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Chicken Grant

Page history last edited by kay hones 4 years, 4 months ago

Chicken Supplies

 

Students take “life skills” classes each week learning gardening, cooking, budgeting, carpentry, art, music & other projects. The garden has student volunteers working before & after school. Some students also help during vacation time. Students grow food plants, build bird houses & safe bee habitats. Last year students began cooking healthy breakfasts & our science teacher brought eggs from his hens. Everyday there would be a line out the door for egg sandwiches!!

 

Garden is a great favorite with students who range from grade 7-12. Most students have been in juvenile facilities & have little or no experience with gardening. Chickens will be a whole new experience & students are very interesting in raising little chicks, caring for the hens & using the eggs for yummy egg sandwiches!

 

Students will learn about raising urban chickens & being responsible for them including feeding, cleaning their home & making sure their coop is in a safe place.  Students are already cooking with eggs each week and now they will learn much more about eggs & chickens. For most this will be a first experience.

 

Students at Civic Center Secondary come from all over the city. The school is a block form city hall. Our garden consists of several raised beds next to a parking lot.  Over the last year students have made bird feeders & scarecrows from recycled materials & some bee catchers as part of a university study. This project will give them another experience with live creatures. This will be a great service learning project for students.

Our teens work in the garden before and after school.  They are eager to try growing food plants for class cooking.  Students take “life skills” classes each week learning gardening, cooking, budgeting, carpentry, art, music & other projects.

 

Also students want to grow plants that attract birds, butterflies and bees.  Last year they create bird houses from recycled materials & bee safe areas.  (We had speakers come talk to the classes about endangered bees.) They are eager to plant "butterfly" bushes to encourage butterflies to come to the garden, too. The garden is 6 raised beds located between to staff parking lots and in front of the bungalow where teens go to get work permits.

In the garden a local naturalist & artist, John Muir Laws worked with the students to create nature journals. He emphasized how important it is to observe nature and taught students some basic drawing techniques.  Our teens were very interested. In fact they wanted to stay in the garden past the program time & continue working in their nature journals.

 

Our school serves students in grades 7 through 12 and is located one block from City Hall. Students live in many areas of the city. For these most at-risk students, with habitual truancy, significant behavior issues and histories of suspension and expulsion, the goal is to change behavior so that these students will stay in school and earn enough credits to graduate.

 

In the garden, teens find a space that provides quiet work time, occasionally building projects AND the wonder of seeing things grow that most have not ever experienced.

Students are able to work in the garden everyday.  Some days they have been busy clearing & composting plant matter.  Other times they will build a variety of structures like a bench, some irrigation systems and bird houses.  Students collect a variety of recycled materials for starter planters and bird houses. Some students come early or stay after school to work in the garden.

The garden is part of our STEAM curriculum for all students.  Students work hard to recycle materials, especially for when they want to start seeds before replanting in the garden. Teen have built bird houses from a variety of recycled materials, too.

 

Several students have created a “native plants” section in one raised bed to attract birds, bees & butterflies.  They have studied some of the native plants of this area & selected some of them for the native plant section.

Students also are eager to grow food plants that they can use in class cooking and develop healthy habits to share with family, at group homes and friends.

Students have planted seeds in starter containers & shared with the neighborhood elementary school.  They also created bird houses for the school.  They hope to continue these projects this year.

Some students have been researching recipes from many cultures & they hope to cook these recipes after they grow some of the ingredients. They will create recipe videos to share step by step instructions. They will also write a short  illustrated cookbook for their families &  elementary students. We have monthly community breakfast programs & students will share their garden adventures at some spring meetings.

 

Mr. Kirk is the science teacher & has coordinated the garden program for several years.  He works with the students in coming up with new & innovated ideas for gardening.  They hope to create some living plant walls!!

 

Our school building also houses the district Pupil Services Department and the IT Department. We invite them to our monthly community breakfast events and during school holidays & from mid-June to mid-August several of these employees volunteer to water & care for the garden. 

 

We have 6 raised beds located in between two parking lots in the center of a large urban area.

The total space is approximately 40 x 40 feet.

We have some irrigation. We have compost bins.

 

Students are growing food plants and some native plants for birds, butterflies & bees.  Students are researching & selecting plants that do well in our specific climate.  They also discuss & decide on which plants will be able to grow in the space we have.  We are researching & discussing trying an indigenous method of growing several plants together in one space. We hope to add a green house.

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