School's Out, Sustainability's In

When students at Chicago's Edison Park and Nathan Davis elementary schools and Lincoln Park High School return to their campuses this fall, they'll discover less asphalt and more verdant green space thanks to Openlands and its Building School Gardens and Green Teacher Network initiatives.

Research shows that young people who spend significant time in areas with little or no available or safe open space are less likely to create, protect, and preserve that space in the future. Openlands sees school gardens as a vital way to help students of all ages connect with nature. To that end, Openlands' Building School Gardens program and Green Teachers Network help to turn today’s young people into tomorrow's environmental stewards.

Building School Gardens
Started during the 2006–07 school year, Building School Gardens installs gardens at Chicago public schools to achieve the following purposes: 

• Develop "garden teams" to support the garden,
• Integrate the gardens into multi-disciplinary curriculum at multiple grade levels,
• Use art creatively in the landscape,
• Instill an environmental ethic in those who the gardens effect, and
• Incorporate physical activity as a regular daily activity.

Based on each school's curricular interests, Openlands works with garden teams to identify the goals and elements of every garden, hires subcontractors to carry out the designs and structural elements, and provides all of the materials and oversight for installation. Elements of the customized gardens may include:

• Benches for outdoor classroom seating for any subject;
• Raised vegetable beds for growing food and healthy eating;
• Native plantings to study insect and animal habitats, as well as ecological history of Chicago; and/or
• Ornamental gardens with ABC, color, or literature-inspired themes.

Most recently, Openlands has used the Building School Gardens framework to tap city funding for asphalt removal on Chicago Public School campuses—seven of these green spaces have been developed so far, with nine additional gardens planned. Although the environmental benefits of a living permeable surface are tremendous, the visual and social impacts of these new landscapes are also notable. According to Openlands Education Director Jaime Zaplatosch, "You can see the difference these gardens make on both the students and the campuses: students appear more at ease in the gardens, which are a lot more pleasing to the eye than a barren asphalt surface." (Click on the before-and-after image at the left to enlarge.)

Through Building School Gardens, Openlands has installed 31 school gardens to date. The Boston Schoolyard Initiative and the Learning Landscapes Program, in Denver, are the only other programs in the country comparable to Building School Gardens.

Green Teacher Network
While Building School Gardens aims to integrate school gardens into curricula for science, math, language arts, social studies, art, and physical education at any grade level, the Green Teacher Network (GTN) was started to provide the curriculum support needed to ensure a garden’s continued success. (All of Openlands' Building School Gardens grantees are required to attend a full year of GTN workshops.) Run in collaboration with the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, these plant-based professional development workshops are offered throughout the school year at rotating locations and involve:

• Hands-on activities;
• Tours of school gardens or locations where teachers could bring their students for a field trip;
• Facilitated, peer-networking sessions; and
• Continuing education credit.

What's more, the Green Teacher Network online community has been running since 2004, enabling program partners to disseminate research, professional development opportunities, grants, and other resources to members. Teachers are also encouraged to use the listserv to post questions to solve their garden-related problems.