When I was in undergrad in the Northeast, around 15 years ago, a degree in “Food Studies” was unheard of.  A campus farm or edible garden was something reserved for agriculture schools or off-campus hippie/granola enclaves. However, the past 5  years have shown a proliferation of opportunities to get trained as farmers, gardeners, food policy makers, and food law practitioners.

On a recent site visit to Portland, Oregon, I met with FoodCorps service site supervisor Caitlin Blethen and her service member Jessica Polledri. Caitlin told me about her local program that trains school garden coordinators. This signaled to me a similar kind of sea change. It indicated that there is a desire out there to be trained in this work, and that there is a (slowly) growing market of jobs being created to do this work. I’ll let Jessica—a graduate of the program– take it from here:

Sometimes, pieces just fall into place. Soon after I moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, I heard about something called the School Garden Coordinator Certificate Training course (SGCCT), a 35-hour course offered by Growing Gardens, a local nonprofit.

I didn’t know something like this existed, and I applied for the course in the hopes that I could climb out of an illustrious past in retail work and unpaid internships. I crossed my fingers, was accepted, and propelled myself into the career track that I didn’t even realize was a career track.

That’s because it’s relatively new: school gardens date back to World War I–when the national school garden program was called, aptly I think, the United States School Garden Army–but have only recently enjoyed a resurgence. Gardens are growing in schoolyards all over the country, a trend that is highlighted by the recent inception of FoodCorps, a national organization dedicated to building and tending school gardens, providing hands-on nutrition education, and bringing high-quality local food into school cafeterias (full disclosure: I am a FoodCorps service member currently serving with Growing Gardens).

For over a decade, Growing Gardens has been steadily building its youth programming but recognized that the need for school gardens was outweighing the organization’s capacity. In an effort to keep the school garden movement blossoming in Portland, they decided to develop and offer the training. Nationwide, there are precious few school garden coordinator training programs: it is possible that Growing Gardens’ SGCCT was, in 2009, the very first.

Growing Gardens’ Youth Grow Manager, Caitlin Blethen, put the course together using her experience working in the field as a garden educator. Over the course’s 35 learning hours, Blethen and a host of guest speakers cover developing a master plan, community organizing, teaching students in a school garden setting, how to connect school garden activities and lessons to the curriculum, and planning a planting calendar, among other topics. To sweeten the deal even more, SGCCT students can opt to receive continuing education credits from Portland State University, an incentive for current teachers and graduate-degree seekers alike.

Though locally directed–speakers include Michelle Markesteyn Ratcliffe, the Oregon Farm to School Program Manager; and there is a special evening class dedicated to understanding the procedures that surround using garden produce in Portland Public Schools cafeterias–the skills taught are universal.

Graduates of the program have gone on to great things: There has been a steady stream of graduates stopping by the Growing Gardens office to peruse our seed library for flowers and vegetables for their new–and thriving–school gardens. Two graduates applied for and received a lucrative grant to get their garden project off the ground. We get constant feedback on how integral certain topics (creating a garden committee, working with school custodial staff, writing mission and vision statements) really were to the graduates’ success. And this particular graduate can ensure you that the course got her exactly where she had hoped to be.

Jessica Polledri is a FoodCorps service member in Portland Oregon, serving under the Oregon Department of Agriculture, with Growing Gardens.

FoodCorps is growing—expanding the number of states we’ll be working in next year and expanding the number of service members who are creating community and creating change. We created FoodCorps with two goals in mind: Addressing a public health crisis and providing a training opportunity for all of growing interest in careers in food and agriculture. Becoming a FoodCorps service member is a way to launch your career in food and farming while helping kids get healthy.

Rachel is one of 50 future food systems leaders who started their terms of service this past August as the first ever class of FoodCorps service members. So far this year, these service members have reached over 20,000 children in 10 states. They are addressing the nation’s painful and costly childhood obesity epidemic using our three recipe ingredient for change: Hands-on nutrition education, growing and tending school gardens, and getting healthy local food onto school cafeteria trays.

