DeWitt TSA Renovates MS GardensIn DeWitt Middle School’s Technology Engineering classroom, engineering, community service, communication skills, and natural hard work meet as students try to build their school into a better facility. At DeWitt, a distinguishing part of the curriculum is a focus on community-based learning. This manifests itself through DeWitt’s gardens, in which students learn about science and teamwork, and provide food for the school’s cafeteria. Members of the school’s Technology Student Association (TSA) are renovating and improving the garden to help their community while preparing for a national TSA competition. For the event Construction Challenge, students are required to “fulfill a community need related to construction.” Students are doing this by building much-needed new hardening-off tables and planters for the garden. The idea for the project came from Ms. Patricia Armstrong, who had long wanted to ameliorate the section of the garden tended by children with special needs. Once the team heard about this, they knew it was the perfect Construction Challenge project. As one team member said, “We were all really excited to do this project that would so clearly improve our school, and to learn more about technology in the process. We also knew that this project would allow us to work with the special needs students, who we’ve worked very closely with in the past, with great results. It just seemed like an all-around beneficial opportunity for everyone.” Now the team is hard at work constructing new hardening-off tables and planters, cleaning up pre-existing areas of the garden, and documenting their work in a display and portfolio. To learn more about what we do, contact project manager Isabelle Zanen, isabellle.zanen@icsd.k12.ny.us or Mr. David Buchner, dbuchner@icsd.k12.ny.us.
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