Natural Classroom

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This cornerstone began last Fall, 2014. The group formed and started right away with 5 goals. The one goal of selling , "worm tea", which is a rich mixture of earthworm casings to make tea for your plants. It is a great food for your plants. We packaged and sold the tea throughout the year. This was truly an education at each place we sold. The team spent a lot of time teaching about its' benefits. They sold them for $5.00 a bag and went to our Fall Festival, Ojai Seed and Plant Swap, Open House, and VIP Luncheon. Each of these places people were excited to try it, and impressed by the student leaderships ability to explain the process and its benefits!

Last year this cornerstone worked very hard to get food from our garden to our cafeteria menu. We have a new chef in our cafeteria this year and she was open to new ideas and ways to try and make things work. We did harvest a few times and she did add it to the menu, or we sold bulk items to the school community to use in their meals. We have an organization called "Food for Thought", and their executive director, Lori Hamor, is instrumental in many aspects of this cornerstone. She provides volunteers to go to each of the five elementary schools and work in the gardens. Our garden day is Wednesday, and David White directs our efforts each week. The students sign in to work in the garden at recess. From there they do various activities: plant, water, harvest, mend, gather, feed earthworms and eat. They also have a wok and a parent each week will prepare a snack with the days harvest. This became a great weekly activity for all, and the volunteers and consistency were a large part of its success. Thank you Lori and David!

One additional goal was to install an "owl box" in our meadows preserve to take care of our gopher and ground squirrel problem. Our field is taken over by these little rodents, and we wanted a solution that was environmentally friendly. With the guidance of the Besant Meadows staff we located a tree near our perimeter and followed the guidelines for installing the box. This summer the team will install the box 20 feet up in the tree, and we will hopefully attract an owl family. We will continue this goal in the Fall, and monitor the box.

Our most rewarding goal is our Trash Sort outdoor classroom. We have been a partner with our trash company for the past two years and are one of the only schools in our valley involved in the program. We have students working each snack and lunch time. The leadership students made a schedule, and this year involved the fifth graders to help. All days and times were covered and in a team of two the students made sure we had a "clean sort" each day. This took perserverance, effort, and responsibility. We had great success and with this program and with the help of our custodian, our sorts were clean a large part of the week. Our wet waste is picked up three times a week, and sent to a company named, "Agromin". They specialize in converting wet waste to soil and compost. This process takes about 90 days. Last year our student leadership took a trip to the site and made a video titled, "The Story of our Trash". We showed this video throughout the year to students to encourage them to sort their trash correctly so we could make our soil! Our last audit results were: 21% of our trash going to the landfill, and 79% going to be recycled or composted. These are great results! We will continue this goal next year.

They also wrote a song to the tune of a popular song on the radio. They performed it at our last assembly, and wrote their own words to the song, "Trash Talk". The school loved it, and were singing it in the halls! This will be a great way to begin our next year.

Finally, the group worked very hard all year to replace our aging planter boxes around campus. They had wanted to replace them with wooden boxes and plant various flowers that would attract butterflies and other insects. This will be continued next year as we were unable to complete the boxes.