Alayna Signorello (2019 TRRE Graduate) has a love for outdoor education. She is in her second year of teaching at Warren Village School in Warren, NH, which is a part of the Haverhill School Administrative Unit 23. After teaching fifth grade her first year, Alayna moved to a third-grade classroom. Rumor has it Alayna single handedly refurbished the school’s playground this fall. Thanks to a Celia B. Gosil Grants in Place Fellow award through Rural Schools Collaborative, Alayna’s on to her next project to improve the school’s greenhouse.
The Warren Village School greenhouse requires repairs. As structure plainly visible on the campus not currently utilized, the greenhouse occasionally raises questions among students and community members about its’ purpose. Warren, NH is a small, rural town where many families depend food services provided through a school lunch company and, subsequently, some students have little exposure to the original source of their food.
According to Alayna, “students in my third-grade class are fascinated by plants and the natural world and they care deeply about their small school community.” Rehabbing and refurbishing the greenhouse will engage her class in learning math, literacy, science, and engineering, research to select plants, and the skills and economics of working in a greenhouse. The community and classroom will be connected through the work of producing food. Third graders may become educators for students in other grades, giving greenhouse tours, talking to others about their project, and sharing their produce with the school.
Alayna’s third-grade class will facilitate basic repairs of the greenhouse at Warren Village School and arrange for installation a new heating and ventilation system to prepare it for four-season use. The grant funds will also be used to supply soil, seeds, seed trays and pots for use to grow food crops. New benches, an energy source for heat, and thermometers will provide the means to make the greenhouse well-suited for its intended purpose. The long-term goals of the greenhouse restoration project are to engage students in learning about the food resource needs of the local community, share the produce with the school and wider community, and be a centralized location for multi-grade level exploratory education curriculum about plants and produce. It will also serve as a platform for learning about global food needs and supply chains, and the effect of climate on food production, connecting our school to the global context.
The Grants in Place Fellowship through Rural Schools Collaborative is funded through the support from Celia and Mark Gosil in honor of Celia’s career as a public-school teacher and their belief in the importance of teachers to rural communities. As one of nine 2020-2021 Celia B. Gosil Grants in Place Fellow recipients, Alayna was awarded funds to support her place-based project, but the award also funds a professional development presentation and an honorarium.
TRRE’s focus local context and using community resources and connections to further students’ education, the emphasis on the importance of elementary science education, as well as a love for and desire to contribute to New Hampshire, were factors that led Alayna to choose the program for her M.Ed. and NH teacher certification. During her residency, Alayna identified her ideal school experience as being in a small school that is the center of the community and the heart of the town. The Warren Village School greenhouse project is evidence of Alayna’s passion for community, outdoor education, experiential learning, facilitating kid’s natural curiosity and drive to learn. We may be biased here at TRRE, but we think she’s making a big difference at Warren Village School.
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