Evanston/Skokie District 65 is looking for community members to help co-design several “outdoor learning gardens” planned for the new Foster School campus in the Fifth Ward.
At a meeting Wednesday night at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, just steps from where the school is under construction, District 65 Sustainability Coordinator Karen Bireta announced that the campus, once complete, will include at least three separate gardens – for pollinators, rain and shade – and, depending on construction, a fourth garden for edible food.
As their names suggest, pollinator gardens are designed to attract bees and butterflies, rain gardens collect and absorb stormwater and shade gardens feature plants and flowers that need less sunlight than others.
“The reason we’re doing this is because we really want unique spaces where our students can get outside and learn and wonder and be a part of nature, and [get] all of the incredible educational opportunities that come with that,” Bireta said.
The district will host monthly meetings for the community to help design these gardens starting this fall, though the first meeting date is still to be determined, according to Bireta. Meanwhile, the school board will announce plans for a broader Foster School transition team at its meeting on Monday, Oct. 7, the school district’s Director of Strategic Project Management Kirby Callam said. Applications for community members to join the team will also open that same night.
Community members interested in joining the garden co-design group will be able to express their interest through an online form soon, according to a District 65 spokesperson. For now, residents can sign up to receive email and text updates about the Foster School project here.
Outside learning
In co-designing the gardens and also instituting a curriculum for students around them, District 65 is partnering with Learning in Places, a collaborative project including researchers from Northwestern University that’s aiming to address an increasing problem of childhood activities being primarily indoors, according to Shirin Vossoughi, an associate professor of learning sciences at Northwestern and a researcher on the project.
Learning in Places is all about teaching kids, especially in elementary school, the “practice of going outside to learn,” according to Vossoughi. The idea is to give kids the tools to conduct field investigations themselves using nature and school-based gardens, where they can learn to think about how nature is structured and other concepts like ethical decision-making.
You can sign up for Foster School construction updates and learn more about the overall project on the district’s dedicated website here.
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