With our young generation becoming more digital by the day, giving them the opportunity to grow and nurture a real garden provides our students a life-long opportunity to learn and appreciate nature. This grant will help seed the start of Drew Elementary's very own gardening club. Our students will rally around growing food, flowers and a fun learning experience of playing in dirt with a purpose!

The biggest need the Drew Elementary campus has concerning making Science interactive and hands on is the lack of a real life garden. By providing students a real life and hands on approach to seeing how food and flowers grow from seed, students will be able to connect what they learn in the classroom to a real life experience. All students from all grade levels and demographics will benefit from the experience gained while participating and observing the growth of the items planted. Math and writing activities can be incorporated as well with intentional lessons designed around tracking growth and processes in the care and nuture of creating a floral and/or food garden. I believe the establishment and embrace of a school garden will not only improve the Science connections taught in the classroom, but it will also help boost test scores given the lasting power of hands on experience. With this grant I, along with other eager colleagues, will help foster a love for learning with the creation of a gardening club. The items selected for the grant are the necessities I feel are needed to help create and maintain a garden. Once the garden beds are established, anything is possible!

My idea that I would like to bring to Drew Elementary is to create a gardening club. As an educator with over two decades of teaching experience, I have seen the excitement and joy children express when they get to learn hands on while getting hands full of dirt between their fingers. As a new teacher to Drew, I inquired if they had a garden or afterschool gardening club which they do not. Seeing this void, I feel the need to help establish both a garden and a gardening club. I feel the beauty of having a program like this is the ability to have children of all ages able to participate. The added bonus of this program is the visible gratification children get when they see their efforts grow. Another bonus to growing a garden from seed allows for the integration of Math and Science by tracking growth with measurements and the study of soil, living organisms and weather. The grant funds will help provide the tools to help work the soil to prepare gardens for our school. These tools are a long-term investment that will allow for repeated use year after year. I plan on creating a framework with the help of my administrators to identify strategic areas to establish these gardens. Since gardening revolves around seasons, I plan on creating a growing schedule that works smoothly with our local region. Part of my planning is to decide which students would be invited to participate in the gardening club. Given that gardening allows for students of all ages to participate, my ideal goal would be to have representation from all grade levels and all cultural backgrounds. I envision our club meeting once a week after school on Thursdays for no more than an hour. I feel this will allow plenty of time to do some minor maintenance and care on our flower and vegetable beds. This would also give enough time to record any data we gather. The initial beginning of the gardening project would entail the preparation of soil for the predetermined location(s). An explanation of the norms and expectations of the club during our time together would be discussed and agreed upon with parental approval. I would like to have club members utilize a dedicated journal to record data gathered from our gardens. I would also incorporate weather tracking charts to help track the season throughout the year. To help all members feel included and validated, I would also like to have input from students to select the flowers and/or vegetables that they would like to see grow. I would also include a schedule in the mornings where selected students would help water our gardens. I feel having a gardening club aligns to Crosby’s mission of personalizing learning because not only will this club provide vital social skills of teamwork and responsibility, it will create future citizens that are kind and service minded who have learned perseverance with all of the experience they have gained by participating in the gardening club. I hope the excitement and visible results of our gardens will give our students at Drew an increased sense of pride. What I am most excited about is the beatification transformation our campus will undergo and the pride our kids will exhibit seeing all their hard work and dedication grow before their eyes.