System Completed at the bronx writing accademy!

Thats it! The system at the Bronx Writing Academy is completed!

In the past 3 weeks we have been building 2 hydroponic system using mainly re-purposed material with a group of student at the Bronx Writing Academy. We had a slow start the first week with 6 students in the classroom, but the students are enjoying it, so each week there was a couple more students joining the class. This week, we had 10 out of the 12 students who signed up in the apprenticeship!

In the past 4 weeks, we have learned how to use some tools (hand drill, screw diver, woodworking square, ect ...), we also learned the basic ideas that explains how an hydro/aquaponic system works, and how plants use water, CO2 and sunlight to produce sugars. We also learned about Ron Findley, a Los Angelino who started to grow food on sidewalks and explain his story in a TED talk.

The students have build these system (with guidance of course) and today they where pretty exited to see that we were going to be done by the end of the day. We installed hooks to hold the grow towers, we unpacked and cut tubing for the pump, installed the pump, and planted lettuce, cilantro and parsley seedlings. We finally tested the system and adjusted the pipes to make sure water was going into both towers. Some of the student took their cellphones out and started
filming the system! We then added the fertilizers to the systems!
By the end, we were ready to get the systems to the roof. there it went !

Only one thing is not 100% great, the school decided to not allow the system to be on the roof, after we set it there, I will have to go and remove it on Friday. Instead, the system will be put in a classroom used for small meetings, as close to the window as possible. The window is oriented to the west. I am yet to know whether we will be allowed to have supplemental lighting for It.

We will see how many of the seedlings need to be replaced ! (on Saturday it was snowing in NYC so I am not sure the seedlings had liked that.

*** I will add some pics of the students working as soon as I processed the video to extract a few snapshots.

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Hydro vermi Ponic Bronx Writing Academy

Since last fall, I have been volunteering for Citizen Schools as a Citizen Teacher (that how they call us volunteers). By the end of the fall semester, I proposed (because some student showed interest) an apprenticeship to learn about - build - and grow  hydroponically plants. Earlier this week was the first meeting to organize the apprenticeship and meet with the school teacher that will accompanying me (us if i find a another volunteer within the next few days).

*** If you are interested in volunteering - or know someone, let me know! even if you have little experience your help will be appreciated ****

Citizen Schools is a non profit dedicated in bringing educational opportunities to middle schools in low income neighbourhoods. For example, Wednesday night, Ive learned that the Bronx Writing Academy, the public school where I volunteer in Bronx, NY, have 92% of their student receiving free lunch because of the incredibly low income of their parents. Overall, the goal is to pull up these children who have reading skills 2 years below there more fortunate peers, which is not only due to the fact that 30% of them are English learners because another language is spoken at home (mostly Spanish, and to a lower extend Arabic and French). While the students have big hurdles to go over, they are motivated to learn. Last semester experience was awesome, we did the WOW! at NYU Langone Medical Center and they where impressive. Not only the students show a real interest in learning. Ok - They still are kids, some with behaviour problems- but that does not mean they dont want to learn. And its not anywhere else that once could hear "Mr. Benjamin, you are my favorite teacher !" Lol!
Next week will be the pitch - which consists in going around the school and pitching your apprenticeship for 3 minutes to the students, so they can choose one of the apprenticeships, I hope that the students that said to me "can we do that?" last semester will sign up!. After that, the apprenticeship will start ! - by the way the title (not official yet) is "A revolution : grow food in the city." During the first 3 weeks, after a brief introduction, we will build 2 systems. Each 
will be made of a 6 gallon food safe pail as the sump tank, a halfed 6 gallon pail as grow bed, and the grow media will be made of shredded water bottle (if I can collect enough of them). The system will be supported by a frame made of reclaimed wood from a futon sofa, and some pallet wood if necessary. We will also have on each a tower from BrightAgrotech in each. The only difference between the 2 systems will be the source of plant nutrients. One will be fed using a commercially available nutrient solution, following the instructions, the second will be fed with compost tea, and if necessary, ammonia. The compost tea will be made out of worm compost. The worm compost will come from another bucket with worms fed with coffee every week.

