BUGS show great leadership!

 

This week presented an exciting opportunity for students of the  

Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students after-school program.

Baltimore City's Student Environmental Leadership Action Team (SELAT) meeting was hosted by Commodore John Rodgers, just a few blocks from the BUGS campus. Our students prepared themselves for the meeting by talking about what healthy changes they would like to see at their school. The conversation focused a lot on trash, but we also touched on worms, bees, gardens, trees and more.

Afterwards, BUGS students designed and created a coloring book about recycling which they will give away at the BUGS Expo on Feb. 25th.

In other news... If your school green team is still looking for plants for the spring:

BUGS will start your seeds from scratch – submit request by Mar 1

Students will be growing seed starts for schools. If you provide the seeds, there is no cost; if BUGS supplies the seeds, schools can ask for specific plants and then pay a small fee ($5 per 20 plants).  Seedlings will be ready for pick-up at the BUGS Farmers Market on Apr 25 (802 S. Caroline St. in Harbor East, 10am-2pm).  Alternate pick up times can also be scheduled.

Please email Jason Reed at jason.reed@livingclassrooms.org

Team Building with BUGS

Many of our students were taking great advantage of a meeting being held at their school for the Student Environmental Leadership Action Team with Mr. Jason. This meant that we were a few BUGS short of a regular day. With this, Mr. Tyone and I decided to combine our students to do some team-building and get to know our students on a more personal level. We tied in elements of both dance and STEM to make this a fun, educational, and productive time together.

 Here I am teaching the girls how to do a thigh stand. We talked about balance and weight to make our stunt safe. Pictured left to right: Ty'nasia, Lariyah, Ms. Valerie, Sharron, Tracey, Taylor, and Arly.

 Success! We completed the thigh stand stunt and the girls were very proud! We bonded over learning a new skill and learning about Ms. Valerie's cheerleading past.

To engage the girls and boys to work together more willingly and cooperatively, we challenged the students to make a human pyramid. We talked about elements of safety, how many people they had in total versus how many people would be on each level of the pyramid, weight distribution, and balance.

In the beginning, the girls and the boys did not want to work together or have anything to do with each other. Here, they are joined for a happy group photo for a job well done!

A Very BUGS Christmas

With the tune of Mariah Carey "All I Want For Christmas Is You" playing in the background the BUGS students sat in anticipation to receive their gifts.

The BUGS Students earn "BUG Bucks" daily as part of our incentive program. A few times a year they get to cash in those bucks for items from the BUG Buck Catalogue.

But what really got us into the christmas spirit are the gift donations we received from the Allegis Staffing Service Group. Each student received a stocking stuffed with goodies and a personal card, handmade, by the staff. 

Seeing the smiles on our students faces is absolutely priceless. 

Happy New Year!