School news
CRAFT students and teachers present at the Vermont Pollinator Working Group Conference
The Vermont Pollinator Working Group invited the CRAFT (Community and Climate Resilience through Agriculture, Forestry, and Technology) Program to present about native plant and pollinator work as part of the education track at their annual conference. The Working Group is a collaboration of nonprofits, farmers, gardeners, and policy makers working to tackle threats to pollinators in Vermont and the Northeast and is looking to expand its education initiatives.
On Friday morning, Students Maya Sluka and Schuyler Hagge along with teachers Abbie Castriotta and Samantha DeCuollo traveled to the conference at UVM where they listened to lightning talks and connected with folks doing pollinator work around the state. The CRAFT program kicked off the education presentations in the afternoon. They described the importance of pollinators and native plants in public education, how the work fits into the curriculum across many subjects and grade levels, their participation in real-world community science projects, and the joy that this place-based work brings to students. After listening to the other presentations, the group participated in a discussion on how the Working Group may be able to support pollinator education initiatives across the state. Conference attendees were inspired by the CRAFT students' work and ideas.
Schuyler Hagge and Maya Sluka
English students learn how to save seeds
Ms. Perkins's 10th grade English class is reading The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson as part of their ongoing study of indigenous peoples in American Literature. The publisher's note states, "Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors."
On October 2, Abbie Castriotta invited Sylvia Davatz to speak with the students in the library. Abbie stated, "Sylvia is an expert seed keeper, co-founder of Solstice Seeds, and specializes in growing heritage and rare varieties of grains that are hardy to our New England climate." During her talk, Sylvia encouraged students to "...listen to the things they [plants] are telling you about the conditions they are growing in." She also shared stories of exchanging seeds with people from around the world and she displayed some of the seeds she has collected. In addition to reading The Seed Keeper and attending this talk, students visited the greenhouse with Abbie to learn the basics of seed saving.
Libby, Annasophia, Ruth and Sylvia with some of her plants and see
9th grade IES students redesign campus to prioritize pollinator habitat
Walk past the high school building this fall, and you might spot 9th graders with rakes and mulch, transforming overlooked corners of campus into something new. To begin the year, students are continuing the site preparation process for creating vibrant pollinator habitat.
This fall, students will collaborate with community partners to clear non-native vegetation, mulch, rake, and begin planting herbaceous perennials. These efforts lay the groundwork for spring seeding, when next year’s 9th graders will sow a curated mix of annuals and perennials.
This collaborative, student-led project is both an authentic service-learning and stewardship opportunity. Students surveyed and evaluated potential meadow sites, weighing ecological benefits alongside accessibility to outdoor learning and recreation spaces. The project builds on a vision started by C.R.A.F.T. Gardens & Greenhouses middle school students and now expands into the high school, strengthening habitat for both birds and pollinators.
With support from Creating Habitat for Pollinators, Woodstock Union High School is now a candidate for up to two acres of funded native wildflower meadow—joining more than 13 acres of habitat already established across Vermont and New Hampshire. Long-term, the meadows will provide an outdoor classroom for students and a model of youth-led environmental stewardship.
This work would not be possible without the support of David Hammond, Abbie Castriotta, Kevin Nunan, and Orion Binney, Karen Ganey, as well as the many teachers, staff, and students who contribute their energy to making our campus a healthier place for pollinators and people alike.
Advanced topics in Spanish students share stories of their national park
Over a dozen Advanced Topics in Spanish students took a deep dive into some behind-the-scenes stories of the Marsh, Billings, and Rockefeller families that all lived on the same property in Woodstock that is now a National Park Service site.
Students met with resource experts, accessed primary documents, and conducted research into topic areas of their choosing guided by essential questions such as: "How does the estate show/balance the difference between wealth and nature?", "What is the relationship between art in the mansion and MBR and why do we have that art?", and "How does the architecture and the landscape reflect the ideals of the 19th century and the philosophy of conservation of Marsh, Billings, and Rockefeller?"