We hope that the kids will be able to learn about the science behind the systems, will learn a bit of the almost "scientific method" and, will be able to express their sensitive and artistic side if they desire. But more importantly, I hope that they will understand and learn that not all trash is to be discarded, but that a lot can be done to use garbage as a worthy resource to build things, grow food and ect ... 
Every week, the students will record info about plant growth, aspect and nutrient level. They will also fill a journal where they will write a few sentences about what they did, how did it go and how did that make them feel. In the last 2 weeks, we will prepare for the WOW! which will be taking the system outside and presenting - showing it to the community, other students and ect ... Also during these last 2 weeks, the students will go over their notes and prepare a blog post reflecting their experience during the apprenticeship. This post will be given to Green Thumb, the association without which the project may not have been as exiting. I also want to offer the students who want to express their artistic side a safe space to do so, I hope that if one want to write a narrative about our project, or a song, we will be able to publish it on Green thumbs blog, and more importantly to display it to the community.
At the end of the Wow! the students will be able to take their share of the food home if they want to, and their share of the composting worm (if the parents are ok!). The system will stay at the school - hoping to be used again and again !
The green thumb grant will be used to buy materials we cant get for free, the pumps, some tools, the commercial grow towers, and maybe for a trip at one of the New York City farms. A non-profit is behing created to be able to receive this check, I sent the paperwork to reserve the name "Chfermette", then in a few days I should be able to open a bank account and start buying the material we need. I guess The non-profit will also be able to receive donations, which would be used to build more systems for the school and teach sustainability and healthy habits in undeserved schools.

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Earth day Hangout with JT Bear at the Bronx Writing Academy

This afternoon was quite a day at the Bronx Writing academy!
After watching and discussing what earth day is/means, we had a hangout session with JT Bear. JT Bear is a gentle man from the west cost of Canada, who has youtube channel where he talks about his aquaponic set-up without hiding the problems he runs into.
We had a great time ! the students where a bit shy at the beginning, but they started to show what they had built, from top to bottom, explaining how the water flows from the bucket to the towers, as well as the difference between how on system is fed using store bought fertilizer and the other using compost tea. They showed in detail the different plants growing in the system : lettuce, spinach,"cabage" (actually Swiss chard), basil, cilantro, parsley, basil, and strawberries.

They then asked a few question to JT Bear about what he grows and why. They also asked if he was a cowboy ! JT Bear was a great sport and entertained the conversation with the students, going back and forth between subjects about our project, but also digression of video games and other.
The best question -I think - (from the questions "on point") was :
"Do you know what day it is today ? EARTH DAY !"
The students shared some of the thoughts about what we are doing to help preserve the environment. As one of the student say, by planting plants we help producing oxygen, and take carbon dioxide from the air. We also recycled salvaged wood and soysauce buckets, as well as made a worm composting bucket.

We finally ended the conversation and the excitement was palpable!

THANK YOU Mr. BEAR !

Finally couple of photos of the compost tea system on the left, and the "conventional" system on the right.


Thank you again!

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Building an aquaponic vermiponic system for a middle school in the Bronx

Demonstrating CPR at the Bronx Writing Accademy for students
A preview of  the engagement of the students next semester

This is exiting !  Citizen Schools, a non profit dedicated to extend learning hours in low income schools,  will allow me to create a 11 week apprenticeship centred on hydro-ponics! Even better, we were able to get a 500$ grant from Green Thumb for the apprenticeship!

I am looking for a couple of volunteers to help out. If anyone is interested in volunteering, please contact me though my google+ account or through the comment section.

The idea of the apprenticeship came up because of one of the students during this semesters apprenticeship at the Bronx Writing Academy ( the apprenticeship is called "Future Physicians" and we are preparing the students to present clinical cases for several cardiac diseases as if they would be MDs). The day the idea was born, we were talking about how food and environment can influence cardiac diseases using the NYC community survey maps. One of these maps shows that some places in NYC, including the Bronx, have much lower access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Since we were talking about food, we also pointed out how a lot of fruit and veggies are not "as good" as we think, because they were coming from sometimes very far like Florida, California or Mexico. I also mentioned that in NYC there are people who are trying to grow food in the city. One of the students said "Ho! we should do that!". Thats how the idea was born. We then visited Taqwa Community Gardens in Bronx, where one of the person there told us bout the Earth Savers Club and Green Thumb.

Because of the grant we will be able to build 2 "  "ponics, compare the growth, and present the system and results to the community at the end of the 11 weeks. On system will be an hydroponic system, the second will be a "teaponics" system - hence my experimenting at home. We will build the system out of 5 gallons pails collected from a local restaurant that will be used as grow beds and water reservoir. This pails will only be food safe pails (soy sauce, pickles and other). We plan on using shredded water bottles (PE - not polycarbonate) and milk bottles (as they also are food safe) for grow-media. Since the pieces of bottles will float, we plan on using another re-purposed material : pillow/comforter polyester fluff as a netting to keep the media in place. Additionally, since we got the 500$ grant, we may get a couple of commercially available grow towers, for comparison.

