The idea behind my project was to get students who spend
extraordinary amounts of time indoors and on the computer, outside working on
something with a real and visable result; then, to document the effects this
work had on their indoor computerized studies.
I hoped that I would be able to obtain data that showed our students
more productive and more invested in their school community after successfully
working to provide food for the needy people in our community.
We plowed the ground last March and
obtained a grant from BB&T, a local bank, to construct a shed and fill it
full of tools for the students to use.
Myself and a few teachers and students worked throughout the summer to
upkeep the garden and provide (some) vegetables for the food pantry. It was a great learning experience and we
started the school year ready for the fall planting.
I realized in the summer that I
needed help and from my classes in community involvement I decided to engage a
community volunteer. I enlisted a nearby
community member to be our garden manager and she decided that the garden was
too big and that we could get more productivity out of a better managed small
space. We re-plowed for the fall and
have planted spinach. We are focusing on
a small area and just one crop.
We have a name, T-shirts, newspaper
spotlights, grants, wiki links, blog, community involvement, and we are growing
all the time.