CINCINNATI — Perseverance. Determination. Resolve. These are characteristics students need to learn to thrive in our society.
At Rees E. Price Academy, they are getting those lessons in spades.
About a year ago, several classes participated in a tree-planting ceremony to rebuild the urban canopy and months later we highlighted them as they began to build out an educational garden, to help them learn and to help the community in East Price Hill.
Several months later, vandals struck.
"July is when we're out of school, and it happened at the end of July. And it was devastating," said 2nd grade teacher Kimberly Frondorf. "There was some crying but now huge smiles. And you know what? The crying was just a cloud passing by because we are resilient. We persevere. So, we always know we have partners, we can find a way."
She added that it is important to "help students know, even though things are going to happen to us in life, we persevere. We're resilient, we try again. If something goes wrong, we try again. And we keep trying."
In mid-October, after weeks of planning we watched as 2nd and 6th graders worked alongside volunteers to rebuild.
Cynthia Walters with Green Umbrella Green Schoolyards Action Network organized the effort and provided garden supplies
Chris Clements with Imago provided the materials and constructed three 4x8 raised garden beds.
Steve Foltz and several other staff members with the Cincinnati Zoo provided a large amount of soil and an assortment of native plants.
Tony Staubach of Hamilton County R3Source volunteered his time.
Civic Garden Center donated packets of cool weather seeds.
Principal Tiffani Maher said the decision to have the students involved in the rebuild was "very strategic, because they live in the neighborhood, we are a true neighborhood school. All of our students that go to our school live in the East Price Hill area. So, this means by them having apart and rebuilding, they will keep it safe, they will tell all their friends that this is our garden and that we planted this."
She added that they will come and "show and teach their parents how to grow food and what we do with it while we harvest it. They will share in the harvest and the bounty by eating in school. It's a huge science…that they can keep with them. We need these kinds of things to show our kids in our urban society that this is normal and this is what we do and we have to do it to keep our area beautiful and sustain ourselves with our own food."
The school is looking for ways to secure and protect the garden. You can help with a donation to the Rees E. Price Academy Principal Fund.
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