Here is what Rachel had to say about her experience this year:

Being the new “garden lady” at a school in small town is cause enough for conversation. Add in the University of Georgia logos that emblazen the coffee thermos I take to school with me every day, and I stick out even more in the sea of Arkansas Razorback gear that comes standard for most of the students and teachers at my school. Serving for FoodCorps has brought me to the town of Marshall, Arkansas, where I spend my days gardening with students from Marshall middle and elementary schools.  The school is a part of the Delta Garden Study, a childhood obesity prevention research project based out of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

When teaching outside, it is important for me to begin by getting a grasp on what the day will hold. My morning starts with a garden walk-through and a meeting with my garden program specialist to plan what garden work we will tackle with our classes for the day. Rolling with the punches does not even start to describe the level of flexibility you need as a FoodCorps Service Member. Your greenhouse will flood, grasshoppers will eat your newly planted kale seedlings, and snow might cover your leaf lettuces in less than an hour. Overcoming these and other challenges have proven to be learning experiences for me and my students over the course of my service term.

If a tasting is on the agenda, I collect my cooking supplies and ingredients before the start of classes for the day. The sight of students gathered around a folding table helping to prepare braised greens, salad, pesto, or even corn and squash fritters is a common one in our classes. Hands-on nutrition education is just as important as the act of gardening.

After talking with my supervisor about the activities of the day, we head to our first class. When my school became a part of the Delta Garden Study, they agreed to adopt a garden-based science curriculum for their middle school science courses. Between sixth, seventh, and eight grades, I work with eleven classes of students. My supervisor and I work with our science teachers to strike the balance between in class science instruction and the outside garden and nutrition connections.

As the “garden lady,” I try to help my students think about learning in a different way, and I get to see firsthand the need to devote more time in our school day to discussing topics like healthy eating. Thanks to FoodCorps I have the opportunity to be a part of that dialogue on a daily basis. My service has given me the privilege of being a part of my students’ lives. Every time we work together in the garden, whether it is to plant, harvest, cook, or even winterize our greenhouse, we illustrate to students that food–where it comes from and how you cook it–is central to health.

Sitting in my organic chemistry class during undergrad, I never envisioned that I would soon become an expert in hosing off kids’ boots at the end of muddy garden work session, explaining the nutritional benefits of pesto over the din of my food processor, or reinforcing the concept of density by making balsamic vinaigrette. But at the end of every day, I am astounded at how lucky I am to experience alongside my students the wonderment that comes with growing and cooking food.

Recruitment for next year’s class begins this week. You can read more at our Web site: www.foodcorps.org or watch our video (produced by Ian Cheney, co-creator of King Corn) on YouTube here.

At a compost bin that doubles as a podium, urban farming hero Will Allen faced the inaugural class of 50 FoodCorps service members—sitting together in Milwaukee but about to spin out to ten states around the country–giving them advice for the year of service they have ahead of them.

“There’s a lot of skill and knowledge existing in the communities you’re going into. You’ll bring stuff, and you’ll learn stuff. It’s a two-way street,” he said. “That’s how real sustainability works.”

After three days of training, workshops, presentations and open space discussions, these young men and women spent day four touring Growing Power, studying their systems of composting, year-round growing, aquaponics…and on and on. Learning stuff.

More advice from Allen on how to make the most of the tour of the Growing Power operation: “Don’t look at the plants (they’re green), look at the infrastructure. See how it works. How we use space.” Notebooks out, eyes open, they followed his instructions. They also pet goats (I did, too).

Their work this year will be focused on three pillars: knowledge, engagement and access. That is: delivering hands-on nutrition education, building and tending school gardens, and bringing high-quality local food into public school cafeterias. And while they bring skills—like farming experience and nutrition degrees—this work will largely be brand new for them, and they will be learning as they go.

So what did they learn this week?

Graham Downey will be serving in Mississippi. He told me how he’s learned about the importance of pairing realism with positivity.  That this work—giving youth an enduring relationship with healthy food—is challenging, but that it’s still important, and possible, to be excited about it.

Norris Guscott, who will be working in Massachusetts, has learned about the importance of getting the students’ parents involved in this work.

Jackie Billhymer, headed to Arkansas, is beginning this work understanding the need to engage the larger community and to harness the power of networking.

So, Civil Eaters, help us out here: what do they still need to know? What does it take to do this work effectively?

Whatever you call him, Steve Ritz is an extraordinary example of how one person can make a difference.

He has two missions: The first is to get his Discovery High School students to grow and eat vegetables. The second is to ignite the Green Bronx Machine and get all of the borough residents to grow and eat healthy food. (Watch out for the soon-to-come Web site and meanwhile follow Green Bronx Machine on Facebook and Twitter.)

