The Tour at School
School Program
In the last 7 years, the Fruit Tree Tour Program has directly impacted 60,000 students, transformed over 180 low income schools and community centers into abundant orchards with the planting of over 4,300 fruit trees.
20 vounteers arrival on a pair of vegetable-oil-powered busses to share a day that the school will never forget. The program includes:
- Green Theater on a Solar Stage
- Fruit Tree Planting
- Eco-Art: Orchard Signs
- Drip, Mulch, and Microlife
- Tree Care: Training and Support
Green Theater
Green Theater: The performance brings a live band,professional puppetry, and characters like time travelling professors, urban farmers, and giant talking worms to educate students about the environment, healthy foods, and caring for the health of the community.
Education with Inspiration: Visual arts, music, and celebration teach students the science and importance of environmental issues.
Be the Change: The performance challenges students to see their own schoolyard as a place they can make a difference for the local and global environment while improving their community.
Fruit Tree Planting
Fruit Trees Students plant their schoolyard with 10-30 fruit trees. The diverse orchard will fruit throughout the school year with a wide spread of delicious varieties.
Working Together Students cooperate to shovel, pick, move soil, haul water, and tuck in the roots of the new tree.
Think Global, Plant Local Small planting groups explore how their actions locally have an impact on their community and the greater eco-system.
"No really. You are what you eat” From plant biology to the importance of fresh food, students look closely at connections between the health of self and environment.
Orchard Arts
What is Most Important? Common Vision's team facilitates dialogues about concepts from the performance and what students see as important in their lives, school, and neighborhoods.
Putting Voice to Vision From these dialogues, students work together to create signs that carry inspiring messages and images for their community.
Meaningful Beautification Signs work as giant labels carrying names of each fruit varieties while infusing the young orchard with colorful reminder of the spirit of cooperation, respect, and earth care they cultivated together.
Drip, Mulch, and Micro-life
At every school, Common Vision installs an automated drip irrigation systen, provides mulch for the trees, and innoculates the soil with compost, worm castings, kelp, and other goodies that support the soil ecosystem for optimal tree growth.
Tree Care: Training & Support
Teachers, staff, parents, and communities are initiated into their school's Orchard Care Committee. Each committee gets a 1-hour training during the tour, regular newsletters on tree care, 12-months-a-year email and phone support, and the option to set up on-the-ground support when needed.
