Students at Rogers Park Middle learn life lessons in garden

Students at Rogers Park Middle School learn science and math by getting outside and digging in a garden, studying the shadows on a sundial and making a salad out of fresh-picked veggies.

After months of working in their school’s backyard, science teacher Bernardo DeCastro, social studies teacher Daniel Heitor and their eighth-grade students officially presented this year’s garden to schoolmates, teachers and members of the community on June 8. The vegetable garden is made up of beds of lettuce, kale, peas, onions, potatoes and other edibles. The ecological garden that sits outside the fenced in vegetable area is teeming with native plants intended to attract bugs and replace the invasive plants that once dominated the grounds.

New additions to this year’s garden included a sundial, a native plants garden and a fence, all created by the students. Last year’s eighth-grade students tore down vines of invasive plants, moved rocks and logs to build a bog, and started many of the plantings, including potatoes and lettuce. The garden is part of the science curriculum for the eighth-grade cluster and each student is involved in some aspect of the garden, from report on its progress to planting and caring for the garden to cooking with the produce.

The astronomical sundial was made using brick pavers. On a Saturday in May, more than a dozen students volunteered to set the pavers, but DeCastro said the calculations for the project started back in September.

Eighth-grade student Kayla Downs explained that the sundial has already been used by her classmates to teach the six-grade students about the solstice and the equinox. They use math to calculate where the sun will hit the sundial and have already made a prediction for June.

Students David Calle and Alex Beiku said that the garden offered a great opportunity to get outside.

“We get to move here and learn more,” said David. “We learn more by doing the actual measuring.”

"You use math into science and everything connects," said Alex, who wants to study electrical engineering. “This leads into a lot of fields, like architecture, because of the dimensions. This has to do with a lot of math."

Kayla also explained that the native plant garden helps the environment and attracts insects and bees that are important to the ecosystem. The students used logs to border the garden and also built a fence behind the native plants using wooden pallets.

DeCastro explained that the students learn that the garden provides a food chain, whereas the invasive plants that they students have slowly been removing does not. 

"We are doing two phases of renewal. Phase 1 was the spring 2015. We began planting in December and started measuring for the sundial in September with the sunrises in the beginning of each season. Phase 2 will begin in the fall when we redo the vegetable garden and expand the vegetable beds,” DeCastro said.

The Hochsprung Outdoor Classroom is named for George and Dawn Hochsprung. After 40 years in the Danbury schools, George Hochsprung retired last year from Rogers Park and taught the same students who are tending this year’s garden. His wife, Dawn Hochsprung, was principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School when her life was taken in the December 2012 tragedy there.

A small Nyssa Black gum tree is planted in the garden to honor George and Dawn Hochsprung. The tree is a food source for birds and will grow for hundreds of years.

For several years, DeCastro and Heitor have supervised as students cleared the land from invasive plants and made a garden seating area with logs. The area is used as an outdoor classroom and can seat 25 students. Beyond the gardens is an acidic bog, common throughout New England, that attracts salamanders, frogs and other amphibious creatures, adding to the tiny ecosystem.