GMS students build ‘green’ classroom
GLENVAR – It was a cold and blustery day, when students in Beth Sellers’ science classes and Ann Fajardo and Mark Rohrback’s eighth-grade Green Math classes worked together to build a greenhouse behind the school.
The project is part of the Green Schools Challenge. Students spent months planning and preparing to build the high hoop house.
Glenvar Middle Green Math students in the almost-completed hoop house they built April 5. From left, they are Mattie Gillespie, Jessica Colley, Zack Alls, Jordan Ritter, Kayla Kolb and teacher Ann Fajardo. GMS photo
Architect Brenda Landes with CR Architecture and Design talked with students about different types of greenhouses and which would be the best use with the $5,000 Principal Julie Myers obtained from school capitol projects funds.
They decided on the high hoop house, which at 24-feet-by-48 feet is big enough for all the science classes to gather around raised planting beds. It is different from a traditional greenhouse in that it relies on the sun’s warmth to heat the house on cold days, and utilizes the prevailing wind direction behind the school and near the auxiliary gym to cool it on hot days, Sellers explained.
In the structure they constructed April 5, science students plan to grow cold-hardy plants such as lettuces, spinach, radishes and other salad greens – and they won’t have to worry about the weather during early spring, as well as critters who love greens even more than people do.
Eighth-grade Green Math students also constructed two cold frames where students started carrots and beet seeds while the weather was unseasonably cold.
Those went into the outdoor raised beds the science students are using this summer. Next fall, they are looking forward to planting fall crops in the greenhouse, Sellers said.
“The salad greens are being grown in the existing raised beds, and we have a bumper crop!” added Sellers, who said her science classes plan to have a salad party in early June to feed all of her sixth-grade students, as well as Fajardo and Rohrback’s Green Math students.
“That will be our small ‘thank you’ to then,” she added.
Green Math student Chelsea Gardner explained their class designed the high hoop house because they wanted “to help Mrs. Sellers have a better area, and a big enough space.”
She added that the hoop house would be “a big enough area for kids to sit.”
Classmate Zeke Skaggs and other students in eighth-grade Green Math classes built some of the frames for the raised planting beds like those that will go into the greenhouse.
Chelsea explained they also plan to have taller raised beds so students in wheel chairs can reach them to plant and harvest.
With a some adult help and supervision, students built the hoop house in a little more than a school day. It doesn’t need to be heated, and the plastic fabric cloth on the sides can be raised up from the ground on warm days to provide ventilation.
There’s room for eight 4-foot-by-4-foot raised beds and space for students to walk around them, as well as room for potting benches.
The hoop house evolved from the gardening project one of Sellers’ sixth-grade science classes did in raised beds they built on a traffic island in the school’s parking lot two years ago. Last year, Sellers obtained a small grant and expanded the garden science project to involve all her science classes.
Disaster struck last winter when repeated deep snows smashed protective critter cages over the outdoor beds, and buried cold-hardy salad greens under almost 2 feet of snow for weeks.
And so, Sellers, Fajardo and Rohrback pooled their classes’ talents to plan and construct the more protected hoop house.
Teachers and students read and studied about hoop houses. Virginia Tech Extension Agent Sheri Dorn gave them advice and recommended they purchase a kit hoop house.
Along the way, students determined if the flexible steel hoops of the high tunnel house were no more than 4 feet apart, the greenhouse should be able to withstand less than a foot of snow.
The school ordered a $3,700 greenhouse kit from Puckett Greenhouses, and the Patrick County company offered to send two employees to assist when students and adults put the hoop house together.
Before the April 5 construction, Kayla Kolb explained to a visitor how she and other students used graph paper they taped together to plot out dimensions for the gravel pad they would need, and for the hoop house while they were planning it and what would go inside.
Jordan Ritter added, “We also have a water line to the greenhouse so students won’t have to haul water.”
Chelsea and other students who didn’t have much experience using tools before the project also got a kick out of learning how to do that.
“I don’t build things,” said Chelsea, who has five brothers. “It’s cool to use tools like screwdrivers.”
Student Zack Alls is experienced using tools, and could help others. “I like to build stuff,” he said.
Students were divided into specific work groups so each knew what he or she would do. Their teachers, along with parent volunteer Kenny Anderson and Assistant Principal Jim Bradshaw, pitched in.
Students used post hole diggers, held hoops, learned how to do slip knots to tie on plastic fabric side curtains that can be raised up to allow air flow. That first day, adults stayed until 7 p.m.
The next day students finished the rest of the construction. And they were tired but excited when the hoop house was finished.
“All the kids in our whole building are going to be able to benefit from the hoop house,” said Bradshaw.
Fajardo captured the students’ cooperative actions in a video that can be seen at http://gmsgreenmath.wikispaces.com/Hoophouse+progress
Sellers’ Glenvar Garden project has its own site: http://glenvargarden.blogspot.com.
Thank you for a wonderful article! I love how you included so many of our kids’ voices and credited all the people who helped us along the way!
Ann