“Building a student-to-student rain garden collaborative to nurture equitable environmental literacy”
In 2016 The Big SandBox (TBS) received funding from the McLean Contributionship to create Extended Learning Outdoors (ELO) within the George W Nebinger rain garden as a strategic opportunity to expose school children, on a daily basis, to the rain. TBS, Studio Ludo and Iowa State University teamed up with Nebinger School’s science teacher, Dr. Javier Domingez, to develop a model for rain garden management combined with educational programming.
The Principal, teachers and parents found this enhancement to have a profound effect on the social wellbeing of the children. It was in this context that the idea of Growing Green was born. Rain gardens can be more than just managing storm water, giving students a hands-on education about the twist and turns of an aging urban water system with all of the complexities and equity issues associated with accessing it, using it, cleaning it up and returning it to the waterways.
It was in this context that the ELO Stewardship/Citizen Scientist Project was born. The vision is to support the use of Extended Learning Outdoors (ELO) (The kit-of-parts rain garden, vegetable garden, and outdoor classroom funded in our first McLean Contributionship Grant) with a low cost high impact method of; 1) stewardship through maintenance, and 2) policy change through scientific data collection.
During the next five years, Going Green’s will develop a student-to-student mentoring program partnering five inner city schools with five suburban schools to ensure a long term use of rain gardens as vibrant learning places.