{"id":12802,"date":"2018-03-05T16:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T00:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=12802"},"modified":"2018-03-22T08:19:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T15:19:05","slug":"student-passion-projects-push-for-connections-with-local-community-and-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/student-passion-projects-push-for-connections-with-local-community-and-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Passion Projects Push for Connections with Local Community and Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"
Social Innovation Leadership Sabbaticals, a 2017 LRNG Innovators Challenge grantee in Antioch, TN, provides the space and resources for students to pursue their wild ideas, revealing a desire to do work that connects and contributes to the local community and local environment.<\/em><\/p>\n Something was wrong: the pumpkins were dying. Some sort of fungus had infected most of the field, and no one was sure what it was, let alone what to do about it. The man in charge, middle school teacher Jay Renfro, was as clueless as his students about how to proceed, but luckily this was no ordinary class assignment. <\/p>\n The students, determined to save the pumpkins that they had put so much time, energy, and learning into growing all summer, sprung into action. Soon, one of them had identified the fungus and found a cost-effective, organic way to treat it: milk. A few days later, armed with several gallons of milk that the school cafeteria had been about to throw out, the students were back in the field, rescuing their crop. \u201cI don\u2019t know how they thought of that but it worked! It was awesome!\u201d Renfro says.<\/p>\n This pumpkin project was only the first in a series of interest-driven Social Innovation Leadership Sabbaticals, one of 10 projects across the country supported by a 2017 LRNG Innovators Challenge<\/a> grant. The project, housed at Knowledge Academies in Antioch, TN, a community just south of Nashville, aims to give groups of students and teachers the time and support they need to pursue ideas and interests that might otherwise get lost in the broader curriculum, sparking the learning and connections that deep interest and ownership create. \u201cDuring the normal school year you cover so many topics, but sometimes there\u2019s one where it\u2019s like, \u2018we\u2019re fired up about this.\u2019 What if they could do something about it?\u201d explains Renfro.<\/p>\n