Rare Partnership is Planted

It was just a seed of an idea… build a greenhouse, ask seasoned gardeners how to grow vegetables, and then give the produce to the local food pantry.
But Principal Jake Chung and the staff at Herbert Hoover Elementary School in Schaumburg have a vision far beyond the glass panels of a single greenhouse. Hoover School is seeking approval to become a Math and Science Academy in July 2010 and is beginning its community partnerships with a nearby senior living community, Friendship Village of Schaumburg.
“The involvement of Friendship Village’s residents is very important to the success of this initiative,” Chung says. “We are very pleased that so many of them will be part of the children’s experience.”
Friendship Village’s Go Green and Garden clubs will partner one-on-one with students to help them grow vegetables organically, and its woodworking shop will help students design and build shelves and growing apparatus. On top of that, Friendship Village’s Land Stewardship Committee will help develop the grounds immediately surrounding the greenhouse.

Altogether, Hoover’s greenhouse project will begin with about 10 volunteers from Friendship Village. Dozens more are expected to participate in the program in some way as opportunities surface. Currently, Friendship Village, a Continuing Care Retirement Community, is home to about 1,000 adults 62 and older.
Jeannette Magdelano, Lifelong Learning Coordinator is organizing the Friendship Village effort for this project. She will be assembling the volunteers in the coming weeks. She said, “We are really excited about this partnership. Not only is it intergenerational but it will really help the children grow in the field of science. We see this growing in the coming years with residents becoming more and more involved with the program. We all believe the sky is the limit to this initiative.”
Hoover Elementary School and Friendship Village residents are planning to meet in April to brainstorm ideas for the greenhouse and then enjoy pizza together. Some of the seniors already volunteer in classrooms at the school, which has 550 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
While the first greenhouse will be built with a $5,000 grant from the Schaumburg Township Elementary School Foundation, the Hoover staff have applied for six other grants to create additional greenhouses, purchase equipment such as a time-release camera to watch the garden grow, and buy solar panels and many other tools to make the Math and Science Academy one of the best in the nation.
“The first greenhouse is an important step toward the success of the Math and Science Academy program,” Chung explains. “Every child in the school will touch this program in one way or another. Since the Academy will not be open prior to the graduation of the current fifth- and sixth-graders, we will bring them into the project first.”
“We know that many friendships will be built between the children and the seniors. We look forward to seeing what they learn from each other and how they will problem-solve when things don’t turn out as expected, and to the many funny, loving and interesting experiences they will no doubt build together,” he says.