Jonathan Toews visits Chicago students to talk healthy eating, gardening

Jonathan Toews of the Blackhawks visited students Monday in Chicago to celebrate their completion of his foundation’s indoor gardening program.

Toews stopped by Schubert Elementary School where the students showed off their classroom’s “Tower Garden” – which is full of various self-grown vegetables and herbs.

The students also had the chance to ask Toews questions about the important of healthy eating.

“Getting the kids involved in learning how to not only grow their plants and veggies, but learning how a clean and healthy diet helps them focus better in school, and kind of just feel better and have more energy to do whatever they want to do, so kind of cool to interact with the kids a little bit," Toews said.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM:

“The Jonathan Toews Foundation partnered with Green Bronx Machine to bring a new indoor agricultural initiative to the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. Now in its second year, the program has grown to provide 40 schools with the Tower Garden curriculum, doubling the number of participating classrooms since it launched.

Each participating school receives a Tower Garden, a state-of-the-art 9-week curriculum as well as access to Stephen Ritz, founder of Green Bronx Machine and one of the world’s leading indoor agriculture educators. Developed over the course of 24 months of beta-testing and research, this curriculum aligns the art and science of growing vegetables indoors to Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. CPS principals and teachers are provided sequenced and rubric-based instruction, including daily lesson plans that teach students required core academic content through growing and eating healthy food.”