We will try to understand the basic physics, chemistry and biology behind a "  "ponic system. We will also introduce the notions of sustainability - in the particular case of food- and try to understand the balance between the cost of growing food locally and far away (in my neighborhood groceries store the very large majority of the fruits and veggies are coming from Mexico all year round). For the students who are more inclined to arts I want to encourage them to write poem, short stories or songs, or drawing painting to show at the WOW!

The program will culminate with the presentation of the system to the community around the school to show as many people in the neighborhood as possible what hydroponics look like and explain how it can be started for a low cost. We hope to get the authorization from the school to do that in front of the school in the little lawn with the flag-post so passer buy can be engaged.

""By the 6th grade, students from underserved communities still average 6,000 fewer hours of learning time than their middle-income peers. You can level the playing field by teaching an apprenticeship this spring. Teach a new and improved version of your last apprenticeship or try something entirely different. Sign up here."" From a citizen school communication

Cant wait to start building it and see how it grows!

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Bronx Writing accademy hydroponics in the news !

This week was quite exiting: the local Bronx news Chanel took an interest in our project. Wednesday, a journalist came to the class and did some filming and interviewed a few students. The students where actually quite amazing as they kept "business as usual" passed the first few moments of excitement after seeing the camera.

A quick shot during the class

The news post (click to read)

The TV broadcast:

EXITING !

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Quick update on the Bronx Writing Academy Project

The construction is almost over ! in the last 2 weeks, we built 2 frames to hold the grow-beds using re-purposed wood from a futon, an old build-in cabined, and a bed frame, and placed the half buckets in it. 
The apprenticeship has 12 student signed up, we started with 6 student the first week, then 8, and last Wednesday we had 10 students. So I think we can call that a success
! students are coming in increasing numbers! Her are some picts of students hard at work !


And the almost finished product!

Just one thing missing besides the media and the plants: the grow media!

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Hydroponic at the Bronx Writing Academy be prepared to be WOWed by 11years old kids

Last week ## edit  now already 3 weeks ago## of the project with the Bronx Writing Academy and Citizen Schools was quite eventful!

A student taking interest in her schoolmates accomplishments

This last week was the WOW! The WOW! Is the culmination of the programs that Citizen Schools offers, and plays out in a unique show, product or showcase by the students. For the Hydroponic apprenticeship, the WOW! was planned to be a public showcase, right in front of the school, to show the community what the students had accomplished.

We started by taking the last measurement for the plants, and finishing the graphs showing the growth of the lettuce and the cilantro. Then the "fun" began, moving the systems from the 3rd floor classroom, down to the street. By fun, I mean the kids had fun spilling the water from the system, and Amrita, the schoolteacher, and I had the fun of apologizing to the janitor. It was a bit of commotion but at the end, everything -the 2 systems, the posters crafted by the students, a couple of tables, and flyers- was taken down to the front of the school, reassembled, and ready to showcase!

Student explains how they recorded the plant growth

A local taking time to ask questions of the students work

The system was positioned right in from of the school, in the triangular section of grass where the flag post is (and a couple of raised bed that were planted last week or so). We asked the kids to try to talks to the passer by, and get their interest up, to bring them by the system. After a few shy attempts, a few of the students became bolder and started to bring people over, and zealously presented their work, the system, the plants growing in it, the nitrogen cycle and etc...
We had planned a quick conversation with JT Bear so give him an update and show our set up, the kids where happy to show their work (again) they have accomplished. They showed around the plants, called the basil lettuce (;-) and commented on the posters they had made. MANY THANKS AGAIN TO JT BEAR!

To be honest I was a bit weary on how it would turn-up, the week en before, I went to the few community gardens I knew about in the neighborhood, and "advertised" the WOW! To try to get some of the community garden member to come up. I was not sure if that was the right strategy, as they first responded by saying how they would be happy to show their garden around. To be fair though, these community gardeners have jobs, and therefore my not be able to show up. So I was happily surprised when I recognized a member of these community gardens. I was even happier to see that not only middle schooler leaving the school took an interest in their schoolmates work, but also members of the community from all ages. It was quite nice also (personally) to have a few people walking up to the kids and shaking their hands congratulating them on their work.

We finally brought everything back up, for a "end of project" wrap-up, including some awards for the students that did the most progress, and showed the most interest.

This was a great experience, and I hope it can keep going in the fall, but at this point I do not know yet if it will be possible. In the mean time, I found a restaurant owner that agreed to allow me to put the system in his patio area, so plants can keep growing over the summer. So I will keep recording what is going on in the comparison fertilizer vs compost tea over the summer. Also the herbs produced will be shared with the restaurant.

