In classrooms across America, most children start learning about gardening by sprouting seeds in a cup. For fifth-grade teacher Chris McAuliffe, that wasn't enough. He's growing an entire vegetable garden in his classroom.
Rebecca's Garden travels to Oxbow Community School in White Lake, Mich., to check it out.
"When we started our gardening unit, at first I was just going to do something simple—planting some beans and lettuce or growing grass on a sponge," says McAuliffe. "In January we decided to plant a garden inside with the goal of growing enough vegetables to eat at a cookout."
McAuliffe has a reputation for teaching outside of the box, especially when it comes to science. He recently won two prestigious awards for his innovative techniques. "I didn't even enjoy science in school. I always felt it was something that you read about in a book and I didn't get it. I always felt inadequate when trying to learn the concepts. So when I started teaching science, I didn't want it to be like that for my students. I wanted science to be something you live. Because of that, we look over the lessons and try to think of ways to make them hands-on."
His classroom is evidence of that. There's a living coral reef that the class created when they studied oceanography, rockets and boats the students made out of old VCR parts when they learned about the laws of motion, and the table the kids used in a robotics competition. Chris decided to use this table as the base for the garden.
How Their Garden Grew
"We went online as a class to find out how to do this, and every website we found said you couldn't grow a garden inside. They said we couldn't get vegetables. From what we read, no one could grow vegetables to completion indoors so we kind of took that as a challenge." McAuliffe lined the table with plastic and filled it with 500 pounds of topsoil. Next he replaced the fluorescent lights with grow lights.
Each student has his own grid with plants. "The kids did research on what they were growing. They had to find out how much water and fertilizer to apply and how much light each plant needed. Once the grids were planted, sprouts came up right away, but the students soon discovered there is more to gardening than just throwing a few seeds in the ground. We started to notice that the plants in the table corners weren't growing. We soon realized that it wasn't warm enough so we added the heat bulbs on the ends which worked much better. We put the lights on timers."
Lack of light wasn't the only problem. Chris and his students bought a fertilizer tester and realized that the fertilizer levels were low. They started testing each grid and adding fertilizers, then they got the idea to put in night crawlers (worms) to help aerate the soil. But then the kids noticed something else was crawling around in the dirt—bugs! They solved that problem by setting toads loose in the classroom. The toads eat the bugs, and Chris hasn't had to feed the toads since January.
"I almost didn't want to put the worms in there. I felt grossed out by it, but it was fun," says McAuliffe. "I thought it was really interesting when we put the toads in there. It made complete sense—a complete ecosystem."
Soon flowers started to appear, but that led to yet another challenge. The garden was indoors, so how would the plants get pollinated? Once again, the students did research and came up with an answer. They used paintbrushes to pollinate the flowers.
"We go from flower to flower. You keep going back and forth from different flowers in your grid and hope that it works. That's basically what you do to pollinate."
Finally, all their hard work paid off. Vegetables started growing. The lettuce was like the first to pop up, and they had lots of it.
Originally, Chris just planned on letting the garden die out, but the kids grew so attached to it, they decided to move it outdoors and let it continue to grow throughout the summer. The kids tilled the soil, dug the holes for the posts and built a fence. Sprinklers on timers kept the garden watered, and families who live nearby were invited to enjoy the cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and squash.
What the Students Learned
"I never knew that radishes seeded, and I never knew about flowers or how long they take to grow," says one student. "I never really knew anything about gardening until fifth grade."
"We had to find out the flower stuff and check the fertilizer and pH," says a second student. "We had to see how much the plants would be spaced apart—an inch and a half and it had to be an inch and a half."
"I learned that flowers are delicate little things," says another student. "And I really like getting my hands dirty!"
What Chris Gets From the Garden
"Visitors ask me questions about the garden and, even before I can answer, the kids jump in," he says. "It's a great feeling to know that you've given them the skills to be confident to handle the situation. Science isn't terrifying to them. It's just a part of their lives. It was so much fun and the kids can say, 'Yeah, we grew a garden indoors.' Not many people can't say that."
That's just one of the many valuable lessons you can learn from gardening and from a teacher who is making a real difference in the lives of his students.
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