Grant helps gardening project spring to life

Parsa+Farhani-Monfared%2C+Atiyyat+Abdel-Halim%2C+and+Nancy+Dow+in+the+composting+area%2C+preparing+for+the+winter+months.

Parsa Farhani-Monfared, Atiyyat Abdel-Halim, and Nancy Dow in the composting area, preparing for the winter months.

Raymond Fox, a special education teacher, has recently obtained grant money for a gardening project at Watertown High School. This grant will help special-needs students with life and vocational skills that they will need to have for their post-high school years.

The money was secured through a proposal that was written by Fox, and will bring together educators, local businesses, and students in a cooperative learning environment. NAME OUR GARDEN Contest

The project was designed from the ground up to incorporate the departments that educators felt were best suited to carry out the gardening project, and that would put the students in a setting that would allow for equal measures of fun and learning.

Some individuals in the Watertown community have already contributed materials at the behest of principal Shirley Lundberg, and the project is expected to begin in earnest in the spring.

F.D. Sterritt, a Watertown-based lumber company, has graciously agreed to donate lumber; the Massachusetts Horticultural Society has agreed to help the students learn to garden; and Deborah Johnson, the WHS foods teacher, has volunteered to teach the students how to prepare what they have grown.

Students will have the opportunity to learn how to create and follow schedules, work together in groups, learn about the seed-to-food process, and hopefully increase their measure of independence.

The project will engage the students at Watertown High in an environment in which they may have had no prior experience, and will conceivably reinvigorate the unused areas of the school today.

–Feb. 25, 2014–