See Our Progress

My school appeared on the news last week because we had made an important change in our community. We had planted a large garden in what was once only a vacant lot. 

This experience taught me a great deal about television news. First, our principal telephoned the TV station and informed them of what we had accomplished. She spoke with the producer—the person who assigns reporters to cover interesting stories. 

The producer checked with the directors, but they claimed there were plenty of stories similar to ours. They wanted to know what was special about our particular garden. 

The principal explained that, after going on the Internet to learn about the prairie, we had made a prairie garden. We had gone to a prairie and gotten seeds from the plants, and then we planted them. We did not water the garden, but we did weed it. We decided to let nature water it with rain, since that was how prairies grew in the past. We sent a picture of the garden to the news station. In the picture, the grass was so high that it stood taller than the fourth grade students.  

The director thought our story was extremely interesting. It was not just a garden, but a history lesson. Actually, it was also a science lesson. As a result, they sent a reporter to our school, and that reporter also brought a cameraman. 

They interviewed the principal and asked several detailed questions about the garden. After that, they interviewed us and we explained to them what we had learned through this project. They even interviewed a person on the street and asked what he thought about our garden. 

They were at our school for two hours. We were really ecstatic. That night, we watched the news and there we were. The news anchor told our story. It was only two minutes long, but it was us. We were famous.