Fresh Food Requires Fresh Thinking: Growing Your Own Foods
My students need 1 walk-in greenhouse they can assemble and use to experiment with organic and genetically modified seeds.
$990 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
Welcome to our world of the disabled. We are in high school. Some of us are in wheelchairs, but we like to move. Some of us are slow, but we want to learn. Some of us like to smell, see colors and use what senses we can. Some of us use one hand. Some of us are blind. But we like our school.
We have 61 disabled students in a public high school and they are all greatly interested in food and what's healthy and what's junk.
We teach the importance of freshness and nutrition. We shop and go into the community 4 times a week and cook meals once a week.
Our high school serves about 1,800 students. The disabled students have planted a raised bed garden with vegetables for two years now and found that late snow and frost killed off our seedlings. Our planting zone is somewhat tricky. The students now want to grow plants throughout the spring, summer and fall in a greenhouse. Then they would be able to harvest and prepare their foods really, really fresh.
We have a wonderful large fenced courtyard attached to our classrooms. There is a 10'x10' student erected yellow shed for garden tools, 2 crab apple trees, perennials and student built picnic tables and sturdy wooden benches for those of us who must sit and watch. The students use the courtyard every nice day they can.
My Project
I am requesting 1 walk-in greenhouse they can assemble and use to experiment with organic and genetically modified seeds. I want to show my students how to re-use materials to reduce waste. I will teach them "square foot gardening" and the "lasagna method" of using used newspapers and stones to mulch around seedlings to save watering and to prevent weeds.
When these same students return in the fall they will harvest, clean, cook and find healthy recipes they can make. Our school emphasizes that life is a vocation and students must always think about their future.
Our students will learn about genetics, agricultural science, the importance of unpolluted soils and water in gardens. They will be recycling food tins from our cafeteria for containers, using wooden shelf units they will make, and re-purpose containers they collect for fertilizers, seeds and storage. They will learn about humane pest control as we have an active chipmunk population in our courtyard.
I want the students to appreciate the flavor of fresh produce they can grow themselves.
My hope is that my students will plant their own gardens when they leave school and will pass on their passion of growing fresh food to others.
In addition, they will know that there are alternatives to the "fast food" circuit of eating. I hope they will appreciate tastes and flavors and enjoy savoring home-grown edibles that can be turned into delicious, healthy dishes. Not everything in life is a handout, we must work.
The students are enthused; we welcome your help with our project!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. B. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
