it. And please read the first, second and third previous posting on moving this project forward.
—Bill Stoneman
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Posted in Outdoor classroom, Teaching, Uncategorized
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.