Ritz is fueled by the irony that although the Bronx is the distribution point for produce to all five boroughs, its residents have very little access to high quality, fresh vegetables.

“If my kids can’t buy good produce at the local supermarket, we’ll get them to grow it,” Ritz decides. And grow they do! Hundreds of pounds of it a year. Where? On the classroom walls.

Given a boost by the largesse of Boston-based Green Living Technologies, the students began growing vegetables on vertical shelves packed with earth. I saw the result last Friday when I attended a farmer’s market at the school.

Students, teachers, parents, and neighbors of the school were all shopping: bins were loaded with collards, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, scallions, and onions–and everyone was filling up their bags and heading to the front of the classroom to pay.

Have you ever seen a chalk board in front of a classroom listing vegetables and their prices? The sight gave me goosebumps. Can you imagine holding a weekly farmer’s market in classrooms all over the country?

The Discovery High School farmer’s market was a fantastic success. Steve Ritz wrote to me a few days after the event:

“We were very profitable, had over 500 visitors and folks from across NYC and NJ including State Senator Rivera and several other elected officials! Had we been able to have an EBT machine–we would have sold even more…

“All the kids went home with bags of produce and after school we went to a local soup kitchen to donate the rest. All the edible plants and seedlings also went to local high-need communities and gardens and the Green Bronx Machine helped plant thru the weekend.

“…Watch the ABC TV Special on June 18, 7 PM–Above and Beyond–which features our program and of course, I hope you can join us in Manhattan on June 22; 6-9 PM at Cafe Iguana for the formal launch of Green Bronx Machine.”

In case you aren’t already convinced that there’s a Pied Piper in the Bronx, here’s Steve telling us about his passion for greening the Bronx and providing math skills, community, and career alternatives for Bronx youths at the same time:

Now listen to one of Steve’s students, Netali Soriano, telling us how much he loves growing vegetables and how tomatoes and avocados have become a personal favorites. Take note of his Green Bronx Machine T-shirt!

Originally published on Lorna Sass At Large

One year ago this week, the Obama administration launched Let’s Move, an initiative to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.  It’s an ambitious–but critically important–goal.

In the last 30 years, the percentage of American children who are overweight or obese has tripled. Diet-related disease, diminished academic performance and a shortened life expectancy threaten the future of our kids. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three American children born in the year 2000 is on a path toward Type II diabetes. Among children of color, the figure approaches one in two. Retired Generals describe a coming crisis of national security: already, 27 percent of 17-24 year olds are ineligible for military service because of excess body fat.

This administration has placed a strong emphasis on healthy futures for our children, and rightly so: America’s sweeping epidemic of childhood obesity requires us to martial a national response. The Obama Administration has facilitated the development of the USDA Farm to School Team, Chefs Move to Schools program, Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools, Walmart’s Nutrition Charter, and the signing of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which created $5 million per year in mandatory funding for a Farm to School Competitive Grant Program. First Lady Michelle Obama has put powerful muscle behind the Let’s Move cause.

When I was at the White House Childhood Obesity Forum in April 2010, one of the First Lady’s statements truly resonated with me: “What we have done is start a national conversation. But we need your help to propel that conversation into a national response.”

Ask and ye shall receive.

This week, FoodCorps, a brand new and much anticipated national service organization, opens applications for its first class of service members.  Those selected will dedicate one year of full-time public service in school food systems–sourcing healthful local food for school cafeterias, expanding nutrition education programs, and building and tending school gardens.

Those activities are directly referenced in the May 2010 report to the President, where the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity outlined 70 specific recommendations to create an action plan for solving the problem of childhood obesity in a generation. Among its recommendations, numbers 3.6 and 3.11 highlight Farm to School and school gardens as community based solutions to childhood obesity.

The Task Force prescribed the kind of programs FoodCorps leaders will implement: “Where possible, use school gardens to educate students about healthy eating. School gardens offer opportunities for fun and physical activity while also serving as an important educational tool to help students understand how healthful food is produced.”

FoodCorps seeks up to 80 young men and women with a passion for serving their country by building healthy communities.  Beginning in August 2011, service members will get their hands dirty in one of 10 states: Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina or Oregon.

