MORGANTOWN — How does North Elementary’s garden grow?
Even better now, said Natalie Webb, who is principal of the school on Chestnut Ridge Road.
North was the recent recipient of a $50,000 grant from Pittsburgh-based Remake Learning Network, which the school will use to reconfigure its outdoor garden space.
Call it a holistic makeover.
That’s what the network does for schools and colleges in the region, with a goal of giving learning a natural spark.
Sunanna Chand, a former elementary school teacher and Remake’s executive director, mapped out the lesson plan for the mission.
“How do we take what we value and then create a space that represents that?” she posed.
Webb didn’t think twice as her hand went up.
North has long been known for its outdoor vegetable garden, which teachers have dug into with lesson plans on everything from photosynthesis to colonial history.
Plus, students get to eat the homework.
What is grown in the garden oftentimes ends up on the school lunch menu.
Five years ago, North’s garden, in effect, ended up in the Rose Garden.
The school’s efforts in nutrition caught the eye of Michelle Obama, who requested an audience.
A field trip to the White House followed, where a group of students from North prepared garden-grown dishes in the Rose Garden with the-then First Lady.
The idea at North, its principal said, is to bring nutrition out from under the roof.
“We’re going to make a true, outdoor classroom,” she said.
Ground will be broken in the spring with a goal of having the expanse ready by the start of school next year, she said.
Part of the work, Webb said, will entail integrating spaces for chairs and reconfiguring paths for wheelchair users.
“It’s already accessible,” she said, “but we’re going to make it better.”
North is also renowned for its intellectual accessibility and diversity.
Some 35 to 40 languages other than English are spoken there, Webb said, from Mandarin to Farsi to Tagalog.
“A good 25% of our kids are at least bilingual,” the principal said.
She likes the idea that North is expanding its learning vocabulary, also.
The school was built in 1979. Like a lot of schools across Monongalia County, it has slowly been encroaching on its borders for years — since Mon is a locale in the Mountain State that is actually seeing population growth.
Meanwhile, North and Wheeling Country Day School in Ohio County were the only schools in West Virginia to receive grants from the $800,000 offering.
Fourteen other schools and other organizations in western Pennsylvania are also recipients.
