Students collecting the browns!

These last 4 months have been a great start to our Budlong Elementary Gardening, Composting and Pollinator Project! The funding helped us to get up and running. We collected and purchased the tools, identified our browns and greens collection bins and composting bin. We planted our gardens, had meetings, engaged the Budlong teachers, administrators, and students. in the midst of COVID this was particularly important as a way to bring the Budlong School community together whether remotely via zoom calls, or masked in the garden. The funding and resources that Change X provided were essential to initiating the project. We have been able to learn about the importance of composting, we have learned how we as a school community can take part in composting, we have successfully socialized the idea of the importance of composting throughout the school community. Next year we hope to build upon what we have learned and use the resources we have collected to take it to the next level. We hope the teachers will be able to incorporate more composting material into their lesson plans, and that specific classrooms will take turns collecting compostable materials for the composting project. Thank you for your support and funding!

Here are a few of the quotes from the Budlong teachers:

Danielle Richmond, Special Ed/Diverse Learning
“The Budlong garden was transformational. I would like to see Budlong strengthen its school community by developing a community compost drop off.”

Jay Heidikat, Fifth Grade STEM
“The Budlong garden was a great learning opportunity! We were able to align it with science lessons including the plant life cycle and properties of matter. The compost was fun and many teachers and families came to pick some up for their home gardens. Next year we can start processing our own.”

Christina Tovar, Third Grade
“The Learning Garden at Budlong has had such a positive impact on our students. Students had a chance to work together to plant various plants and learn about the best ways to maintain their growth. We started talking about food waste and composting and plan to do it in our classroom in the fall.”

As part of our kickoff meeting outcome and team feedback gathered, we are moving forward to use our grant resources to collect tools, a storage shed, composting bin, etc. at Budlong School. We’ve had many helpers! Thank you!

One of our third grade classrooms is helping us build and plant the nasturtium tee pee. Ms Tovar and Mr Heidikat have a lesson that they are incorporating into this outdoor project.

We have had some challenges with our water source. The sources on the north side of the building have been turned off and can't be turned back on. The Vice Principal and school engineers are working with us to split the cost and labor of routing a hose for our drip line system over a door, onto the roof and down into our main manifold crate. There was also concern that the set up would be vandalized so we found a brick colored hose that will blend into the building and look permanently affixed. We are hoping to have water by May 6th and plant all our seedlings by May 15th.

Action Plan:
-Explore Resources for school gardening and composting
-Share the presentations with teachers, school volunteers
-Measure level of interest and time commitment resources for incorporating composting into the curriculum
-Capture a list of priorities from the teachers and admin
-Start plan in late April
-Gather feedback by April 20
-Keep CPS and City COVID safety measures in place at all times

Photo from initial Zoom Meeting

Can't wait to see this come to life. Thanks Jennifer!