Finally, Many thanks to (not in order):Agnieszka Tuszynska (my lovely partner who was supporting the idea from day one), Amrita Kalsa (BWA teacher) , Alex Black, Maddie Oliver,Morayo Faleyimu, Molly Cohen and Katerine Mott (Citizen schools) , JT Bear, Bronx Writing Academy and his director Kasmar Samuels , Greening Forward and Margarita Vigodner (My boss). 

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Bronx Writing Academy Students journals

During the spring project, Amrita (Bronx Writing Academy teacher) and I asked the group of 6 grade students to write a few lines after each session summarizing what they have done, how they felt and what they think on that day.
Here are a few excerpt form the notebooks.


3/11/15
Today we were building the frame. I learned how to measure the center [on the piece of wood we used to build the frame]. I drew a X on the wood, the center of the X is the center. I like how we made the legs of the machine [frame], this will make it stand up. Sebastian

We are building a sort of table to grow the plants in hydroponics. One thing I liked is that we build
stuff to grow plants like flowers and roses, and strawberry. Ismael 

I lined up with the X with a and d so the screw can go in it [a and d were 2 piece of the frame for the system, the X was to mark the center of the piece of wood]. I also drilled a hole. Jarik

The thing I like about today is building because using lots of force and you are using lots of strength you will get tired but also strong. Abraham

 3/18/18
 Today, we learned how a man planted in the streets of LA. [the man is Ron Finley, who started a movement to use the sidewalk to grow food in LA]Sebastian

3/25/15
Today I learned how the system worked. I helped put the tubes. We planted our food. Sebastian

I learned about how plants grow, I also learned how to measure the watering tower. I liked seeing the water make the plants grow. Corey

I learned that soil is worm poop. I also see that with water [we can] grow lots of plants. I and [the class] also created a growing system. Franklyn 

I learned that if soils goes though the pipes, the it gets dirty. Also I like helping make something for everyone.  Nichalos

Something I like today as I went to the roof. [the system was installed temporarily on a protected part of the school roof]. And I also learned how to plant different plants in ways I never imagined. Abraham

4/1/15
We learned how a worm can interact [with the plants growing in the soil, or in our hydroponic system]. I likes making them a home. I helped make food for the worms. Sebastian


What i liked today was drill [holes in the worm bin]. I learned about worms and how the live. What I like as holding the worms. Corey

I want the feel the worm again. I learned that there are things inside the worms, like blood. I like how [the worm] tickled me. Franklyn

Today I learned that worms dont like the light. I like looking for the worms. Stiven

I draw worms and cocoons. I learned that [some animals] can breath without a nose. Tyrone

4/16/15
I learned that ammonia is in urine. I liked that there is 2 separate bacteria that transforms ammonia into plant food. I want to to the experiment with the colored chemicals [ammonia, nitrite and nitrate colorimetric tests]. Elizabeth 

I learned about chemical formula. I like chemistry about the substances [that feed the plants]. Franklyn

I learned that ammonia is toxic to the fish, meaning it can kill it. Ammonia is something that you produce. I liked to learn about the nitrification. Nichalos

4/23/15
Earth day, special Guest JT Bear (aquaponic practitioner) :

You can do the 3 Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle)
Factories and littering is hurting the earth
We recycled / reused the [soy sauce] buckets for the system.
I was proud to show him my future job. We use a complex system to grow plants. Sebastian


It helps to speak out opinions about the environment / pollution. Elizabeth

 What we could do the preserve the earth is stop littering and [release] too much carbon [dioxide].  Whats destroying the earth is pollution in factory. We make hydroponic system and grow plants. The hydroponic system is how to grow plants out of recycled things. I am proud I told JT about the hydroponic system. Corey M.

We plant plants or trees to produce O2 and soil. Franklyn

One thing I can do the preserve the earth is to make more plants. To help people eat healthy by making more plants using a hydroponic system that provides water and nutients to the plants [from composted food waste]. Abraham

4/29/15
I liked doing the experiment with the vegetables. I learned how to measure plants. Ismael.

I measure how long the plants grew. I liked seeing the salt turn into liquid [on that day we did an experiment where we put salt in the center of a fresh potato and compared it to a cooked potato, to show how osmosis happens only if the vegetable is alive]. I want to do this again, and learn about the inside parts of the carrots.  Franklyn


The last 3 meeting of the group of students was dedicated preparing the wow. We did not take the time to write in the notebooks.








After the Wow, A local restaurant kindly accepted to "oversummer" the system, with the new school year starting, we will continue the program at the Bronx Writing Academy.

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