Environmental education takes off at Butler Catholic
Even students who were in the garden club at Butler Catholic School last year have not been able to do all the activities they are doing this school year in Rae Harrison’s environmental education classes.
Harrison previously volunteered at the school to earn her Master Gardener rank, and started the 2023-24 school year as director of environmental programming at Butler Catholic. Students in all grades, kindergarten through fifth, have class with Harrison once a week, where they get to tend to plants, watch tadpoles grow, feed chickens and experience nature in the school’s courtyard.
“We have been able to write, do art and incorporate that with the garden stuff and what is outside,” Harrison said Wednesday, May 1. “They get to come out here, and they get to draw, they get to write, they get to be creative and interact and eat some lettuce.”
Harrison’s classroom is near the school’s courtyard and contains a tower garden, several garden beds underneath lights, a microscope she can project onto a screen and numerous other plants students have collected from the courtyard.
As fourth-grade students entered the classroom Wednesday, some grabbed a piece of lettuce from the tower garden to munch on, and others showed Harrison pictures of plants they have at home.
Following a short grounding session where Harrison relayed some ways students could appreciate nature, the group headed outside to partake in a scavenger hunt.
Several students agreed the outdoor time was their favorite time of the week.
“Ms. Rae did garden club every other week and that was it,” Juliana Warnick, a fourth-grade student, said about last school year. “We get to learn about plants a lot and definitely having experience with the chickens.”
Olivia Yeager, another fourth-grade student, said she is excited for Harrison’s class each week because she gets to go outside most of the time.
“I think it’s being outside in nature and taking in our surroundings,” Olivia said. “In fourth-grade, we get to take care of the chickens and stuff.”
Fourth-grader Rose Greco tended to some of the plants in the greenhouse in Butler Catholic’s courtyard Wednesday. She said the greenhouse is a unique place on campus because of how much it fits in such a small space, and it is a good place to go to support nature.
“It’s got room for fish, and we can plant stuff for the salads at lunchtime,” Rose said. “I like when we go outside, and sometimes we have snacks and look at nature.”
John Hazur, principal of Butler Catholic, said Harrison’s class is one of the most student-oriented, student-driven classes at the school, which is accomplished by simply letting the children be curious about the world around them.
“We can answer their questions by making them question things,” Hazur said. “Let’s let them be hands-on instead of behind a desk.”
Harrison said she will continue tending to the plants students seeded in the garden and in the classroom over the summer, so students will come back next school year to healthy and bigger plants.
“The stuff that they plant now, when they come back in the fall when it’s ripe, they can go back to that box and they will have started those from seeds,” she said. “I’m a 12-month employee, and we’re running three weeks of garden camp into the summer.”
