Hydro Vermi ponic system building at the school has started!

The students working hard!

Yesterday was the first session with the students at the Bronx writing Academy!
A small group of student joined the apprenticeship that we offer about hydroponics. The overall goal of the apprenticeship its to have the student understand what local food can be, and why it is sustainable compared to foods coming from 1000s of miles away.
Other goals are for the student to

the build of the day

learn how plants grow, what do they need to grow, how one can grow plants without soil. After introducing a bit more about what aquaponics is and showing a couple of videos showing important points on how an hydroponic/aquaponic system works. Then I pulled out the tools and the material and we all go building!
This sessions there was 6 students, 4 worked with the school teacher that accompanies us, and 2 worked with me. Our objective for the day was to build the frame that will support the grow beds, and put it on legs. It didnt exactly work that way, we got to build the frames though! First I showed them how to mark the center of a piece of wood, how to bore a hole with a mechanical hand drill, and how to use auto-piercing screws. The group working with the teacher build on of the frames, the other students and I build a second one.

Since got a slow start, it was a bit too much to put the frame on legs, so we stopped there to do the weekly creative/journaling activity. Every week we will have 1 or 2 activities that the students can keep track of Yesterdays task was to draw or write something that the words "farm", "city", "food" and, "hydroponics" inspired them.

The programs organized by Citizen Schools are called apprenticeship, and they are organized around a 10 -12 week period of time: 9-10 weeks are dedicated to the apprenticeship and the preparation of the last week (week 10, 11 or 12). The last week is when the WOW! is "done" the WOW! can be pretty much anything: some apprenticeship lead to the making of a public announcement clip, other lead to the making of a product, other can be an event hosted by the school or my the volunteers with the community. We plant to have the WOW! just outside the school, quite literally in the street, and present the work they have done : building the system, and explaining how it works. I hope that we will be able to bring people from surrounding community garden/urban farms and people form the neighborhood at large.

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Hydro vermi Ponic Bronx Writing Academy

Since last fall, I have been volunteering for Citizen Schools as a Citizen Teacher (that how they call us volunteers). By the end of the fall semester, I proposed (because some student showed interest) an apprenticeship to learn about - build - and grow  hydroponically plants. Earlier this week was the first meeting to organize the apprenticeship and meet with the school teacher that will accompanying me (us if i find a another volunteer within the next few days).

*** If you are interested in volunteering - or know someone, let me know! even if you have little experience your help will be appreciated ****

Citizen Schools is a non profit dedicated in bringing educational opportunities to middle schools in low income neighbourhoods. For example, Wednesday night, Ive learned that the Bronx Writing Academy, the public school where I volunteer in Bronx, NY, have 92% of their student receiving free lunch because of the incredibly low income of their parents. Overall, the goal is to pull up these children who have reading skills 2 years below there more fortunate peers, which is not only due to the fact that 30% of them are English learners because another language is spoken at home (mostly Spanish, and to a lower extend Arabic and French). While the students have big hurdles to go over, they are motivated to learn. Last semester experience was awesome, we did the WOW! at NYU Langone Medical Center and they where impressive. Not only the students show a real interest in learning. Ok - They still are kids, some with behaviour problems- but that does not mean they dont want to learn. And its not anywhere else that once could hear "Mr. Benjamin, you are my favorite teacher !" Lol!
Next week will be the pitch - which consists in going around the school and pitching your apprenticeship for 3 minutes to the students, so they can choose one of the apprenticeships, I hope that the students that said to me "can we do that?" last semester will sign up!. After that, the apprenticeship will start ! - by the way the title (not official yet) is "A revolution : grow food in the city." During the first 3 weeks, after a brief introduction, we will build 2 systems. Each 
will be made of a 6 gallon food safe pail as the sump tank, a halfed 6 gallon pail as grow bed, and the grow media will be made of shredded water bottle (if I can collect enough of them). The system will be supported by a frame made of reclaimed wood from a futon sofa, and some pallet wood if necessary. We will also have on each a tower from BrightAgrotech in each. The only difference between the 2 systems will be the source of plant nutrients. One will be fed using a commercially available nutrient solution, following the instructions, the second will be fed with compost tea, and if necessary, ammonia. The compost tea will be made out of worm compost. The worm compost will come from another bucket with worms fed with coffee every week.

We hope that the kids will be able to learn about the science behind the systems, will learn a bit of the almost "scientific method" and, will be able to express their sensitive and artistic side if they desire. But more importantly, I hope that they will understand and learn that not all trash is to be discarded, but that a lot can be done to use garbage as a worthy resource to build things, grow food and ect ... 
Every week, the students will record info about plant growth, aspect and nutrient level. They will also fill a journal where they will write a few sentences about what they did, how did it go and how did that make them feel. In the last 2 weeks, we will prepare for the WOW! which will be taking the system outside and presenting - showing it to the community, other students and ect ... Also during these last 2 weeks, the students will go over their notes and prepare a blog post reflecting their experience during the apprenticeship. This post will be given to Green Thumb, the association without which the project may not have been as exiting. I also want to offer the students who want to express their artistic side a safe space to do so, I hope that if one want to write a narrative about our project, or a song, we will be able to publish it on Green thumbs blog, and more importantly to display it to the community.
At the end of the Wow! the students will be able to take their share of the food home if they want to, and their share of the composting worm (if the parents are ok!). The system will stay at the school - hoping to be used again and again !
The green thumb grant will be used to buy materials we cant get for free, the pumps, some tools, the commercial grow towers, and maybe for a trip at one of the New York City farms. A non-profit is behing created to be able to receive this check, I sent the paperwork to reserve the name "Chfermette", then in a few days I should be able to open a bank account and start buying the material we need. I guess The non-profit will also be able to receive donations, which would be used to build more systems for the school and teach sustainability and healthy habits in undeserved schools.

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