January 14, 2025
By BARTON HENLEY
Rutherford County Schools
Students at Stewartsboro Elementary will soon be getting their hands dirty in the pursuit of learning about gardening and sustainability.
The school was recently selected for a $5,000 Battelle Education TSIN/STEMx STEM Classroom Grants, sponsored by TVA and BVI.
Stewartsboro STEM teacher Katelyn Ross applied for the grant, and the school was chosen out of more than 650 applicants.
“This funding will provide the students at STE an opportunity to learn about sustainability and gardening,” Ross said. We will have the funds to build multiple raised garden beds with 3 season protection. Our students will have the unique opportunity of planting seeds and caring for these plants all the way to harvest.”
Ross hopes the students will be able to learn about sustainability of the earth throughout this project.
“We experience waste every day,” Ross said. “This grant will allow us to teach our students how to care for the environment and use the things we would normally throw away to further nurture the ground. While our team was in discussion about the benefits a garden would provide our students, we began to discuss waste that we experience at our homes and even at the school. This garden and composting project will allow us to teach students about food waste and how certain materials can be used to nurture the earth, and thus provide our community with the nutrition that it needs.”
The TSIN STEM Classroom Grant Program, sponsored by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in partnership with Bicentennial Volunteers Incorporated (BVI, a TVA retiree organization), is designed to fund STEM learning projects in classrooms and schools in the TVA service area across the Tennessee Valley. The application seeks classroom- or school-level STEM projects designed to support initiatives that advance STEM activities in the classroom, and to develop a talent pipeline for TVA and its customers.
For more information on this grant, go to https://www.tsin.org/classroom-grants.