The half-dozen fourth 颅graders are supposed to be hard at work weeding garden beds with their science class at Gotwals Elementary School in Norristown, Pennsylvania. But for a moment on this spring day, the plants will have to wait. The kids have made a discovery.
鈥淚t just moved!鈥
鈥淚 can see the head!鈥
鈥淐an we touch it?鈥
A garter snake has scaled an overgrown weed to catch a few rays. 鈥淒oesn鈥檛 it look like a branch?鈥 an educator asks. 鈥淣ature lets it hide in plain sight.鈥
The students huddle for a closer look at the harmless reptile as the conversation turns to native plants. Across the playground, other students wielding kid-size binoculars scour the skies for birds. A third gaggle, armed with gloves and garbage bags, train their eyes on the ground to collect litter.
Buzzing around the scene is Carrie Barron, manager of the nearby . A tall, genial woman with a perpetual smile, Barron exudes roll-up-your-sleeves enthusiasm. The kids watch attentively as she demonstrates how to coax goldenrods and bleeding hearts from their pots and pat them gently into the soil.
This is what science class often looks like at Gotwals: a blend of exploratory learning, physical work, and lessons in native-plant gardens that students sow and tend. What began as an effort to revitalize science teaching and promote environmental awareness at one school has become a fully integrated conservation-education partnership across Norristown, population 34,000.
Over the past seven years, Barron and the center have introduced native-plants programming to six elementary schools and two high schools in the Norristown Area School District, providing a gateway into the natural world that can鈥檛 be replicated inside classrooms. Special-needs and at-risk students cultivate plants in 约炮视频-sponsored greenhouses at their schools, gaining skills that may help them find future employment. Hispanic community groups in town offer after-school programming in their own gardens. And students practice entrepreneurship with sales of greenhouse-grown native species, which help to turn the city into a thriving habitat for insects, birds, and other wildlife.
What makes the effort more remarkable, and vital, is that the town isn鈥檛 an affluent enclave. One-third of students come from economically disadvantaged households, one-tenth are English-language learners, and nearly one-fifth have special needs.
All this, jumpstarted and generated by the passion of one woman who rallied a community around native plants.
It all began with a fateful science-fair competition. Barron was a fresh hire as the John James 约炮视频 Center鈥檚 first education staffer when she was invited to judge the science fair at Norristown鈥檚 Marshall Street Elementary School in 2011. It wasn鈥檛 the former middle- and high-school science teacher鈥檚 first fair, though she鈥檇 never seen such low-quality work. One student investigated which chewing gum tasted best, exhibiting the results by gluing wrappers to a poster. 鈥淚t was heartbreaking to think that was a science project,鈥 Barron recalls. 鈥淚t told me that students didn鈥檛 have the tools or the knowledge to understand what scientific inquiry is and how to utilize it to solve real-world problems.鈥
She resolved to help improve science education in Norristown, and looking out on the school鈥檚 central courtyard, disused and overgrown with weeds, inspiration struck. She鈥檇 previously seen the power of getting kids out of traditional classrooms and exciting their curiosity. Research supports her observation: , for instance, concluded that physical engagement with science content activates students鈥 sensory and motor systems and enhances their learning and recall.
Barron approached the principal with a proposition. In addition to helping kids develop stronger science-fair projects, she鈥檇 transform the courtyard into an outdoor-learning space populated with native plants provided by the center. The principal jumped at the offer, with an additional ask: that Barron also develop lessons in the space for fourth graders, who take a standardized test in science at the end of the school year. The teachers, she explained, could use the support.
The following fall, under Barron鈥檚 guidance, students and teachers from each of Marshall Street鈥檚 four fourth-grade classes designed and planted gardens. Then the plants were put to work: One day per month, a center educator taught a science lesson in the garden, focusing on seasonal changes and other garden activity, such as visits by foraging and pollinating birds. Teachers brought classes outside independently, too, to take advantage of the rare opportunity to experiment with experiential teaching.
To Barron鈥檚 delight, at the next science fair, projects followed the scientific method: hypothesis, control, experiment, conclusion. What鈥檚 more, she saw that many children drew from their work in the gardens, presenting on how plant cuttings fared when placed in different liquids, for example.
Student journals at the end of that first year were another encouraging indicator. 鈥淲e asked the kids what they thought of the program,鈥 Barron says, 鈥渁nd they鈥檇 write, 鈥業 didn鈥檛 even think about birds before,鈥 or 鈥業 didn鈥檛 know about native plants,鈥 or 鈥業 used to let the water run while I was brushing my teeth and now I shut it off.鈥欌 Over the next few years, she hired more staff and extended the curriculum to fourth graders in all six of the district鈥檚 elementary schools.
Across the schools, fourth graders鈥 standardized-test scores in science improved significantly since the program鈥檚 launch. At one school, the proportion of fourth graders who scored below basic proficiency dropped to 4 percent in 2017, from 19.8 percent in 2012. At another, the change was more dramatic: By 2017 all fourth graders scored at or above basic proficiency鈥攁 seismic shift from 24.2 percent of students below proficiency in 2012.
