I love talking with folks when I check out Providential Gardener Calendar events. There's always something new to learn. On Sunday, when I was at the Urban Greens West End Garden Tour, I heard about an 8-minute film made by Ilana Friedman while she was a student at Brown four years ago called "Inch by Inch: Providence Youth Gardens for Change." It shows how teachers can implement gardening programs in schools:
...Lessons emerge organically as garden settings help students address issues specific to their school. Building academic skills through hands-on learning, students also grow healthy food, develop literacy in a bilingual setting, make public art, and bridge the deaf and hearing communities. This video motivates educators to get growing with their youth.
It strikes me that this is a good Fourth of July story: about taking charge of the urban environment and developing self-sufficiency ~ and personal independence. Yet how interdependent we are on those who teach us and on those enabling organizations like Southside Community Land Trust, which continues to develop school gardens in Providence.
You can see this film right now on Media That Matters, a site worth exploring in itself. Read the story about the film for more details. Four Providence schools are featured: Community Prep and their Freedom Garden, Flynn Elementary, City Arts!, and the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.
One more thing: Stu Nunnery (Rhode Island Farmways) and many other people involved in The Children's Garden Network are hard at work on the Garden at Every School in Rhode Island by 2010 project. I have written about that program in other posts, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more from them in the coming school year. But for now, back to the parades and fireworks.
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