STEAM Teacher Stephanie Coxwell and Food Corps resident Hope Jarrard received a $500 grant for the Midway Hill Academy’s (MHA) garden, after winning a video contest hosted by Kidsgardening.org.
Coxwell uses the garden to teach a variety of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) lessons and host activities for her students to be involved in.
Jarrad assists Coxwell in these endeavors and is also in charge of the school’s gardening club. For about two years, Coxwell visited Kidsgardening.org to find grants and lessons to be used in connection with the garden.
“I began using Kidsgardening to find grants for the garden. At the time funding was limited to whatever I had available to my STEAM classroom so it was a helpful resource,” said Coxwell.
“When Hope joined us last year, I passed this resource to her to use for lessons and grant opportunities as well. It’s a great resource for monthly activities, grants, national activities, et cetera.”
According to Coxwell, the garden is used on a daily to weekly basis with a focus on STEAM activities. In addition, Jarrad stated the garden is also used for a variety of social and emotional learning in various classes and with the school counselor. Third through fifth-grade students interact with the garden through these various methods.
“My focus is using science and math in the garden. For example, my students are currently working on a pollinator project,” said Coxwell.
Jarrad added, “Our school counselor has started to use the garden to help regulate emotions and it’s becoming integrated into social and emotional learning. Other classrooms use the garden as an award or as an extension to their lessons and the garden club incorporates reading, math, and more into its activities.”
However, the idea behind their winning video, “Growing Together,” for the contest was inspired by a project Coxwell led previously.
It was a STEAM project centered on repurposing water bottles into hydroponic planters, a technique to grow plants using a water-based nutrient solution rather than soil.
Students and teachers donated bottles, and Coxwell saved them for an entire year so all students at MHA could start their own garden at home. Each student was able to choose between growing flowers or vegetables. However, being able to add their own nutrients, as they do at the hydroponics station in Coxwell’s classroom, is inaccessible at home and costly so students’ home planters used soil.
“One of the first third-grade units is recycling and looking at human waste, so I asked teachers and students to recycle their water bottles to create these planters.
Originally it was going to be a third-grade project but other grades showed interest, so we waited for a year so that all students could make a planter and take it home,” said Coxwell. “That next year, HOPE led the activity at first with the Garden Club and I filtered it over into my regular classrooms.
And since Garden Club members started earlier in the year, they were then able to teach other students.”
When Jarrad stumbled across the contest online, she and Coxwell decided to create an instructional video on how to create these hydroponic planters with recyclable materials. “Growing Together” starred Garden Club members Janorick and TaRenzzo teaching how to make the planters and was produced by Jarrad.
“I chose Janorick and TaRenzoo because they work well together and they have worked in similar roles as supervisors or teachers,” said Jarrad.
“We practiced once before filming but it honestly only took about 30 minutes to create the video. They were naturals with it.”
The goals behind this project and the video were to teach students how to provide for themselves, learn how to grow food naturally and be mindful of materials.
“Not everyone has a home garden, so this teaches them a skill to provide for themselves and to learn to grow food without pesticides or other harmful chemicals,” said Coxwell. Jarrad added, “When kids are involved with growing their own food, they are more excited about trying healthier food and new food.”
After being announced as one of the first-place winners, MHA received a $500 grant for the garden, sets of kids gardening gloves, and a variety of assorted seeds.
According to Coxwell and Jarrad, the grant money was used to purchase a shed that will house garden-related items that are taking over the STEAM lab in Coxwell’s classroom. The leftover money, after the shed, may be used to either upgrade the irrigation system in the garden or to create a sensory garden.