Statement of Purpose

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Holleman Community Healing Garden

Our school’s home is in the exquisite Blue Ridge Mountains of Ashe County. The idea for the Holleman Community Healing Garden sprouted from our own students here, who have a deep felt, generational connection to the land. What amazes us about these students is their inherent sense of community. After experiencing isolation during COVID, the tragedies of Hurricane Helene, and the unexpected passing of a beloved school librarian, Kelly Holleman, our students learned that coming together is the path through adversity. When we first brainstormed the garden, the kids immediately suggested we redistribute produce to families in need through existing support networks at our school. Not only will the students learn how to grow food, but will also develop a servant mindset. We humbly ask for this grant to nurture our seedling’s natural interests that would open the window for them to grow into powerful community partners.

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Our project not only impacts our middle school students, but connects them to our high school career courses. Collaborating across schools would be a fountain of inspiration for students exploring potential career paths, as well as providing leadership opportunities and business skills for our high school students. Their generation will be responsible for continuing the traditional agricultural economy of the Appalachians, a tradition that seems harder to preserve with the passing years. Our community is one of determined tenacity as obstacles that plague our world can be especially prevalent in our rural areas. We have students whose families live in poverty, battle addiction, and experience food insecurity. The garden is named with the mission to nurture children so they can learn how to share that healing with the land they live on. By gaining an outdoor classroom, students will develop their sense of wonder at the natural world and self-confidence in their skills as environmental stewards.

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Through hands-on experience in planning, building, maintaining, and harvesting, students can connect classroom concepts to real world ecological literacy. Our lead teacher, Ms. Rodriguez, worked on a farm in Ashe County for several years and has the potential to connect our students with organizers from local environmental groups like Ashe County Agricultural Center, Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, and Keep Ashe Beautiful, should they find a calling in stewarding our natural world.

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More than anything, we hope this garden heals. Not only for the students who start it this year, but to create a place of community where generations of students can find refuge and peace in nature.

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Educational Outcomes Students will learn

●  Principles of organic gardening (i.e. environmental benefit, health benefit, sustainability, benefit of local food consumption)

●  Compost science and waste reduction

●  Teamwork, project planning, and applied mathematics for budgeting and building

●  Beneficial techniques to bring back to their own family farms and agricultural industries.

 

Standard Alignment to North Carolina Department of Public Instructions Standards

●  LS.6.1 Understand the structures, processes, and behaviors of plants that enable them to survive and reproduce.

●  ESS.7.2.1 Engaged in argument from evidence to explain that the good health of humans and environment requires: monitoring of atmosphere, maintaining air quality, and stewardship.

●  ESS.7.2.3 Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to explain the impacts on humans and mitigation strategies of potentially hazardous environmental factors and storms.

●  LS.8.1 Understand the hazards caused by agents of disease that affect living organisms.

●  LS.8.2 Understand how organisms interact with and respond to the biotic and abiotic factors in their environment.