Castings are great for gardens and easy to use.
They're also kind of gross, admitted fifth-grade teacher Kathleen Brown, but "really not so gruesome."
It's "worm poop," said the Lakeside Elementary educator.
About two years ago, Brown enlisted most of the West Point grade school to join her vermiculture project: using Red Wigglers to compost cafeteria scraps.
And while some of the other teachers and a few students were squeamish of occasionally sifting through the dirt and separating the earthworms from their droppings to use as fertilizer for the school's flower beds, she said, the project was fun and engaging for most kids.
"They enjoy taking care of the worms and they appreciated the fact that they feel like they're doing something to help" the environment, Brown said.
Though the project had an initial price tag of about $500 -- Red Wigglers are a bit expensive -- the cost was covered through grants Brown received, and since then, the composting experiment has been self-sustaining.
Also, a few classrooms retain vermicomposting bins.
Principal Don Holt said there's so much food thrown into the cafeteria's garbage there's never a lack of apple cores to feed the worms. Although there were a few glitches in the beginning, he said.
"[Students] took food they weren't keen on eating" just to throw something in the Red Wigglers' food bin, Holt said laughing, and the kids weren't "putting all of the pieces together in the perspective we would have liked to with ecological purposes."
It took some lessons on the importance of minimizing food waste to address that situation, Brown said.
The project served as one big lesson plan for her then-fourth-grade class.
Brown's students researched microbiology texts to learn the processes Red Wigglers would use to compost the scraps and what kind of food they could eat. The classroom used mathematical equations to determine how much waste worms could consume and how quickly they would reproduce.
Then, they put together presentations using Excel and PowerPoint to teach other classrooms about the vermicomposting project. There were also a few Red Wiggler haikus and theatrical performances, Brown said.
"It opened up a lot of learning activities ... it was much better than just sitting there and it was student generated," Brown said, noting working with worms engaged many students who were disinterested with school.
The students involved in organizing the project were in Brown's high-ability gifted and talented class, but the effort "could be successful in any educational setting, I think."
