Digging in the dirt for a healthier tomorrow

Fort Worth, TX

12/13/2007

By Anna Ruth Overbey
Schieffer School of Journalism


TCU's nursing students are not afraid to get their hands dirty when it comes to serving the Fort Worth community. A group of 10 senior nursing students teamed with the Tarrant County Resource Center during the fall semester to provide students at Charles Nash Elementary School with the necessary tools to build two garden beds while also emphasizing the importance of living a healthy lifestyle.

"Students worked with the school to design and implement lesson plans related to the gardening and composting programs," said Pamela Frable, lead faculty member for Community Health Nursing at TCU.

One of the beds was made of one-inch tall landscape timbers that outlined an 8-foot by 4-foot area. The group made the other garden bed out of one-inch tall landscape blocks that created a 10-foot by 3-foot space for the smaller garden. The group made the bed narrower so younger children at Charles Nash Elementary could reach the middle of the bed to tend the garden.

Charles Nash Elementary School is located six blocks northeast of the courthouse in downtown Fort Worth in the Rock Island Samuels Avenue neighborhood at 401 Samuels Avenue. The school has 228 students in the pre-Kindergarten to fifth grades. Seventy percent of the students are Hispanic.

Senior nursing student and group member Nina Byers said one of the most difficult challenges the group encountered was the language barrier.

"One of our group members, Isela Sandoval, is fluent in Spanish and she was our translator for both the fliers and with the Spanish-speaking children when we were at the school," Byers said.

The team chose gardening as an activity that reinforced physical, social and nutritional healthiness. Gardening is considered a strenuous activity comparable to working out, and the foods grown in gardens are healthy and nutritious for the kids to consume.

The nursing program provided between $160-$200 to the nursing students to fund this project. Students were expected to raise remaining funds by asking for donations or creative fundraising.

As a result of previous connections, TCU's Center for Civic Literacy and the Center for Community Involvement and Service Learning helped support the community gardening project. The total cost of the project was about $1,120.

Gardening was not as easy as it sounded for senior nursing students Damaris Akinniyi, Kelsey Bassett, Nina Byers, Danielle Hoffman, Hillary Hermann, Paige Hendrix, Shelly Murphy, Isela Sandoval, Jen Tester and Ed Tyler.

Tyler described his experience working on the project, "I was sore for a couple of days, and I'm sure the rest of the crew was as well."

Byers said the group spent almost six weeks learning together from master gardeners Jim Nelson and Pat Higgins.

"We learned first in the classroom, then spent one day out at the Demonstration Garden at the Community Resource Connection,” said Byers. “We learned about plant propagation, watering, water conservation, soil and composting."

Frable said after learning about gardening, the group worked with Nash Elementary School to design lesson plans for the children related to gardening and good health.

Byers said the group would like to get the community more involved in the future,
The group hopes that the Corner Stone Community Center will continue to be involved, Byers said, especially during the summer when the kids are not at school. The Corner Stone Community Center is located in the neighborhood of Charles Nash Elementary School.

"The more people involved, the more likely the garden will succeed and continue to flourish," Byers said.

Nursing faculty hope that student involvement in these projects will continue after the course as well.

Frable agreed with Byers that this project could have a positive long-term effect.

"Some students go on and become active in the community," Frable said. "They may continue to volunteer at the agency, they may change how they live their lives, or they may be inspired to address a problem or need they learned about during the course."

"We were happy to look back on all the work we had done and how we were able to help so many children," Byers said. "It was a neat project and it gave a little twist to our idea of nursing and what all that entails."