Support For School Gardens Growing
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Students come out every other week for an hour’s nutrition or science lesson.
Dressed in black easy sportswear, former professional basketball player Lisa Leslie was helping her six-year-old daughter Lauren tamp the soil in the flower terrace, where they have just added and watered some plants. “It’s fun,” said Lauren, sitting on the ground, listening carefully to guides and was eager to bed another seedling.
“I think it’s important for our kids to be aware of our earth and how they can help save it, whether it’s just nature, or planting trees, or has something to do with recycling,” said Leslie, “Garden is essential, because it’s where we get our food, where we get a lot of natural and organic food. It’s great to understand how to garden.”
Leslie and her daughter were part of the service action with L.A. Works. On this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, more than 1,000 community and corporate volunteers revitalized the campus of a South Los AngelesTitle 1 school Hillcrest Drive Elementary by enlarging its school garden, repairing murals and painting buildings.
“We want to show our kids that we care. It’s important that we give them a beautiful learning environment, so that they’ll look forward to learning and coming to school,” said Bob L. Johnson, cofounder and chair of L.A. Works, “It’s a place for them to collect their thoughts, to have quiet conversations with each other, and to read a book.”
Research has documented the educational efficacy of school gardens. A classroom garden can act as a springboard for a wide range of lessons in science, mathematics, history-social science, English-language arts, visual and performing arts. Students will also see first hand the wonders of fresh food, healthy nutrition, and benefits of exercise.
In California, the contemporary interest can be dated back to 1995, when the former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Easton launched A Garden in Every School Initiative that reached 3,000 schools. Several bills, including the latest Assembly Bill 1535, California Instructional School Garden Program (2006), have been enacted subsequently to promote instructional school gardens.
“A garden gives children the opportunity to learn about growing their own vegetables, and gives teachers the opportunity to teach about healthy eating and living,” said Elizabeth Pratt, principal of Hillcrest Drive Elementary, “Our students are able to accomplish anything because of the beautiful environment that they are in.”
The Bill authorized the California Department of Education to allocate $15 million for grants to begin or expand using a school garden as a learning tool. Eventually nearly $11 million was put in place, benefiting almost half of all California schools. And $2.6 million alone, 24% of total funding, went to Los Angeles County.
During the same period, former Board Members at the Los Angeles Unified School District Julie Korenstein and Marlene Kanter presented in 2007 a three-year resolution that school gardens be preserved and used as outdoor laboratories. The district received $1.72 million dollars and involved all 526 schools.
However while all the governmental financial subsidies expired in succession and nothing catches up, some non-profit organizations, largely sparked by parent and community interests, are trying hard to fill the gap. The Garden School Foundation(GSF) headquartered at 24th Street Elementary is just one of them.
Younger grade students focus on developing their senses, their observation and descriptive skills. “We had two activities today for the 1st grade. One was to go into the garden, observe signs of winter and to draw; and the other was to make bird feeders on pine cones with peanut butter and bird seed, so we can attract birds to our garden,” said Jessica Hom, volunteer with GSF, “I see the students get really excited to be in the garden.”
With a one-acre prototype garden classroom, GSF offers a year-round Seed-to-Table Program for kindergarten through K-5th grades.All the lessons are designed aligned with both Common Core andCA State standards bringing to life the concepts that being talked in classroom through experiences in the garden.
As students get older, they are challenged more to think critically how a garden is connected to the wider social, historical and scientific issues. “In the 4th grade, students learn about the native of California history that compares how a natural ecosystem is different from a landscape that had been manipulated by the missions,” said Executive Director Julia Cotts, “They work in groups to develop hypotheses and create experiments to test those hypotheses.”
GSF is only on the first year teaching the curriculum in a complete form, although it has been teaching students doing these for about three years. It just finished drafting the curriculum last year, which would be published some time this spring. But there’re already some wonderful feedbacks from the parents.
“Parents are really surprised very often by what the kids coming home and asking to eat. Kids will teach parents how to make the recipe. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know how to make it yet, but they just have to go to the market. They’re dying to show their parents whatever it is that they made that day,” said Cotts.
GSF has more than doubled in size in recent years, adding four new Seed-to-Table garden programs to an additional 1,200 students at underserved schools. Cotts’ team is also working on a new resolution to LAUSD right now that really talks about gardens’ instructional role in schools.
“There are 740 something school gardens in L.A. County, and there are only a handful groups that I know are assisting in programming, so there’s a definitely huge need. We would like to be able to meet the demand as much as we can, so we have a waiting list of 20 schools right now that want the program,” said Cotts.
It’s also great to see that the value of school garden projects has been widely acknowledged by the authority. As part of the Clean & Green Campaign, Councilman Curren D. Price, Jr. for the 9th District hasinitiated planting gardens at John Adams Middle School, Manual Arts High School and some others in South L.A.
“I am a strong believer that community gardens and parks can serve as incubators for change. It is important of us to reclaim our community by encouraging these efforts so our children thrive”, said Price in an interview last October, whose deputy Connie Llanos did not respond to my interview request.
Meanwhile, LAUSD has been developing standards for architects to follow and will modify designs to include school gardens for its $19.2-billion “We Build” Program. Collaboration for High Performance Schools (CHPS) criteria, California's green school rating system, was changed in 2009 as well to include the addition one point for the presence of a school garden.
