My Students

Our first year of sustainability! What's the PERFECT "brown gold" compost recipe for our organic garden? We make LOTS of compost from the cafeteria, but we desperately need squiggly red worms, organic bone/blood meal, mulch & sea kelp. We'll mix it all together and end up with pure garden goodness!

We are a public, middle school (grades 4-6) in a rural community.

Our two hundred fourteen student demographics are 92% free/reduced lunch; 47% White, 47% Black, 4% Hispanic, 1% Asian & 1% Native American. The large organic vegetable and herb gardens are the result of a whole community sustainability project designed by the gifted students three years ago. Through this project, ALL our students learn the intrinsic value of philanthropy--the joy of giving from their hard work to those in need. They established a farmers market for the community because we have no local market and few families have access to fresh produce, much less organic produce. The students also take their community project to the next level by donating proceeds from their farmer's market to the local soup kitchen. Now, we are making the organic garden self-sustainable through large-scale, whole-school organic composting in the cafeteria! We have produced four large batches of compost and desperately need the remaining ingredients!

My Project

For this project I am requesting Planters Pride Miracle Mulch, Neptunes Harvest Kelp Meal, Miracle Gro Blood Meal, Potting Soil, Redworm, Espoma and Miracle Gro Bone Meal, and Magic Worm Food which will be used by my students in our garden. The sustainability project is a cross-curricular, cross-grade-level outdoor classroom challenging students in higher order thinking and problem solving skills. The garden teaches natural sciences, advanced mathematical skills, technological skills, language arts skills, social studies skills, health and consumer sciences, horticultural skills, philanthropy & entrepreneurship. The garden and composting educate the students in environmental stewardship and sustainable living, while they grow fresh produce free of pesticides, hormones, and chemicals. The students have weekly "Garden to Table" cooking activities with Master Gardeners. It provides the students with the knowledge and skills needed to live nutritionally healthy and environmentally sustainable lives. The students expanded their project into a Global Youth Service Day Festival, educating the whole community in reducing, reusing, and recycling for whole-community environmental sustainability and stewardship! Teach for the Planet!

Your donations will implement our large-scale composting and provide materials for whole-school experiments and hands-on discovery.

With your generous funding, outdoor classroom supplies will be purchased to produce our first full-garden batch of compost and the fall/winter harvest will provide fresh produce for the cafeteria. Part of environmental stewardship is becoming aware that organic waste is beneficial, and for our garden to become self-sustainable, composting is a crucial component!