Finding Safe Solutions

If you haven’t seen an episode of WGRO News, you are missing out. The weekly news broadcast was Janet Childress’s solution to making sure her remote learning students were kept up-to-date on the happenings in the gardens at A.T. Allen Elementary in Concord. Her tagline was “Bringing the gardens to you, when you can’t come to the gardens,” long, but catchy.

Cabarrus County Schools started back under Plan C in August, fully remote. During this time, the news videos bridged the students to the school garden, literally and figuratively sowing seeds that would be ready to nurture further when students physically returned to school. Having transitioned to Plan B in late October, safety protocols and social distancing strategies have allowed students to return to the garden. But WGRO continues to be an integrated educational opportunity. Janet developed a learning path in the Virtual GROW Lab Choice Board where face-to-face students can audition for a guest reporter spot. Talk about making lemons out of lemonade! 

Janet was also able to grow her garden support team during the pandemic. She reports, “We were very fortunate to have a bus driver, who is a certified Master Gardener, ask to be assigned to our school gardens during Plan C. She was able to assist with garden maintenance, mulching, and even started up a new hydroponic project for us.”

Some of the safety protocols put in place were: 

• Set up a triple-wash system for our tools so that multiple students can use them without cross-contamination. 
• Last year, ATA converted large raised beds to 2 ft. x 2 ft. beds. These were the foundation for the Share-A-Square program where two students were assigned to one square foot. This year, the students cannot work in pairs, but the small beds were spaced far enough apart that one student can be assigned per square foot.
• New color-coded painting and signage help students visualize their assigned space and remain safely socially distanced. 

The reassignment of the 2×2 beds led to a shortage of individual spaces for 4th and 5th graders, but in her usual fashion, Janet found solutions. Thanks to the hydroponic project, each 5th grader could grow their own hydroponic container and another set of larger beds could be rebuilt to allow appropriate distancing. As usual, solutions often come with challenges to be overcome; in this case, it was a lack of funds. She turned to crowdsourcing by hosting a Facebook Live, showing the community what they wanted to accomplish and simply asking for donations of miscellaneous containers and softscaping plants. Despite a most unusual year, the garden, and young minds, are growing!