Gladstone's got a greenhouse in need

By Jen Cowart
Posted 10/26/16

Urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city, and it's a relatively new movement aimed in part at helping to end hunger. First Lady Michelle Obama has done it by

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Gladstone's got a greenhouse in need

Posted

Urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city, and it’s a relatively new movement aimed in part at helping to end hunger.

First Lady Michelle Obama has done it by growing her Kitchen Garden in her urban backyard at the White House, and Hugh B. Bain Middle School has done it with its Green Thumb Club and community garden. Now, Gladstone Elementary School wants to do it, too.

Ayana Crichton and her after school Kidventure crew are hoping help achieve their goal. Crichton is the state ambassador for the Afterschool Alliance and the program director for Expanded Learning for Cranston Public Schools. Her Bain , Kidventure, and Camp XL programs are popular, hands-on, experiential learning offerings that take place both after school and in the summertime. The programs are student-led, and Crichton, along with her site coordinators and staff, work hard to connect their activities and learning after school to what they are doing in school, as well as to create a home and school connection.

Through their urban gardening initiatives, which are still in their early seedling stages, Crichton believes they have accomplished all of those things, and she hopes the programs will continue to blossom with the help of the local community.

“I wanted to do a garden at the schools because where I worked formerly, in Norwich, Connecticut, we had them there and they were such a great learning tool for our students,” Crichton said. “The students were working one-on-one with seeds and plants in the garden and it supplemented the learning about growing and planting and the life cycle of seed to plant that they were doing in the classrooms.”

The students in the Kidventure program were asked to create miniature floor plans of what they would want their gardens to look like, a task that could have been challenging in the multi-grade after school program, but that instead produced a wide range of opportunities for staff members to take the students further in their learning.

“The younger students drew their floor plans, some drew them from overhead, some drew them in a blocked format showing how each section of the greenhouse could look, and each one was different,” she said. “In the older grades we have the opportunity to use technology and let the students scale their drawings and really learn how to design a garden.”

In order to further connect the students’ learning, Crichton and her colleagues allowed the students to try out some of the foods that they would be growing and to have other hands-on experiences.

“They tried strawberries and tomatoes and beans,” she said. “There is no better way to grab and engage these students in their learning than by letting them actually taste the foods, and that can be done in all grades, K to eight. We also have a master gardener, Kim Pond, who used to come to us through grant funding, and then we lost that funding source. Now she comes to us out of the goodness of her heart and teaches the kids about worms and composting, and they absolutely love it. They especially love touching those worms.”

Connecting to the classroom is always the goal for the after school programming, and Crichton says that she has really seen the gardening initiatives bridging the gaps for students.

“In school they learn about growing a flower, and it’s a very long process, but oftentimes they don’t actually get to grow a flower, to see it from beginning to end,” she said. “Here we can grow flowers, talk about perennials, annuals, and seasons of flowers like mums in the fall and daffodils in the spring. The students have grown and sold daffodils in the Kidventure program. They have grown sunflowers and used the seeds they produced to replant them. Seed germination is in the school curriculum but they don’t truly understand it if they don’t see it, and then they understand it at their own individual levels.”

In a high-poverty neighborhood where English is usually a second language, Crichton and her staff have seen the universal nature of gardening and have watched as it has connected students together who normally would not be able to connect due to various barriers.

“There is something about being in a garden, working together and growing things as a team,” she said. “We are blessed to see these students working together, weeding the garden and seeing their excitement as things begin to grow. They’re literally growing plants and they are having fun and learning while they’re doing it. They are often sharing stories about their family members who might grow a particular variety of something the others have never seen or heard of before. It gives them the opportunity to connect the dots culturally, to talk and to socialize.”

At Bain, the community garden is in full swing, getting lots of support from several of the staff members there who have a love and passion for gardening, and from site coordinator Shane Becker, who is also an avid gardener. Crichton believes the students have benefited from working side-by-side as a team with staff members outside of the traditional classroom setting.

