New greenhouse to cultivate learning opportunities throughout the school year
Students will work hands-on growing produce to enjoy and share with others
A newly erected greenhouse behind the Decagon Building on the Rye Lake Lower Campus will be the focus of lessons throughout the school year in horticulture, healthy eating, and myriad work-based learning opportunities for students in the AIIM program.
Plans are in the works to use the greenhouse as a vocational learning station for students to grow, box and deliver fresh produce to classrooms on campus or for families to bring home. Students would hold various jobs, from planting, growing and tending to the produce and keeping the greenhouse clean.
At harvest time, students would package food boxes bearing student-designed labels for delivery or pickup. Students would also select produce for recipes to prepare in classrooms, closing the connection between nutrition and the origins of the food they eat.
Educators envision classrooms and families submitting orders for food boxes, not unlike popular food delivery services or the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model at many farmers markets.
“It’s all things they can see in their communities that their families already do,” Assistant Principal Nickolas Villano said.
The greenhouse enables instructional activity centered around the existing campus vegetable garden to continue year-round.
“It will provide students opportunities to perform different tasks throughout the school year,” Ms. Dolan said.
While the greenhouse will be utilized initially by students in the AIIM program, Ms. Dolan sees opportunities to include students in the campus’s TSP-I program.
Remaining work includes creating planting beds and workspaces inside the greenhouse. There will be shelving and hanging plants as well.
“I think it’s more tangible,” Ms. Dolan said. “It becomes more real for our kids. They get to bring something to life.”
“It takes it outside the classroom,” she added.
Use of the greenhouse will be on a rotating schedule set by the campus Garden Committee.
