Growing in Science: Helping English Language Learners with Mental Health

Funded Oct 1, 2024

We are excited to share our progress with you since our project has been funded!

At Edison High School, we are an entry point school for many immigrant families and students. Many of our classrooms have students who were born from all over the world; each student speaks multiple languages, while representing their home language, also. Our classrooms are incredibly diverse spaces. Along with that diversity, comes some home-sickness. Many students were uprooted from their homes, leaving behind a life full of love and hope.

This project is helping bring back some of that hope by giving our students the equipment to begin growing fruits and vegetables from their home countries. As a physics classroom, we are working on tying together the concepts of Biology and Physics in an energy production unit that focuses around the natural biological processes for energy production.

With the humidifier and grow light, we are able to propagate, and grow the fruits and vegetables students miss the most. One of the best things about the grow lights are that we can hang them throughout the classroom and then grow even MORE produce by putting our grow pots underneath. Living in minnesota where the day light is scarce, this grow light allows us an opportunity to grow produce even in the winter when there isn't much sunlight.

The humidifier helps us get plants going in the first place. The humidity in our school is a constant 25%, which is far to low for young plants. With the humidifier, we are able to get plants started healthily in a grow tent, and then after it has developed, we can slowly expose it to lower and lower humidity levels, until we finally transplant to our planter boxes in the classroom.

Thank you for your generous donation. This equipment will benefit students not just this year, but for many years to come providing us with amazing fruits and vegetables to eat while learning.”

With gratitude,

Mr. Beyendorff