At Gladstone School the garden has had some challenges, which Crichton and her crew are always working to overcome. The program was able to use 21st Century Learning Funds along with a grant from state Rep. Charlene Lima to purchase an authentic, dome-shaped greenhouse for the grassy space adjacent to the school’s parking lot. The goal was to put up a greenhouse that would be long-lasting and be an outdoor classroom space during the school day and an outdoor learning space for the after school program as well.

The NEL/CPS Construction Career Academy in Cranston helped to create the space and install picnic tables there as well, so families from the school could come to the garden and work, as well as to eat at the tables. The picnic tables were purchased with a Fuel Up to Play 60 grant, and they also allowed for classroom teachers easily rotate students in groups in order to be working both inside and outside of the greenhouse at the same time, since approximately15 students can work inside at once.

“The students love the greenhouse, and many of the parents were volunteering their time to help out in the garden. It was all coming together. The problem that we are having is that the greenhouse is constantly being damaged and vandalized,” Crichton said. “This is an urban area, and we are right on the border of Providence. The area sees a lot of gang activity. At night and on the weekends, the panels are getting broken, there is graffiti being done, the door is getting broken and things are getting stolen. The kids are so passionate about their space and they have really taken a leadership role with it, but they’re devastated to come back to school and see the damage that is being done there when they’re gone.”

In an effort to make the area less appealing to vandals, the Kidventure staff has put up signs, only to have the signs damaged. They have worked to highlight the greenhouse and garden areas at PTO meetings and school events in the hopes of making the space more appealing to the community.

“We want everyone in the community to have ownership of this garden area, and to have everyone to help come together to make it safe,” she said. “The Cranston Police Department has been wonderful, trying to patrol the area during the times that they know are high activity times for vandals, but we need to try to create a system that works to protect this space. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get everyone together to work on a common goal. We are hoping that if more people know about this, they will come together and help us.”

In addition to replacing the door with one that would have a better lock, replenishing the missing items and replacing the broken greenhouse panels, Crichton is hoping to install a fence around the area to keep vandals out.

“We’d like to make this a less appealing space for vandals and a more appealing space for our community, for everyone to come together and help to make it safe,” she said. “I’d love to see an atmosphere similar to a community watch program, so that we can continue this program and to expand it further. We have the capacity to make this greenhouse and garden so much more than it is now. We have the ability to grow tropical plants such as oranges and lemons, the students could grow a salsa garden and make salsa, they could host a farmers market with the things they grow, they could make and sell lemonade with their lemons, and we can begin to feed our own community, to make a sustainable space. The possibilities are endless. We just need to keep the space safe, and that’s where we are looking for help. We hope to repair the existing damage now, and find solutions so that we can prevent further damage going forward.” 1

SEED CYCLE:

The sunflower garden outside of Gladstone School is just one example of the hands-on learning that takes place in the Kidventure after school program at Gladstone School. The students were able to connect what they had learned in school to the real-life planting and growing of sunflower seeds, and using the harvested seeds from their flowers to plant additional plants. (Herald photo by Jen Cowart) 2

A UNIQUE SPACE:

The Gladstone greenhouse is a geometric greenhouse that is dome-shaped and was purchased from a local Rhode Island retailer. The panels are often vandalized overnight and on weekends, and the staff struggles to keep up with the repair in order to keep the greenhouse gardening program going. (Herald photo by Jen Cowart) 3

INDOOR/OUTDOOR SPACE:

Thanks to help from the NEL/CPS Construction Career Academy, the greenhouse was coupled with an outdoor seating space. Vandalism of the greenhouse’s door, seen here, is a constant issue for the program, and the hope is to replace it with a better door with a better lock. (Herald photo by Jen Cowart) 4

CONNECTING WITH THE CLASSROOM:

The Kidventure after school program’s goal is always to connect the students’ classroom learning to their after school activities. The greenhouse gardening has helped students connect their learning in many areas. (Submitted photo) 5

PLAYING WITH WORMS:

Learning about composting is one of the students’ favorite activities because it involves a visit from Kim Pond, a master gardener who donates her time to the program to teach about the science of composting, and because they get to touch and play with the muddy, wriggly worms as they learn. (Submitted photo)

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here