{"id":522629,"date":"2010-04-09T16:27:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T20:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3276"},"modified":"2010-04-09T16:27:35","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T20:27:35","slug":"high-school-gardening-%e2%80%94-for-credit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/522629","title":{"rendered":"High school gardening \u2014 for credit"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Times:<\/a> Starting this week at Princeton Public High School<\/a>, students can take gym class in the garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s strangely enjoyable,\u201d said Tim Vasseur, a Princeton sophomore, shovel in hand. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely not easy to do or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>Advocates for greener schools believe this is the first time public school students will receive physical education credit for garden work. The idea was conceived by Matt Wilkinson, a physical education teacher and a former wrestling coach who also has a background in horticulture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re giving students another option to mainstream physical education,\u201d Mr. Wilkinson said. \u201cHow long is somebody going to play basketball or soccer? Gardening they can do their whole lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last fall, members of the community raised $1,500 and constructed 16 raised garden beds<\/a> on school property. Now that it\u2019s spring, students will get to work planting seeds, weeding, and turning compost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives people who aren\u2019t that athletic \u2014 and I feel like I\u2019m not \u2014 it gives them an opportunity to do something else,\u201d said Kruthi Isola, a sophomore. \u201cYou learn how to do more than just play a game.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the class, students will create weight lifting programs customized to build gardening muscle. For example, Mr. Wilkinson emphasized how the day\u2019s activity \u2014 using shovels to turn over soil in preparation for planting \u2014 uses the same muscles employed in bicep curls.<\/p>\n

But the teenagers are not required to get their hands dirty. Each member of the class can choose between working in the garden or a more traditional activity. On the first day the garden was open, 17 of 27 students in one class picked gardening; the rest played Frisbee.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome of my friends, they\u2019re like dude, come on, let\u2019s go play some basketball,\u201d said Alex Henry, also a Princeton sophomore. \u201cWhy are you doing this girl stuff? But I was like, you know, let\u2019s break the orthodoxy a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the gardening gym class first received publicity in a local newspaper<\/a>, most of the comments left on the Internet were positive, but not all.<\/p>\n

Read more>><\/p>\n

Share This<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Times: Starting this week at Princeton Public High School, students can take gym class in the garden. \u201cI think it\u2019s strangely enjoyable,\u201d said Tim Vasseur, a Princeton sophomore, shovel in hand. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely not easy to do or anything like that.\u201d Advocates for greener schools believe this is the first time public school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}