Reaching All Minds (RAM) Academy, a K-8 Title 1 STEM public charter school located in East Durham, proposes the “Expanding the Harvest: Building a Hoop House” project. This project will assemble a hoop house on our campus that will be designed and built by students and used to teach students and community members about growing produce.

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Reaching All Minds Academy serves 395 students, 93% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. We are located in an area that is considered by the USDA to be a food desert1, severely limiting our students’ access to fresh produce and healthy grocery options. We have a Mobile Greenhouse (a decommissioned school bus that has been converted into a greenhouse) that we have used to teach our students about growing their own fruits and vegetables. Additionally, our Middle School students are trained in how to run the Mobile Greenhouse and act as the teachers (called Student Ambassadors) to our neighbors when the Bus is taken to community events and other schools. While this tool is excellent for taking the learning to our community and providing students an opportunity for hands-on learning, the overall number of plants that can be grown is incredibly limited.

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Our vision is to add produce distribution to our Mobile Greenhouse, so that when our students teach community members to grow carrots, for example, the community members can take fresh carrots home with them immediately. In this way, RAM Academy will be helping our students leverage their learning to help feed our community and counteract the impacts of the food desert we are positioned within. In order to do this, we need a way to grow produce on a larger scale and have the ability to grow for a longer period of time each season. We propose building a hoop house on our campus to achieve this goal. The hoop house will be designed and constructed by our Middle School students as part of their AgriScience class. Students will adopt this as their Spring 2025 semester long project, working on it for an hour daily throughout the remainder of the school year. Students will research the best architecture for the hoop house, drawing their own blueprints based on the information they have collected. Once a final design has been determined, students will work with our AgriScience teacher and Facilities team to construct the hoop house. Students will learn to use the tools necessary to create the structure (measuring tape, hammers,rubber mallets, staple gun, etc.) under the guidance of our Facilities team. Students will then build the hoop house on our campus.

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Once completed by our Middle School students, our K-5 students will plant vegetables and fruit inside the hoop house. Their AgriScience coursework will teach them how to properly plant produce seeds and to care for the plants to ensure they thrive. Students will be responsible for maintaining the plants and harvesting the produce that grows. Students in grades 5-8 will use the produce grown as materials in their AgriScience class, learning how to prepare meals with each item. In this way, students will know how to eat the items they’re growing and gain an appreciation for fresh produce. We have found that this is a challenge faced by our families. Due to the lack of regular access to fresh produce, our students and their families don’t always know what to do with produce items when they do have them. This leads to fruits and vegetables being thrown away, rather than served. By providing this knowledge, we can overcome the barrier of families avoiding or throwing away produce items simply because they don’t recognize them or know how to cook them.

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Ultimately, the hoop house will help us to complete the following objectives:

1. Lengthenthegrowingtimeavailableforproduceinourarea;

2. Allowstudentshands-onlearningexperiencesinbuildingthestructureand

   maintaining the gardens inside it;

3. Providefreshproducetoourstudentsandcommunitymembers;

4. Expandtheknowledgeofhowtogrowandcookproducetoourfood-desert

   impacted community; and

5. Empowerstudentstosharetheirexpertiseastheyteachthecommunityfromour

   Mobile Greenhouse Bus.

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At Reaching All Minds Academy, our mission is to prepare students to become productive citizens with the skills needed to solve complex problems, think critically, exhibit positive social competencies, and to function in a highly technological and global society. By engaging in project-based and hands-on learning, students will be prepared to pursue STEM related careers and become lifelong learners. We have a strong history of fulfilling this mission as evidenced by the expansion of our STEM course to a full AgriScience curriculum and department; investing resources to create the Mobile Greenhouse and ten community gardens on our campus; and creating a Student Ambassador program to empower students as teachers for their community.

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The addition of a hoop house to our campus and educational resources would allow us to provide not only additional learning experiences for our students but also allow for the improvement of our entire community. The extended growing season and additional volume of produce made possible by the hoop house would enable us to effectively share our knowledge and fresh produce beyond the confines of our campus.