鈥淥bservation, making connections鈥攖hat鈥檚 what learning is about,鈥 says Janet Samuels, who retired as district superintendent this past summer. 鈥淸The curriculum] is not just learning in a classroom, and that makes an incredible difference.鈥
It鈥檚 not just learning in schools, either. In 2014 Barron began collaborating with (ACLAMO) Family Centers, a local Latino network, along with the (CCATE), a Hispanic organization based downtown near the Schuylkill River. Barron鈥檚 team of Spanish-speaking educators taught bird-centric programming, installed garden beds, and developed bilingual curricula around watershed health for after-school programs.
Before long, Barron realized she needed ever more plants to fill existing and planned gardens. Students, she thought, might be the answer. She brainstormed with Samuels about what they鈥檇 need to begin a propagation project鈥攁 small greenhouse, equipment, seeds, and soil鈥攁nd which students would benefit most.
They decided that special-needs students in Norristown Area High School鈥檚 Job Skills classes would be a great fit. Not only might the experience help them secure employment at a nursery or landscaping business, but that hands-on activities help special-needs students connect with their peers and improve science grades. The district, in partnership with the John James 约炮视频 Center, would supply a portion of the plants required each season, keeping costs down while introducing another facet of horticulture into Norristown science classes.
Now students in the Job Skills program work in the greenhouse each week, learning to raise young plants. On one overcast Wednesday morning in early summer, the teens divided and repotted black-eyed Susans in the glass-walled structure. 鈥淚 think plants are peaceful,鈥 says Semaja Mikell-Counsel, a sophomore, who accessorized her bright blue hair with neon-green garden gloves. 鈥淲e take care of them and make sure they have food, water, and sun.鈥
Plants that Mikell-Counsel and her cohort tended have since spread throughout the city. Some have been transplanted to raised beds adjoining the greenhouse and other schoolyards; others adorn private gardens; and still more, planted in collaboration with the one-year-old government program Keep Norristown Beautiful, bloom along the banks of the Schuylkill, where they curtail erosion along the city鈥檚 Riverfront Park.
Acouple of miles to the north of Riverfront Park sits Roosevelt Campus, a century-old historic landmark that provides alternative programming for 150 at-risk high schoolers recovering credits for graduation. It鈥檚 also the site of Barron鈥檚 latest project.
One of the school鈥檚 most striking features is a rustic greenhouse whose potting tables and planters went unused for years. When principal Carla Queenan heard about the greenhouse being erected at Norristown Area High School across town, she reached out to Barron with a vision of her own: to revamp Roosevelt鈥檚 greenhouse into a sanctuary for students to learn and build skills. 鈥淭eenagers are so into tech,鈥 Queenan says. 鈥淚 want them to be able to put that aside and focus on taking care of something, seeing it grow, and being responsible for it鈥攖o connect with something besides a screen.鈥
With Barron鈥檚 help, that vision is becoming a reality.r covered the installation of a new floor and sturdy tables this summer. CCATE student artists painted a colorful mural on one wall, and this fall the raised beds that students constructed and planted sprouted goldenrod, purple coneflower, and other species that support pollinators. When greenhouse renovations are completed this winter, students will cultivate and then transplant 1,000 native plants along the Schuylkill River and nearby Stony Creek.
On a brisk, sunny Saturday in October, the inaugural cohort of Roosevelt鈥檚 horticultural program held a plant sale at the greenhouse. (The program began with eight students; next semester, it will accept 20.) Families stopped by to shop and support their teenagers鈥 work, and dozens of community members picked out specimens for fall planting. Barron was also on hand, introducing customers to Oscar, a one-eyed Eastern Screech-Owl who is one of the 约炮视频 center鈥檚 educational birds.
While Barron prefers to focus on the kids, her hard work hasn鈥檛 gone unnoticed. In April the Pennsylvania Association of Environmental Educators honored the John James 约炮视频 Center at Mill Grove with an Outstanding Environmental Education Program award. 鈥淢s. Barron is the epitome of an educator,鈥 says Samuels, who nominated the program. 鈥淪he鈥檚 passionate about science, she鈥檚 passionate about the work she does, and you see that multiplied.鈥
Barron doesn鈥檛 want her impact to stop at Norristown. An she鈥檚 created for 约炮视频 state offices, centers, and chapters includes everything they need鈥攍esson plans, grant applications, presentations鈥攖o start similar collaborations in their communities. Closer to home, she鈥檚 working with the and chapters to expand the pilot to schools elsewhere in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia. 鈥淟aying the groundwork for programs like this to be replicated is the biggest accomplishment,鈥 she says, 鈥渁nd all the success of the kids learning and being engaged and creating habitats for birds is what drives me.鈥
Roosevelt senior Ta鈥橬ya Webb can be counted among those successes. Her grandmother is a gardener, and now the two bond over what Webb discovers in the greenhouse.
鈥淚 like learning different things about flowers and plants鈥攍ike, we鈥檝e never seen this type of bird before, but because we planted this type of flower, it鈥檚 going to come,鈥 she says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e in school to do schoolwork, but then we鈥檙e having fun on the side with planting and gardening. We鈥檙e learning more about nature and experiencing more.鈥
All it takes is a little soil, water, sun, seeds, and a whole lot of dedication.
This story originally ran in the Winter 2018 issue as 鈥淣orristown in Bloom.鈥 To receive our print magazine, become a member by .