BHS art teacher Jo Svaren has long planned to do “something special” with an enclosed plaza on the BHS campus located between the high school and middle school buildings.  The patch of ground has no external access, and most visitors to the schools have no idea that it even exists.  The space was a haven for wild flowers, weeds and brush until this week, when heavy equipment moved in to level the surface for reconstruction.

 

A grant from Central Minnesota Jobs and Training Services is funding a crew of 12 students in a service learning program who will work on the project to learn basic skills in learning horticulture and landscaping skills.  According to program coordinator Michelle Kocak-Jones, the program will focus on workplace skills and attitudes, responsibility, interacting with others, basic academics, habits of wellness and planning for success.

 

Kocak-Jones, a special education teacher in Monticello, MN, said the program has worked with a number of other local agencies in the past, including the Sherburne Soil and Water Conservation District and the City of Becker.  Students participating in the program can also earn school credits, and will acquire basic living skills relating to menu planning, nutrition information, calculating shopping quantities and food preparation resulting in creating healthy meals.  The program uses a text titled “Rubrics I: A Guide for Managing the Transition from School to the Real World”.

 

Svaren envisions an area that will allow classes to meet outdoors at certain times of the year.  The overall site plan, designed by Joe Rand, will include plantings of river birch, aspen, apple and plum trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes and fieldstone walkways.

 

The first phase of the program will continue for three weeks, Svaren said, and students and other volunteers will maintain the space in the coming years.