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Learn how Angela Yeasayer led a school garden project at Eastern High School.

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By Angela Yeasayer

At almost any school, you quickly realize you are in a world of competition. Sports, academics, politics, personalities, classroom space and instructional time all vie for attention. But one place that I noticed competition wasn't happening was on our school's tennis courts. The courts haven't been used for practice or competitions in many years. The courts were built on land, that over time, couldn't support the asphalt and large cracks developed and eventually became too costly to maintain.

My story starts nearly 3 years ago with the dream to bring a garden to the school for not only nutritional education but also scientific exploration of nature, its cycles and all the wisdom contained within just the simple observation of them and the contemplative nature of working in a garden, hands in the dirt. This was and has now become a sustainable passion project for me.

Fast forward into the planning of this garden when myself and our administration realized that an underutilized portion of our campus could be the perfect fit for constructing raised garden beds and making something useful of something that is now a deteriorating slab of asphalt with a nice fence around it.

The ability for me to inherit nearly a ½ acre of land also came about as a result of a direct need from my school's administration for an additional section of freshman computer literacy to be taught and they didn't have an available teacher. As it would happen, their need also happen to coincide with my planning period. Through this new understanding in our relationship, I was able to secure the garden spot (also known as our "tennis courts") in exchange for giving up my planning creating a computer literacy class that focused around some of the needs of developing this area of the campus into a green space - and still teaching digital and computer literacy. We became project-based at a rapid pace and everything we created was themed around the planning and implementing of this project.

The biggest challenge in developing this garden was in my underestimation of the amount of emotional and intellectual horsepower it would take to create the relationships and mindset to see this project truly take off and become a sustainable and beneficial green space for students to explore, study and appreciate.

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Angela M. Yeasayer is in her seventh year at Eastern High School, where she teaches media arts and computer literacy, with a focus on social and emotional learning. She is currently a candidate for National Board certification.
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Learn more about how school gardens build community in a special Earth Day themed live chat on April 20, 2017 at 8-9pm Eastern, or find more resources here.

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Building Community With School Gardens - Sevenzo - Medium

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By Angela Yeasayer At almost any school, you quickly realize you are in a world of competition. Sports, academics, politics, personalities, classroom space and instructional time all vie for attention. But one place that I noticed competition wasn't happening was on our school's tennis courts.

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How a tennis court became a garden at Eastern

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How a tennis court became a garden at Eastern

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Learn more about how Angela Yeasayer lead a school garden project to make use of unused tennis courts.

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Eastern High School installed a weather station to monitor the environmental impact of the garden.

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Installing a Weather Station with No Electricity or WIFI (off the grid) This garden project has many facets to it. One of which, was to...