Aiming to utilize successful public service models, FoodCorps will leverage a modest amount of federal, philanthropic and corporate funds to answer the administration’s call to action: place young adults in high-need communities, with the mission of improving children’s education about and access to healthy food.

I call that a national response.

Check out our recruitment video:

Applications and more information can be found at www.foodcorps.org.

School gardens are as old as schools themselves. As Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Pringle see it, however, their return might just be the key to a modern education. Bucklin-Sporer and Pringle are the executive director and programs manager (respectively) of the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance (SFGSA) and authors of the new book How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers. I spoke with them recently about the book, their network, and what it will take to change education—one green schoolyard at a time.

What will readers get from How to Grow a School Garden?

Arden Bucklin-Sporer: It’s a practical guide on how to build and design a garden, grow the community around it, and sustain the project. It’s not about how to grow this or that plant–although we do include anecdotes about what plants work best with kids.

Rachel Pringle: It really brings you step by step through the process; if you’re a parent or a teacher at a school, it shows you how to begin. And then once you have that space, how you sustain that space by creating a program around it–whether it revolves around nutrition or environmental education or outdoor education, or all those things.

What is the school garden landscape like right now?

ABS: Even in this time when resources tend to be shrinking, the green schoolyard landscape is thriving. In San Francisco, that’s largely thanks to Prop A, which provides bond funding to build green schoolyards. We have about 80 school gardens here and the nice thing is that they’re connected through SFGSA, so they can speak with one voice, and we can advocate on behalf of everybody.

RP: And that’s something we’re seeing not just in our city but also in Berkeley, in LA, in Boston, and in Texas; these regional networks are popping up all over. I have a Google alert for school garden, so every day I get a whole list of things that are happening across the country and around the world. But the thinking around school gardens is also really expanding into nutrition, connecting kids with nature, and outdoor education.

There’s this renewed focus on agriculture and on where food comes from and I do think the recession has had a big hand in it. We’re in a society where we’re removed from how things come to be; there’s so much technology and everything just happens for us and it’s incredible, but I think people are really interested in the inner workings.

Especially when they have more time than money.

ABS: Exactly. So instead of looking outwards, more people are looking in their own back yards and in their schoolyards for adventure.

Green School Yards are also places to teach the practices of sustainability. For instance,  we have rain water harvesting in some gardens now, and other ways we incorporate discussions of percolation and ground water–these concepts are really important for kids to get.

You mentioned that these gardens are now often speaking with a unified voice; what is that voice saying?

ABS: We’re letting city and district officials know that we’re here—that this is a movement, and it’s organized. We’re also asking for funding, because green schoolyards are often under-resourced, so we’re looking for clever ways to support these programs.

RP: In general, we’re asking for a shift in the way people think about education. The recent Berkeley study is just the latest of several to show that garden-based learning really enhances traditional learning—math, science, language arts. So we’re asking for a shift in our ideas of what can happen in schools.

Is there a sense that a class that takes place outside the school buildings is peripheral?

ABS: Yes, there’s the idea that outside is for informal learning and inside is for formal learning. But you can do plenty of formal learning outside, and I think it’s more likely that a child who learns outside understands that learning goes on everywhere—rather than just turning it on when you’re in the classroom and off when you leave.

We’re also very concerned with place-based learning and making students aware of how their particular environment and ecology shape the garden. We want our kids to really know where they’re from, because we realize that if they haven’t taken care of or cared about something in their own sphere of influence, they’re less likely to care about broader environmental concerns.

Do you want to speak to some of the challenges people face when establishing a school garden?

ABS: For one, you have to think carefully about how to make it sustainable. Because no one really wants a garden that has fallen into disrepair and is causing problems for the school’s landscaping department. So there are challenges always in understanding what is an institutional garden that will go beyond your kids’ experience at the school and hopefully continue for decades. Resources and money to pay a garden educator are also often a challenge. You don’t have to have that, but it really does make a better program.

RP: Teachers coming out of credential programs and colleges are by and large not coming out with a background in ecology—or a general sense of systems or biology.

So we have all these teachers who are trepidant about incorporating an outdoor classroom into traditional teaching. Ultimately I think the sustainability of these programs relies on getting all teachers more familiar with outdoor classrooms—so you don’t have to hire a garden coordinator or find that extra funding.

We hear a lot about the barriers to entry for young farmers; are school gardens another outlet for young people who want to grow food?

