Pinehurst Elementary's Learning Garden

There are lots of cool things taking place within the walls and beyond at Pinehurst Elementary in North Charleston, a Title One school, with more than 450 students. Students there are taking a hands-on approach to learning, that's helping them grow. They're our Cool School of the week.

On a sunny day, third grade students are learning about rocks and the earth. It's a part of their science curriculum, but this classroom experience is more hands-on, not your typical classroom setting. Welcome to the Charleston Area Children's Garden Project at Pinehurst Elementary, an edible garden, and learning center for school district standards, including math, ecology, health, and environmental studies.

Darlena Goodwin is executive director of the Charleston Area Children's Garden Project, a non profit since 2004.  She says, "All of the things that we learn through gardening., short term goal planning, long term goal planning, perseverance, hard work, team work, all of this achieves that goal.  The teachers and I communicate through email every week. They tell me the soft kits they are working on in the classrooms and the subjects in their textbooks they are working on that correlate with the standards and I revolve the garden learning session around those standards"

Students say the garden makes learning fun, but the best part is they get to eat their hard work. Third grader Joanna Vargas says, "It's beautiful. At the end of the year, we get to make soup with all the vegetables that we made." Principal Dianne Benton says, "They have a ball out there all the time, but they're learning, they're writing, they're learning their science standards, their inquiry standards. It's just a wonderful wonderful program and they get to eat out of the garden which promotes healthy living." Third grader David Doctor says, "It's very cool. There are many vegetables, many vegetables. I pretty much eat green beans a lot."

Students say their school is definitely cool. Doctor says, "Because since I'm in third grade, I really kind of like my teacher." Vargas says, "We get to plant gardens and help the earth. Ii feel happy." Lizbeth Perez says, "It's fun. You get to learn a lot here. I like it, it's nice. I like it. I like the teachers here, they're very nice, and the principal she's very nice too to everybody, and I like it here."

Right now, the Charleston Area Children's Garden Project is at six Title One schools. They started at Pinehurst in May of this year, and it targets third graders. More than 90-percent of the students there are on free or reduced lunch. One-hundred students participate in the Backpack Buddies Program each week. They're able to take food home over the weekend. This food is provided through the food bank at no cost to the school.

If you want to learn more about what makes Pinehurst Elementary so cool, go to our website Counton2.com and go to our Cool School page under the news tab.

We want to hear about the good things that are going on at your school. Send an email to Octavia at omitchell@wcbd.com and tell us all about it. Maybe your school will be the next Cool School of the week.