Math teacher Forrest Matthews has been building raised beds for BMU’s garden with the occupational-technical students. The idea came to be after he noticed the class was getting bored of worksheets. So, he and the class started brainstorming hands- on projects they could do and the idea that stuck out was creating new raised beds for the school’s garden, as the old ones were falling apart. Next came time for funding and getting everyone on board with the idea. Once the students got permission from parents it was time to start, or so the students thought. “It was a bit bumpy at first, I made the students do a lot of the planning which they didn’t like a lot. So we had to come up with a couple of different raised bed designs because ultimately, we had to propose those ideas to Mrs. Knisley as she was the one giving the funding,” said Matthews. After Mrs. Knisley decided on a design the class put together the materials list as these beds included metal and other materials, pricing everything out as all of these things also had to be approved. After the materials were delivered and the building started, it became a pretty smooth process according to Matthews. “It started with me showing the students what to do construction-wise and then letting them go from there. And after a while, the students just jumped into it to a point where they built the raised beds with little guidance.” Student Kris Fennimore had a great time working on the beds, stating “Overall it was pretty fun, we got to learn outside of the classroom and do hands-on work.” The garden will have a variety of vegetables such as squash, tomatoes, and green beans.