Hambright Elementary School students have recently been learning about environmental topics, and the school received an award for some of its efforts.

The school has added a community garden to its campus, representing a joint effort of the staff, students and PTO members; The Edible Classroom; local businesses; and students and teachers at Penn Manor High School (PMHS).

The project began last year when Hambright PTO member Lauren Weaver met with Grace Julian, co-founder of The Edible Classroom, a nonprofit that provides gardening classes to students at area schools, including Conestoga, Central Manor and Eshleman elementaries. A Hambright Garden Team was formed, and staff members and parents began soliciting donations and holding fundraisers, including a recent Bingo Night at Hambright.

Local businesses donated various materials for the garden, and a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture paid for additional items. PMHS students in Mary Wurzbach's Introduction to Agricultural Mechanics classes built the garden beds. On March 16, all Hambright students helped to fill the garden beds with soil.

Every classroom at Hambright was slated to participate in two lessons led by Edible Classroom instructors this spring. Students and staff members planned to plant tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, and carrots, along with some unusual crops, including dinosaur kale, dragon tongue beans, and jelly melon. Students have been documenting the progress of the garden on a school website, and many of the crops will be harvested before the end of the school year. At a school family event on April 14, students painted signs to identify the crops.

Hambright has been named a 2023 Watershed School of Excellence by the Pennsylvania Association of Environmental Educators for its efforts to teach students about the impact of watersheds on the environment. Hambright was praised for "providing student-centered learning experiences that engage students through hands-on investigation of local environmental issues," and teachers were hailed as "passionate, determined, and innovative educators."

Fourth-grade teachers Bradley Showalter and Katherine Harnish accepted the award on behalf of Hambright at a ceremony in March. Both teachers, along with Kelley Groff and Ay'Shia Gaston, completed watershed education training in 2021 through a partnership with Millersville University, Virginia Wesleyan University, and Norfolk Collegiate School.

At Hambright, teachers incorporate lessons about watersheds - land areas that channel rainfall and snowmelt to creeks, streams, rivers, and, eventually, the ocean - in their classes. Students learn how to identify a watershed and how water moves within these areas. They also study the Hambright campus and use a computer simulation to determine how surface changes would improve the watershed.

Additional activities have included conducting studies of water quality and aquatic macroinvertebrates in a local creek, painting storm drains to let people know that only rainwater should go down the drains, conducting a litter cleanup, and creating a public awareness campaign about littering, raising trout from eggs and releasing them to local waterways, and learning how to reduce water waste.