Fertile activity bears fruit – and flowers!

Facilitator Walt Jones

Click thumbnail to view larger version.

Additional Washington County School District articles:

Winning Suggestion

From Walt Jones, Modules Facilitator
Sunrise Ridge Intermediate School, St. George, UT

Editor’s Note: Modules Facilitator Walt Jones will receive a $50 Pitsco Education gift certificate and a T-shirt for sharing the following winning suggestion. Submit your winning suggestion to Editor Tom Farmer, tfarmer@pitsco.com, P.O. Box 1708, Pittsburg, KS 66762.

If you’re ever at a loss when brainstorming ideas for a fund-raiser, take a few minutes to look around your Pitsco lab. Possibilities abound – just ask Walt Jones.

The Sunrise Ridge Intermediate School Facilitator has 15 Pitsco Modules in his spacious classroom/ shop, and his constant stream of creativity could yield 15 different money-making ideas. But when asked to come up with a product his students could produce for a school sale to benefit students in an African school adopted by Sunrise Ridge, he looked first at the Horticulture Module.

“I looked around to see what I had, and I had plants from Horticulture,” Jones said. “Growing up in agriculture myself, I was interested in growing some things and experimenting.”

Using a few items from the Horticulture Module and purchasing Styrofoam cups, soil, and seeds, Jones and his students created a mini greenhouse near the Module workstation that yielded enough seedlings to bring in a tidy profit at the school’s “African Market” in 2011.

This year, the principal asked him to do it again with the proceeds benefitting the needy right here in the US. So, students with experience at Horticulture and those just interested in helping when they completed another Module, pitched in to plant tulips (sold out by early February), three varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, and peppers.

“I suspect we’ll make several hundred dollars this year,” Jones said, adding that students get a thrill out of nurturing the plants and watching them grow.