WHITEHALL, Mich. — Shoreline Elementary in Whitehall has installed a new hoop house meant to help teach students about gardening year-round.
Volunteers and educators worked together Tuesday to construct the gardening building - an opportunity made possible through a roughly $350,000 grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.
"The goal of the grant really is to create healthy environments for kids so students, just being in our schools, get healthier," said Dan Gorman, who serves as the grant coordinator for Creating Healthy Schools Muskegon County and as food service director for Montague Area Public Schools and North Muskegon Public Schools. "Because we have them for 13 years, and we really want to build those environments."
"I think what we really have the opportunity to do is we're going to build a sustainable system, and we have the leadership, and we have the the boots on the ground," Gorman said.
The full grant amount is being distributed among least five districts in Muskegon County. At Shoreline, the hoop house means year-round garden and outdoor learning for students, even during the winter months.
"Our garden and our hoop house and eventually our outside classroom in the woods is going to be the base of that because this is a K-2 building," Shoreline Principal Beth Whaley said. "And so we're going to start it here and grow these kids up loving nature and loving our Earth and figuring out how to be healthy and keep our Earth healthy."
With their garden and food literacy instructors like Lynn DeVlieg already involved in Shoreline students' learning, the building, coordinators said, only expands on efforts to teach kids about healthy living.
"We bring food into the classroom to teach them about fruits and vegetables, local fruits and vegetables, seasonal foods that that allow them to then, when they go to the cafeteria, be able to recognize that food and choose foods that are good for their bodies and they're familiar with," DeVlieg said.
An effort that, thanks in part to this funding, DeVlieg said will have lifelong impacts on the next generation.
"So, this helps them build a relationship with that food. And hopefully, they'll keep that for the rest of their lives to help nourish their bodies," DeVlieg said.