A program that combines hands-on growing and building with math and other skills that need to be taught at school has been recognized as an Exemplary Practice by the Board of Trustees at Rocky View Schools.  

Three teachers who are involved in the Growing Futures program at George McDougall High School in Airdrie presented on the program recently at the board's first meeting of the year.  Ken Melton, Jeff Casey and Kelsey Payne explained to the trustees how the program works.

Melton says, "The program allows students an opportunity to go from seed to finished product, and in this case our finished product is planters.  The students are with one teacher, Mr. Casey, are doing seed germination, growing techniques, what are we going to transplant them into.  What I do with the second part of the semester is, from scratch lumber, students are building a variety of planter boxes and we use those planter boxes with the seedlings they've started and we do planter box sales.  It's allowing students to use that real-world application of what they've done in math, or social, or science to apply it to Growing Futures, as we call it."

Melton, a construction teacher at the school, says the students gain entrepreneurial skills by selling the boxes to customers, thereby gaining social interaction skills.  They also talk about cost analysis involving material costs, plant costs, and labour costs.  By putting all of those things together, students learn that they can do a small business and where they could go with their skills.

Casey, who teaches Japanese Horticulture, says the greatest impact he's seen on the students in the program is in seeing something grow for the first time.  

"They might have done something like this in grade four, like with bean seeds or something like that, but they actually get to see it go all the way through to harvest.  The kids and their excitement of coming in and checking.  They don't even say anything like, 'we want to go downstairs and check out plants right now.'  They're enthusiastic about their learning."

For Payne who works in Learning Support at George McDougall says the program has been invaluable in helping students stay in school who otherwise might have dropped out.

"Before we had horticulture with our K and E (Knowledge and Employability) Program I had lots of kids that didn't come to school or would show up for the last 10 minutes and they'd kind of roll in and come and put their heads down.  Making this engaging program for them made them come to school.  They came on time and they came in wanting to do something which took away the fight for me to get them to do anything.  I can think of three that graduated just last year that wouldn't have made it past grade nine or ten if it hadn't been for something like this that got them to come to school."

According to Melton, about 45 students were involved in the Growing Futures program last school year but he is confident those numbers will increase for the four-year-old program. 

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