RP: Yes, it melds into the urban agriculture world. And I think that is going to be a more common type of farming–growing food in urban areas and in small spaces. So teaching in a green classroom is kind of a primer for that, and I think there are a number of students looking for jobs like this.  I’ll be curious to see what’s happening ten years from now.

Originally published by CUESA

These days, we hear more and more about our food system in crisis: contamination, obesity, poor distribution, and environmental devastation.  To combat some of these issues, the school garden is a growing trend that aims to teach our kids a more direct connection to their food and eating habits.  It’s actually not a new concept.  During World War I and II, motivated by scarcity and national security issues, schools  became major suppliers of fresh produce.  Our government began the U.S. School Garden Army, promoting fruit and vegetable production, consumption, and health.  But now the format has entered modern times, up against modern ailments and a larger population.

It is one thing to plant a few sunflowers with Kindergarteners and another to install, maintain, and implement nutrition, cooking, and ecological curriculum that ensure a lasting impact on the students.  It’s not as easy as just planting some tomatoes and hoping our kids will get the message. We’ve all encountered a neglected schoolyard, tangled weeds and scorched earth, with evidence of good intention but stunted momentum.  To really hit home on the important seed to fork lessons a school garden can deliver, it takes tons of work, planning, thought, and consistency…a home garden times one hundred or more.  The hurdles involved are also great, from our national policies, to funding, to actual space available within our country’s concrete landscapes.

But today we also have more resources promoting the school garden concept.  Lesson plans, non-profit organizations, grants, teacher workshops, and consulting opportunities get us closer to creating these Growing Classrooms more efficiently and with a broader reach.  We also finally have some definitive research to back up our claims that these school gardens will work towards creating a healthier food system for generations to come.

In 2004, The School Lunch Initiative was launched in Berkeley, California.  The Initiative, which aims to integrate cooking and gardening into regular school programming and food, is a collaboration between the public school district’s 11 elementary and 3 middle schools, Alice Water’s Chez Panisse Foundation and the Center for Ecoliteracy.  However, after being met with criticism and arguments about the project’s validity, the Chez Panisse Foundation decided to fund The School Lunch Initiative Evaluation Project that was released in June of this year.

This academic study conducted by UC Berkeley researchers is one of the first to thoroughly examine a fully functioning school garden program within a public school system. This lack of scientific evidence is due, in part, to the difficulty involved in quantifying the multi-layered variables, time, and sophistication within the diverse samples of school food and garden projects. Some focus only on the environment, some on nutrition, some on public school menu changes, but until now there has been little evidence that looks at models of successful integration within all the tenants of this issue.

Over the course of three years (fall of 2005 to spring of 2009) 238 students were followed as they moved from the fourth and fifth grades into middle school to determine the effects of The Initiative as it was being implemented. The method was to track students’ development over time within a critical age group, broken up between highly developed food programs and less developed ones within the Berkeley school system (all under the School Food Initiative, which has required healthier food choices, a school garden, on-site cooking education, and professional development for teachers). It is important to note that the schools receiving more exposure to the Initiative programming generally have lower income students, while the schools with less assistance have higher income families enrolled.

The reason this age group was chosen is because studies have indicated that as we move into middle school and our teens, food choices become less healthy, which may lead to poor eating habits as we enter adulthood. U.S. adolescents eat about 3.5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, according to the USDA, as opposed to the recommended seven to eight. This statistic points to the importance of sustained garden and cooking education in middle schools to create a lasting impact. The researcher’s evidence documented an increase in fruit and vegetable servings by 1.5 for fifth graders at the highly developed schools. The less developed schools showed a decrease by 0.4 servings.

There was also a concerted effort to mirror the ethnic and economic diversity of Berkeley public schools within the study, as stated by the authors, “The heterogeneity of the student population is due to Berkeley’s long-standing efforts at integrating its schools. In 1968, the Berkeley Unified School District became the first major school district in the nation to voluntarily integrate its schools. Today, a school assignment plan based upon race, ethnicity, parent education and parent income level aims to bring a diverse mix of students into each Berkeley school.”

One main finding was that parents reported much healthier eating habits in their kids. More than half of the families involved in the study reported eating dinner together every day, and 35 percent of parents with kids in the highly developed School Lunch Initiative schools saw a noticeable improvement in their children’s food choices as opposed to 16 percent in the less developed Initiative schools.

