Unionville Elementary School is growing something new.
You can see it when you stop by the school: Trays full of seedlings sprouting on classroom windowsills. Potatoes growing roots in cups of water. Large shelves bearing gardening tools and seed packets near the back door. Teachers and students holding class outside, on the hill, by the garden boxes, under the sheltered “learning lab” on the playground and in the miniature amphitheater with wooden benches by the pond. Students planting flowers and vegetables, or watching and sketching the trees, writing their observations in science notebooks.
While schools across the country emphasize STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — Unionville staff are rolling out a new curriculum of their own. They call it EARTH: Environment, Art, Resources, Technology and Health. The curriculum is heavily inspired by STEM but brings in elements of Unionville’s natural, rural surroundings.
As other MCCSC schools have added special school-wide programs — Fairview’s performing arts program, Grandview’s STEM certification, Summit and Clear Creek’s dual-language immersion programs — principal Lily Albright wanted to highlight what Unionville had to offer as well.
After much brainstorming and reviewing their school’s unique assets, the idea for EARTH emerged.
“It really covered everything we’d been discussing, and all of those topics and strands were able to be packaged in this easy-to-understand acronym,” she said.
In many ways, the curriculum harnesses things Unionville has been doing for years. They compost and recycle in the school cafeteria, use the outdoor spaces often and go for hikes on Unionville’s 18 acres. The fishing club catches fish in the school’s pond from a little dock built for class purposes. They use different kinds of art, including quilting, to visually represent what they’re learning. The school teaches digital citizenship and coding, as well as healthy living and good lifestyle choices.
EARTH puts a renewed focus on those elements, increases the number of science experiences and puts an outdoor, environmental twist on it all.