USA Today – Stephanie Anderson Witmer
“A dozen students in Meagan Slates’ plant sciences class at Penn Manor High School in Millersville, Pa., cluster in small groups in the school’s greenhouse. In a previous class, they’d trimmed the meristems of coleus plants, and now they’re measuring new growth with rulers. The coleus are among the few plants in the greenhouse after the school’s annual plant sale, but a week earlier, it had been teeming with flowers, vegetables and bedding plants that the students had grown themselves. “They started at the beginning of the semester planting seeds, transplanted things into different containers and grew them for our plant sale,” says Slates. “They got a feel for how a greenhouse would run.” Learning by doing is the norm rather than the exception in Penn Manor’s Agriculture Education program. This hands-on learning approach, plus the opportunity to use state-of-the-art equipment and technology, are big reasons Penn Manor’s program has become increasingly popular.”(more)