Albert S. Hall School in Waterville, Maine had its fifth grade project attacked when the children's growing onions were robbed right at the time of harvesting. Half of the collected vegetables were going to be donated to the local homeless shelter, while the other half was going to be given to the school's kitchen to make lunches for the children in the cafeteria.
The 10-year olds had been working on the project since last spring, and their teacher, Mary Dunn, had made her class note last week that the tops were all dried, so she told them they would harvest the yellow onions on the Tuesday after Labor Day. However, when they arrived to the school garden on Tuesday, they discovered the entire produce had been stolen - the whole bed of one hundred onions.
The project of fifth graders working on vegetable crops in the school is part of a 5 year-old on-growing program created by Ms. Dunn and supported by the community. However, this was the first time that part of the produce was going to the homeless shelter, local newspaper Bangor Daily News reported. The children and their parents had watered and weeded the garden throughout the summer.
The school has put forth gardening in the curriculum to get the children to know what they're eating, how to grow their own food and to teach them to eat better - plus, as their teacher said, so they know what it is they're eating. Another food-preparing objective the students have been following is turning cucumbers into pickles.
However sad it may be for the children to have seen their hard work go to waste - one of the fifth graders even said it was "kind of depressing" -, Ms. Dunn has managed to turn this into a life lesson for them, by emphasizing how important it is to work together when things don't go as planned.
