Growing Healthy Together
The Oasis Program provides a small, highly structured substantially separate environment for students with disabilities impacting emotional regulation and behavior. The addition of a hydroponic garden to the Oasis program will benefit our students’ social/emotional wellness while fostering resiliency, teaching teamwork, and offering real-life practical skills applications to the concepts that they are learning at school.
For many of our students, the concepts that we are learning are abstract and difficult for them to visualize and make connections with. Hydroponic gardening allows them to observe Biology concepts being taught in action. Students can observe the plant life cycle, test soil PH, and graph their data as they create the optimum growing conditions.
Growing Healthy Together meets an academic need for hands-on practical application of the concepts that we are learning in Biology while also providing healthy food options for our Wellness class to use in our cooking labs. Beyond providing a deeper understanding of the science behind growing, students are equipped to leverage their newfound knowledge to create hydroponic growing systems within their homes and communities.
–Sheena Swanson, Oakmont Oasis Program
Grant Year: 2022-2023
Grant Recipients: Sheena Swanson
Receiving Schools: Oakmont Regional High School