Friday morning several student volunteers from West Central Valley High School made their way to the Stuart Sports Complex to help with a community project.

Stuart Police Sergeant and West Central Valley Schools Resource Officer Katie Guisinger applied for and received the Trees for Kids grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The bulk of the volunteer work came from high school students that were either in one of Agriculture Teacher Molly Dolch’s morning classes, or members of the WCV FFA Chapter all came and helped plant the 27 trees awarded in the grant.

Dolch told Raccoon Valley Radio why she brought the students to plant the trees.

“So we have FFA members with us today, and some of my classes are with as well. The class I have right now is our plant science class. We’re actually learning about trees and how to tell what type of tree it is and some of the different characteristics and features. So I think it’s an add on to class for that class for sure, about what why we need to know about trees, and now we get to plant the trees. And so it’s kind of a full circle lesson for those students in plant science, and I think it’s important for my FFA members to get involved in the community. We like to do a lot of different community service events throughout the year, and this just adds to the portfolio of options to give students a wide variety of community service project experience.”

All the students got a chance to see how they should plant the trees, and then broke up into groups to get them all in the ground quickly and efficiently. Some pictures from the beginning of the morning can be seen below.