There was also strong evidence that students had increased knowledge of nutrition when exposed to higher levels of Initiative programming (cooking and gardening), specifically in seventh graders in year three with a five percent increase in nutrition scores over the previous year. Not only did the kids know more about fresh produce, they actually started to prefer it, notably in the first year of exposure. The preference was sustained, specifically for leafy greens, following them all the way into middle school.

By year three, the older kids at the highly developed Initiative middle schools displayed a positive attitude about their lunch program, food choices, in-season produce, and ideas that our eating habits can help or hurt the environment. In short, they got it…

The study was also to determine how to enhance, change, and replicate this kind of programming on a wider scale. Obvious recommendations included continuing these kinds of integrated school garden programs, ensuring regular attendance by hiring paid staff, and maintaining the programs into middle schools to reach kids as they move into their teens. The report also suggested adding components that include parents and community members, finding ways to improve the quality of foods brought from home (not just for lunch but for larger events, fundraisers, etc.), and increasing physical activity during the garden and cooking lessons to promote exercise.

On a policy and research level, there needs to be more understanding of how the parents and children view the school meals and what they are actually consuming in order to create strategies that ensure more participation. Also, future assessment of cost and replicability of the School Garden Initiative needs to occur to determine feasibly spreading the model on a wider scale. And finally, the study suggested broadening the age group to look at much younger kids all the way into high school to really analyze the impact of these garden programs for the future.

Photo: Life Lab Science Program in Santa Cruz, CA

When I started volunteering this winter as a garden science teacher with Washington Youth Garden, entering one 3rd-grade classroom every week to help instill knowledge and enthusiasm by the children for the wonders of nature, I had no idea that this experience would inspire me to initiate a national call for Universal School Gardens.

But when I witnessed the children’s smiles and eyes light up in the course of planting seeds and watching them sprout into seedlings and grow, my appreciation deepened for the many reasons why school gardens are gaining popularity and have an excellent track record for enhancing the educational learning and natural curiosity of young people. “Every student should be free to enjoy the incomparable thrill of tasting fresh healthy food that he or she had a direct hand in growing,” I thought, “and every school in America should sprout a garden!”

That’s why this March 2010, as spring fast approaches, I am asking you to join me in expressing support for the mission of “Good Food For All Kids: A Garden at Every School.” Simply by casting your vote for the principle of Universal School Gardens in the 2010 Ideas for Change in America contest sponsored by Change.org, you can help move this idea one important step closer from inspiration to reality.

After voting concludes on Friday, March 12th, the 10 most popular ideas will then be transformed into national grassroots social change campaigns. The staff at Change.org will reach out directly to relevant decision-makers to engage them on the winning ideas, and they will work with each winner to create a grassroots campaign and promote their idea nationwide. Already, “Good Food For All Kids: A Garden at Every School” was one of the top 3 ideas in the “Food and Agriculture” category in the first round. Now, we are playing to win the final round!

Although my vision for Universal School Gardens is ambitious, I believe that now is indeed the ideal moment for a new nationwide mobilization of Americans dedicated to the common purpose of achieving this delicious dream. We have extraordinary political momentum on our side. For example, the Obama administration has stated its commitment to putting an end to childhood hunger by 2015, and First Lady Michelle Obama recently launched her signature “Let’s Move” initiative aiming to combat the nation’s crisis of childhood obesity through strategies for healthier schools and better children’s fitness. Establishing sustainable food gardens at schools across America should be a key component of both of these efforts.

And we have a clear legacy of success to build on: Thousands of edible gardens have already been established at schools in every U.S. state. Educators have produced an abundance of garden-focused curricular standards in all subjects, from science and math to English and art, as well as the empirical evidence to demonstrate why school gardens are a fantastic educational tool and define best practices. A wealth of school gardening websites and resources is available to provide practical instruction.

After experiencing one of the coldest and toughest winters in United States history, with countless families struggling in the grip of a severe prolonged economic recession that has caused a rising tide of childhood hunger, this year many American children are anticipating spring with special fervor. When the snow is all gone and flowers once again begin to bloom, why not celebrate all across the country by planting a wave of new school gardens?

