Children, Meet Earth.

I'm not a visual person. I don't really look at the living room and say, "You know what would be great? Some curtains in a color that compliments the couch, with a chair over here and..."

But today, I looked at our playground (not very far from the legendary recycled-rubber bits), and I saw it where it does not currently exist: a raised bed of... peppers, maybe. Or something, anything, green and growing.

I think that in the wider world, I would be easily dismissed as an unrealistic, idealistic, hippy-liberal or any number of epitaphs to describe someone who thinks that we can actually all get along, even if we never quite understand each other fully. But the reality is, while I am socially liberal, I am personally quite conservative: I think as a whole, people can't do for themselves and need help, but individually, we should all be capable of taking care of ourselves and our surroundings (home, family, community...).
In other words, you need to protect and take care of your own.

So as a teacher, I need to teach these kids to care about their own. And what is theirs? This space at school, for one. That's where we begin. We take care of our space. We take care of our bodies, too - that's why we go outside every day, why we have a 'fitness' program, why we have healthy snacks at snack time. It then makes sense that we can do both at once by gardening.

Therefore... raise the beds!