In order to get our hands in the dirt, we need to bring it into the classroom! We plan to set up indoor vertical gardens in 5 science classrooms, serving a total of more than 650 students.
Leader
Marissa Maggio
Location
345 Chambers Street NY, NY 10282
Stuyvesant High School is a big urban school in a 10-story building in the downtown Tribeca neighborhood of NYC, with no green space of its own. So we want to bring the green spaces inside. We are hoping to brighten some of the biolgy and environmental science classrooms with indoor gardens. Students will nurture the plants as they learn!
I would like to grow plants inside a few Stuyvesant science classrooms, to bring the environment to us! My students and I look forward to growing veggies that we can harvest and eat, as well as ornamental plants to green our classrooms. We will also integrate the plants in our science curriculum. We are an urban school so my environmental science students need to get experience growing things!
The steps are simple. Assemble the grow towers. Plant the seeds. Create a schedule for watering and care among the students. Watch the plants grow!! Such a simple plan, but we need your help to get it up and running!
The students will grow veggies to eat during lunch in the cafeteria and ornamental plants that will brighten our classrooms. I look forward to seeing students reap the incalculable benefits that hands-on gardening activities can bring. My students will both demonstrate the joys of gardening to others in the school and get hands-on experience themselves. We will also integrate planting activities into our curriculum, using it to demonstrate and explore concepts like evapotranspiration, photosynthesis and more. The nutirition classes will have a source of fresh herbs and vegetables for their cooking assignments as well!
There are so many reasons to bring plants into the classroom. They create more oxygen. They are inspiring to look at. They give students the experience of growing, which includes patience, respect for nature, and scientific research opportunities. They will teach us about crucial parts of our environmental science curriculum. We can eat the veggies! Many of the kids are first generation, low-income kids whose first language may be Bangladeshi, Chinese or Russian, and who never had the chance to plant a garden. Please, help us to get started!
I teach a class called Urban Ecology and advise the Environmental Club which is full of students who are smart, ambitious, and caring high schoolers in grades 9-12. In my class and with the club we take the curriculum out into the real world. We love to go on field trips and we work on making the school greener through campaigns like e-waste recycling. My students and I can’t wait to get started with our indoor gardens once we raise the funds.