Ultimately, committing to the realization of good food for all kids may be one of the best ways that we can rebuild local economies while proving that investment in the health, nutrition and future of America’s young people will no longer be sacrificed to the convenience of serving them the cheap, bland, uniform, unhealthy processed foods that have become the standard school menu. Only when each and every student has the unhindered opportunity to access the daily nourishment of healthy foods will we be able to honestly claim that no children are being left behind.

It is no longer a secret that the diet of America’s youth needs to radically improve. Hunger, bad nutrition and obesity among children are leading causes of health risks and often contribute to poor classroom performance. A study by Feeding America [PDF] asserts that “food insecurity and hunger, together with other correlates of poverty, can dramatically alter the architecture of children’s brains, making it impossible for them to fulfill their potential.” By planting a garden at every school in America, we will ensure that every child has the opportunity to benefit from eating more fresh healthy foods. Let’s make 2010 the year that the idea of universal school gardening takes off as a force for positive change in U.S. education!

Originally Published on DC Food For All

As one of the teachers involved with Michelle Obama and the White House vegetable garden, I’ve been impressed with the sudden surge of public interest in the simple act of children planting seeds. At Bancroft Elementary School, where I work first and foremost as an art teacher, we know only too well the benefits children get from growing their own food.

But I don’t think the public has any inkling how hard it is for teachers to maintain school gardens like the one we have at Bancroft. Despite all the hoopla over school gardening, the truth is teachers engage in these activities at risk of their jobs. You see, gardening is not part of the mandated school curriculum. We are supposed to be teaching reading and math. As much as we believe school gardens offer a multitude of teaching opportunities, schools do very little to support us. Principals and teachers have been bluntly told that they will lose their jobs if math and reading scores don’t improve. We desperately need help. We need someone to take charge of our school gardens.

The kids you see in all the photos working with the First Lady in the White House garden, or making breakfast on the Today Show with the Obamas’ chef, Sam Kass, are fifth graders from my school. One of the reasons I chose to work at Bancroft two years ago was its garden. I had just moved back to the Washington area from South Carolina where I grew things pretty much all year round in my own yard. With visions of sunflowers and big tomato plants dancing in my head, I signed up for a community garden plot in D.C. But the waiting list was long. The idea of living without a patch of dirt to play in was hard to swallow.

Then I arrived at Bancroft. The assistant principal toured me around the school. As we walked through the playground, she casually remarked, “Oh, and that’s the garden.”  We passed four herb boxes and nine raised beds overflowing with giant sunflowers, with tomato plants heavy with fruit, with squash spilling out over the sides. There was even corn! Truthfully, up until that point I had no idea schools had gardens. Planter boxes with a few basil plants, maybe, but nothing like this.

As I soon discovered, these remarkable gardens were entirely the result of volunteer efforts. Ten years earlier, neighborhood resident Iris Rothman and her partner-in-crime, Nancy Huvendick, along with fifth grade teacher Toni Conklin, had begun acting on a shared vision of the school as a gardener’s Eden. Iris and Toni fought tooth and nail—cut through government red tape, jumped through every bureaucratic hoop–to make way for outside agencies such as the U.S. Botanical Garden to come in and construct the bones of our garden. Casey Trees, a non-profit groups, planted some 40 trees on school grounds. Last year, Iris had the brilliant idea to start a community garden on school property. We now have at least 30 people on the waiting list for plots.

All of this was accomplished by concerned neighbors and teachers during their free hours. I don’t think the school system ever spent a dime.

I met Iris when she approached me about collaborating on some art projects in the garden. Up to that point, I had assumed the garden was part of the daily school curriculum. It soon became clear that the work Iris was doing with the kids happened after school or in the summer. Iris worked hard to create opportunities for learning in the garden. But she did not have support from the school administration. They saw gardening as an extra-curricular activity. Disrupting the daily schedule was not an option.

The garden at Bancroft Elementary evolved on its own over the years. It was never officially introduced to the school’s staff. No system was ever put in place to utilize it within the curriculum. When I arrived, I brought something new: A passion for gardens and a creative mind. Not only was my schedule more flexible than other teachers’, I did not have test scores to worry about. I was able to weave the garden into my own arts curriculum. And since I teach every student in the school, I was able to expose all of them to the joys of horticulture.

Then came the day when some of my students helped Michelle Obama and Sam Kass break ground for the new kitchen garden at the White House. I returned to Bancroft and told the administration we needed to get our own school garden ready because the First Lady planned to visit. They laughed and told me that while she may have said that, what she actually did was something else. I called Iris.