Not only did these students conduct research and create a 5-minute mini-tour, but they then delivered their presentations to an audience of their peers—all native Spanish speakers visiting from Madrid. This is a monumental task that takes courage, preparation, and even a little bit of humor. Students appreciated getting to know different stories about the park and connecting with this resource in a new way.
The Spanish students are visiting as part of an exchange program with Colegio Salesianos Paseo Extremadura. The teachers accompanying the students were so impressed with the project that before the day was over, they had contacted their school to suggest that their students complete a similar project in English when we visit them in April.
Planting the future: A freshman's intro to CRAFT
By Isla Segal ‘29
This op-ed first appeared in the October 2, 2025 edition of The Vermont Standard
This past week, I was one of the dozens of kids from Woodstock Union High School that took a field trip to the King Farm to plant chestnut trees and make applesauce. CRAFT, which stands for Community and Climate Resilience Through Agriculture, Forestry, and Technology, is a program at the high school that focuses on nature and sustainability. Students can take classes, such as Economics and the Environment or Regenerative Agriculture, to get CRAFT credits. Once they earn 6 credits in this pathway, they graduate with a CRAFT certification on their transcript. Outside of the certification, the program offers opportunities such as the trip to King Farm, where we as students can work with nature and be out in the world, making a difference.
When we got to school on Tuesday morning, about thirty students gathered in the lobby and went up to the nearby King Farm. This is a property the Vermont Land Trust owns, and our school is partnering with them to do projects such as this one on the land. We stacked firewood and sliced apples that a class had picked at Billings Farm earlier that week, then started boiling them down to make applesauce.
An hour in, many more students came after attending their first class on campus. We talked about the history of chestnut trees and passed around seedlings and pieces of chestnut wood. We planted chestnuts because it’s a tree that has many uses, from wood for furniture to food to eat, and there used to be chestnuts in Vermont and throughout the east coast. They were wiped out about a hundred years ago by a blight. We hope that we can help bring chestnuts back by planting these trees, so we partnered with the American Chestnut Foundation. The small trees we planted grew from seeds harvested from a rare, wild, mature American Chestnut tree in Vermont. The seeds were propagated at our school in air pruning beds. Air pruning beds are raised garden beds with a mesh netting above the ground so that when roots grow through the netting, they dry out and die, causing a more dense root system. What we planted were baby trees, about a foot tall, with several leaves, and a root system about a foot deep. We dug holes into the ground, placed the plants in, and added a soil mix that had pine duff, which helps chestnut trees grow. We put tubes around the top of the tree to help protect it from deer browse and tied those tubes to a stake in the ground. Finally, we watered them and covered the surrounding ground with cardboard to limit weeds. I got to plant two chestnut trees, one in the field, and another in the woods above it, because we tried to plant in both open and forested environments to compare the resiliency of the trees. It was cool to plant multiple trees, because the first time, I was figuring out the process, but by the second time, my partner and I had techniques and we knew what to do. Overall that day, we planted about fifteen trees, and we’ll plant more next year as a part of a several-year-long project.
I find it awesome to have the King Farm property near our school, and I feel so lucky to be able to use it. Currently, some of the older CRAFT students are in a pilot class with the goal of working in collaboration with Vermont Land Trust to design a plan for the property that will incorporate sustainable growing and harvesting practices and make it more open to the community. I look forward to watching these plans unfold and become reality through my years at Woodstock and beyond when I come back to visit.
The morning was my first experience with CRAFT, as I’m a freshman, and it felt like a comfortable community, and the kind of people I want to be around. We had everyone from ninth graders to seniors, and they were all joking around as we sliced apples, or talking to me as we walked up the hill. There were so many different people there, with varied interests, who take different classes, or sit with different people at lunch, but we had all come that morning to be outside, and make applesauce, and get our hands covered in soil, and that brought us all together. I’m glad as I go into high school to have even more role models and friends from other grades, who I can look up to, or who I’ll know when I walk into a new class.