The Village
Allegheny Mountain Institute
Staunton City Schools
​Allegheny Mountain Institute was a proud partner of Staunton City Schools (SCS). The garden at Bessie Weller Elementary School was maintained by an AMI Fellow starting in January 2020. This Garden Coordinator was responsible for planting, harvesting, and maintaining the courtyard garden, and working with teachers and administration to expand the curriculum connections and garden content. The meaningful partnership between AMI and SCS helped foster real change in our communities through growing food and building community, which shapes our youth into environmental stewards the world needs.
The Learning Courtyard Garden at Bessie Weller was a space for students to engage in garden-based experiential learning activities to support their education outside of the classroom. Through captivating, hands-on encounters in the garden, students were empowered with an understanding of how to grow food and make healthy life choices. Environment-based education emphasized an interdisciplinary approach to learning experiences and gave students opportunities to engage in deeper understanding, investigation, and decision-making skills. The garden provided plenty of opportunities to explore Virginia's 5 C's in relation to becoming stewards of the Earth and responsible citizens in our communities: students practiced critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creative thinking, and citizenship skills.
The school garden at Bessie grew annual vegetables, herbs, and perennial pollinator plants and was a certified Monarch Waystation! The 300 pounds of food grown during the 2020 season was distributed to local food pantries throughout Staunton, gifted to teachers and staff, and used for taste tests with students.
Students participated in garden programming as it corresponded to the curriculum for their grade level with lesson plans from the garden coordinator. The garden coordinator distributed seasonal activity kits to teachers to help them connect their planned content to what's happening in the garden. There were endless curriculum connections and extensions between the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning and the ecosystem growing outside on school grounds! Each grade level had identified specific supporting units to help deepen the current curriculum:
Kindergarten: Seeds, Plants, Five Senses
Grade 1: Life Cycle of a Plant
Grade 2: Pollinator Life Cycle, Habitats, and Monarch Migration
Grade 3: Soil and Decomposition and Water Cycle
Grade 4: Three Sisters Planting and Watershed Health
Grade 5: Compost and Recycling