![\"Planting](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/web-Emerald-Derige--300x175.jpg\" "\\"web")
Held Tuesday, March 12, the event brought together Franklin faculty, representatives from San Diego Gas & Electric and several community groups. Cindy Marten, the new San Diego Unified School District superintendent, was also present.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all started, of course, with a desire to help the kids,\u201d Emerald said before taking a group of 15 ASB students to plant the first tree with the help of Urban Corps volunteers. The first four trees planted lined Copeland Avenue, facing the front of the school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want more trees, we want more shade [and] we want a more beautiful community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A special Watering Club at the school will care for the trees, along with the Garden Angels of Kensington, a volunteer resident group that has been tending sidewalk tree plots on Adams Avenue.<\/p>\n
Emerald said the Franklin project began with the efforts of Dixie Blake, a Franklin volunteer with a personal connection to the school.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer sons went to this school many years ago,\u201d Emerald said, \u201cand she remembers the way Franklin was when her kids were growing up here. \u2026 She has made it her life\u2019s mission now, along with all her friends here in the neighborhood, to restore Franklin to its greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blake has been volunteering at the school for nine years, building a core group of 40 tutors who give their time to help students and faculty. Focusing on nature and the environment, the volunteers have put in a vegetable garden at the school, as well as a hummingbird and butterfly habitat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of planting the trees came to mind about four years ago,\u201d Blake said. \u201cThere must have been trees in all those spaces at some point, but from the outside it looked bare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin Elementary Principal R. Akoni Derige said he hoped to continue the tradition year after year, and felt it was a great opportunity for the students to learn about the importance of caring for trees.<\/p>\n
The sentiment is at the heart of Blake\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are happy and proud of these new trees, and will be keeping them watered during the rest of the school year,\u201d Blake said. \u201cThere are so many learning opportunities with the gardens, and now the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help facilitate learning, Miss Smarty Plants of the Water Conservation Garden and representatives from Urban Corps came to the school during a morning assembly to speak to students about why trees are important, as well as safety regarding trees and power lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are about five fatal electrocutions a year, and we really want to get that number down. This is one of the ways that we educate the youth,\u201d said Urban Corps representative Katheryn Ramirez.<\/p>\n
One interactive activity Ramirez did with the students was a \u201cCity Planning\u201d hands-on exercise using Legos to build a map of their school, including where to place trees in regards to power lines. The activity is part of the nonprofit\u2019s Tree Smart Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey seemed to really, really like it,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cWe talked all about different types of trees they might see around their community [and] they had a lot of questions, which was really nice.\u201d<\/p>\n Urban Corps has been at the forefront of planting trees for San Diego since 2002, planting more than 14,000 street trees while educating youth at their charter school and through events like the one at Franklin. Their mission is to both provide job training as well as educational opportunities to young adults.<\/p>\n \u201cThere has been such a tremendous response from the students and excitement from the faculty,\u201d Blake said. \u201cEveryone is working so hard each day on their schoolwork, it\u2019s nice to have something fun going on.\u201d<\/p>\n The results of the March 12 event will be felt beyond the end of Arbor Week, or even National Arbor Day in April. Both Emerald and Blake said the trees will be something the children can look back on with pride.<\/p>\n \u201cAs Marti Emerald pointed out, those trees will be there in the future and the students will have done something to help the environment,\u201d Blake said. \u201cAfter they leave \u2026 they can come back and see them to remind them of their time at Franklin.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Franklin students learn tree conservation, safety at Arbor Week event By Anthony King | SDUN Editor Several Benjamin Franklin Elementary School students celebrated California Arbor Week by planting 15 trees around the school\u2019s perimeter in Kensington with the help of Urban Corps of San Diego County and Councilmember Marti Emerald.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":245951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Planting for the future","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Planting](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/ASB-One-child-focus-199x300.jpeg\" "\\"ASB")