GREENSBORO, N.C. — Kindergarten teacher Erin Kenny once famously said, "Children cannot bounce off the walls, if you take away the walls."
That sentiment is what sprouted the seeds a new garden project at Southern Guilford Elementary School in Greensboro, where children are getting out of the desk- to- chalkboard-setup and immersing themselves in nature every day.
"We had to put them in carefully with the right amount of space. Did we measure, or did we just guess?" second grade teacher Devana Snyder asked her second-grade students, as they worked to pick peas.
Snyder is one of many teachers whose students spend time working on the school's three outdoor garden beds. They are a concept of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and funded by grants from Home Depot, who provided $2,000, and the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, who chipped in an additional $250.
The PTA installed the gardens last fall, and now they are part of the school's classroom education year-round.
"It's so good to get out and get our hands dirty. We're a small rural school, and so it's just a really neat opportunity to give these kids lessons on how to plant and grow things, and we hope it'll stick with them the rest of their lives," said Southern Guilford parent, alumna and PTA member Katie Mitchell.
The students get to eat the food they grow in the garden, with produce ranging from peas to carrots to strawberries to pumpkins, depending on the season. The PTA's long-term goal is to keep the gardens growing year after year and get the whole southern Guilford community involved in supporting the project.
