Fox Lane Middle School Garden to Serve Students With Special Needs

School gardens are a popular way to engage students with their studies. Science, math, literature and social studies can be woven together with lessons taught through planting, maintaining and harvesting a garden.

And for students with special needs, gardens provide opportunities for health, wellness and calm—critical for developmentally challenged kids, said Paulina Ram, an occupational therapist with the Bedford Central School District's SAIL program, or Structured Alternatives to Independent Learning.

“As an OT, I’m always looking for ways to promote optimum functioning, and gardens can help students achieve a balance between a state of low arousal and hyperactivity,” she said.

Ram is part of a team that “planted the seed,” so to speak, for a new organic school garden at the Fox Lane Middle School that will serve the eight students in the SAIL program who have studied together since kindergarten. A groundbreaking will take place Thursday to celebrate the newly built raised beds outside of the middle school science classrooms.

Ram’s husband, Ronnie Ram, president of Inspiria Media Corporation, reached out to one if his clients, Jason Gordon of Millwood-based Total Turf Inc., who immediately agreed to build the beds and plan out the garden as a community donation.

“We are always looking for ways to give back, and this was a perfect fit,” said Gordon. “I’d like to stay involved and help them plan and grow it and see where it goes.”

The garden gives the students, who have developmental spectrum disorders including autism, a chances to use all of their senses and improve their social motor skills, said Ram.

“We do yoga daily with the students, which has gone great,” she said. “And in this day and age when everyone is health conscious and learning about sustainability and where food comes from, the garden is another chance for them to work outside and improve their skills.”

The SAIL team also plans to implement gardening activities into its peer buddy program; mainstream students come in, play games and model appropriate social behaviors for developmentally challenged students. Over time, teachers and therapists hope the teachers and students in mainstream classes will use it as well.

“This garden also offers a sense of community to the school,” said Dr. Peter Faustino, school psychologist. “The garden becomes another outreach tool for integrating special needs students and mainstream students. There are opportunities for science lessons and even cafeteria meals to be impacted because of this garden.”

Faustino calls it the “ripple effect.”

“We hope the word gets out about the garden. We hear stories about all of our students seeing each other in town, at the diner or wherever. The garden can be another place for them to make connections,” he said. “Plus, it’s a lifeskill and leisure skill for our students for their young adult lives and beyond."