Assembly speech: why we should keep the school garden
Good morning, Principal, teachers and fellow students. My name is Yan, from 5B, and I am standing here because a notice last week said our garden might make way for extra lockers. Lockers are useful. I have one, and I like not carrying six textbooks in the rain. A patch of soil that we planted ourselves is useful in a different way. Last October, class 4B grew peas that actually climbed. Nobody will remember a metal door in five years. They will remember the morning the first white flower opened and someone shouted down the corridor as if we had won a match. I am not asking the school to choose flowers over storage. That is a false pair. There is a blank wall along the covered playground. Put the new lockers there. Keep the garden, even if it is small and even if some weeks it looks messy. Messy is not the same as useless. A locker wall will also look messy when stickers peel. Some of you will say: “It is only a few pots.” Yes. That is why it is easy to save and easy to destroy. If we cannot protect a few pots we watered ourselves, we should stop telling Open Day guests that this school grows more than grades. So I am asking for a delay, not a miracle. Measure the playground wall. Count the lockers you actually need. Leave the soil. When you walk past after assembly, look at the peas — or at the empty sticks, if it is the wrong season. Either way, that is ours. Thank you.