Palatine's Jane Addams teachers to plant organic garden

Third grade teachers at Jane Addams School are ready to see just how green their thumbs can get.

The group recently attended a workshop titled Exploring School Gardens. This workshop helped the teachers prepare themselves for the introduction of an organic garden at Jane Addams.

"School gardens connect students to their schools by developing within them a sense of pride and ownership, which, in turn, improves their attitudes toward school," said Nancy Froy, a third grade teacher at Jane Addams. "School gardens also promote good nutrition and healthy lifestyles, and they foster an increased awareness of environmental issues."

The teachers, along with principal David Morris, assistant principal Monica Petersen, School Nutrition Services director Bobbie Desprat, and School Nutrition Services assistant director Kristin Voigts, will begin setting up the garden this summer so it will be ready when incoming third grade students return to school in August.

Along with the garden, Jane Addams' third graders will participate in a program titled Fresh from the Farm. This unique curriculum provides students experiential learning opportunities about such themes as the environment, our food system, and nutrition and health. Each month, students will taste various fruits and vegetables; learn when, where, and how they are grown; identify their unique traits; and find out what nutrients and health benefits they provide.

"We are real excited to start this project at Jane Addams," said Annette Mongoven, a third grade teacher at Jane Addams. "This just seemed the logical next step after this year's fruit and vegetable tasting program."

During the Exploring School Gardens workshop, teachers gained hands-on experience at composting and planting. However, they also learned the positive benefits gardening can have for children, and how they can tie gardening activities to the state learning standards. Students will be able to connect the garden to expository and narrative writing projects, and they will be able to use the garden for math activities in which they calculate its area and perimeter or

collect and graph data about the various plants that will grow within it. They will explore "know and apply" science concepts that describe how living things interact with each other and with their environment, and, of course, cover topics on health and nutrition.

So the school's new organic garden will not only allow Jane Addams' third grade students to reap the benefits of healthy eating; it will also assist teachers in covering state standards in these academic areas.

"All of the time we spent learning about organic gardening during in-service workshops and actually getting dirty while working on a real organic farm truly revealed to us the importance of this initiative," Froy said. "It showed us the importance of bringing this garden to Jane Addams."

For more information, contact Jane Addams School Principal David Morris at (847) 963-5000 or morrisd1@ccsd15.net