1. Garfield Middle School
We have been delivering specialized horticultural training for the developmentally disabled youth at Garfield Middle School.
We engage them in a wide variety of hands-on activities that use live plants and dried flowers. We grow vegetables from seed and create kitchen gardens from potatoes, onions, carrot heads,etc. In this way students learn about safe food systems, good nutrition and where their food comes from.
We engage them in growing flowers to be used for gift-giving and beautifying their homes and communities. This makes it clear to them that they can contribute to quality of life for others in their communities. This is empowering! Students learn from the Rutgers team about the many wonderful jobs and careers that involve plants.
We introduce new concepts like ecology and environmental stewardship and many new plant names. The courtyard at GMS becomes the display area for all the many plants the students have grown. They learn the skill of plant propagation and transplanting. These skill s can help make them marketable for the many green industry jobs that abound in our area (garden center, florist, landscape, interior plantscaping and more).
Whether they pursue jobs and careers in horticulture or not…the successes with plants can make for satisfying life-long hobbies and social bonds with others.
Everyone comes to realize they can grow their own food if they want to ; many indicated a new interest in plants and the desire to learn more. That is a valuable outcome, indeed.
A horticultural therapy program for the Bergen County Special Services School District. The participants range in age from 14 to 21, and each session focuses on specific skill sets. Joel Flagler is a Bergen County Agricultural Agent and can be contacted through e-mail: flagler@AESOP.Rutgers.edu.
Rutgers Horticultural Therapy website:
www.aesop.rutgers.edu/~horttherapy
In a week long program this past June, the Junior Police Academy taught forty incoming freshmen leadership skills and to prepare them to enter high school. The students were given a presentation about bicycle safety and how bicycles can be used as a viable form of transportation, especially going to school. The Garfield Health Department presented helmets for all of the participating students and Sport Authority donated a bicycle to be raffled to the top students. Each day the students had to participate in calisthenics followed by leadership building exercises and educational field trips.
