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Rob: Well certainly some serious stuff, thank you Courtenay. Well getting their daily serving
of fruit and veggies will be a little easier this fall for some students at an elementary
school in Tulsa. As Dustin Mielke explains, work this spring should sprout some fresher
food for next school year. Dustin Mielke: The sounds of construction
swirled around the playground of Kendall Whittier elementary school in Tulsa as a new greenhouse
sprung from a pile of wood and PVC pipe. The Tulsa County Farm Bureau Women's committee
partnered with the school, and provided the supplies and much of the labor for the greenhouse.
Lotsee Spradling, chairperson of the committee, says her group wanted to provide agricultural
education for the inner-city school's students. Lotsee Spradling: Well, I hope that they will
be excited about getting to mess in the dirt; that's always a fun thing for a kid, and actually
grow something, you know, that's a good feeling to know that you have given life to something.
We just hope that they really get connected back to the earth and how things are, how
things are done, you know, in our, in our field.
Dustin: Paul Thomas, community schools coordinator for Kendall Whittier elementary, says the
greenhouse will produce not only plants, but a bounty of education for students.
Paul Thomas: The idea is to provide kids with as many varied experiences as possible. And
this one is important because most of our kids do not have a relationship, or an idea
of where food comes from and how to begin to understand that there is a life outside
the urban core which they primarily come from. Dustin: So what plants can students look forward
to growing? Thomas: We're going to have flowers, annuals,
flowerbeds, various food products, like spinach and lettuce and tomatoes, and just all the
normal garden type things that you might find in anybody's garden.
Dustin: And you can bet the students are excited. Indra Coronado is a fifth grader. She looks
forward to seeing the greenhouse full of colorful plants. The time and effort others put into
the project impressed her. Indra Coronado: I think that the people who
want to help my school and help us build a greenhouse are pretty cool; they're trying
to spend their time helping others. Dustin: And while the greenhouse was built
in little more than one day, Thomas says the lessons the greenhouse provides will last
a lifetime. Thomas: It will allow us to not only give
kids the experience of planting, harvesting and reaping the rewards of what they do, but
in some cases, we're going to plant and nurture plants to sell, so they can learn financial
literacy, fundraising, things of that sort; these kinds of things, this greenhouse will
allow us to do.