As in the past, there was no plan for spring planting at Bancroft. No money had been set aside for seeds. No teachers had garden projects in mind. I approached some local businesses and asked for donations of plants. Whole Foods gave us enough cabbage, broccoli and lettuce seedlings to fill five beds. But how would I get students to plant our garden beds during the school day? Each day Iris and I took art classes to the garden to plant seedlings. We weeded and mulched. By the time Michelle Obama strolled through our garden with a beaming Toni Conklin on her arm, things looked pretty lush.

After that I began taking my art classes frequently to work in the garden– planting, harvesting, drawing. The White House dropped off tomato plants and we had fifth-graders show 3-year-olds how to plant them. We don’t have a kitchen at school so anytime we wanted to use the produce from the garden in a cooking lesson we had to convert the art room into a kitchen. When the lettuce was ready to eat we got an after-school group to harvest, wash and prepare it for salads. We set out salad toppings–dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, croutons–so kids could create three-dimensional, edible art projects. We picked herbs from the garden to make vinaigrette from scratch. The students were shocked to learn that salad dressing could be “made,” it did not have to be bought at a store.

Last Spring I signed up for a workshop at the Washington Youth Garden– part of the National Arboretum–to learn how gardens can be used as teaching tools. My classmates were teachers who already had gardens, along with many others who wanted to start gardens at their own schools. Our common bond: a shared desire to get kids busy in the soil. For the first time, I saw just how many people are working hard to create a consistent, citywide school garden program.

Then in the fall, a new D.C. Farm to School Network sponsored a “Local Flavor Week” to encourage school activities around the idea of fresh, local produce. My principal allowed me to put the rest of my schedule on hold to plan numerous events—cooking demonstrations, a trip to a farm, building cold frames. Most were linked to teaching standards. Every one of our 450 kids participated.

Many things became clear after that week. The most important and surprising was that every teacher in my school was excited about students having garden experiences like the ones I organized. Most were even willing to sacrifice precious hours to help. I also learned that there are so many dynamic people eager to work with kids on gardening, cooking and nutrition education. Finally, it became plainly evident that while it is possible to tap into this wealth of resources to build a school garden program, it is a FULL-TIME JOB.

As I said, my new principal allowed me to put everything on hold for Local Flavor Week because she believed in the importance of highlighting these experiences for the students and agreed that all 450 kids should participate. She even paid for one of the buses because the school lacked the funding. We are lucky: Our administration supports our gardening efforts. Many schools are not so fortunate. But even with this unconditional support, the garden program is still a patchwork of volunteer efforts that needs a dedicated individual to transform it into a streamlined resource that every teacher can use to engage her students.

During Local Flavor Week, I still had to teach my full load of art classes even though there were 16 trips and in-school workshops scheduled. Everywhere I went I was actually jogging, not walking. I had to be in at least three places at once on more than one occasion. I had not asked any other staff members to help me coordinate this because none of them had the time. They had their kids all day long. So I was a one-woman show. And I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if every week could be like this week?” If we had a full-time garden coordinator, that is.

I had so many teachers after that week thank me and tell me that anytime I want to set up something like that again they would love to participate. I wanted to say, “If I can do it, you can do it.” But the truth is they can’t.

It’s not that classroom teachers aren’t interested. They just have too much on their plate. And without gardening experience, they just won’t use the school garden.

For all her great work and effort, Iris Rothman lacks an inside connection to the school, involvement in the schedule, familiarity with the curriculum. She has no power to create or change the curriculum, to implement standards-based activities, train teachers. She even has a hard time convincing the administration to allow her to bring in others who could do all of these things. Fitting it into the schedule would mean more work for administrators who are already overloaded.

“Healthy Schools’ legislation pending before the D.C. Council would require the city’s schools to create a garden program for the first time, to provide training, planning and technical assistance for existing gardens as well as new ones. The one thing clear to everyone involved in this legislation is that, more than anything, what school gardens need is someone to be in charge, someone to take on this job full-time.

School gardens illuminate the connections between food, nutrition and our physical and mental well-being. They can change the lives of impressionable children. A resource this valuable should not have to depend on unpaid volunteers or teachers who fear for their jobs.

Originally published on The Slow Cook

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America

Dillard Academy — Goldsboro, North Carolina

When Cheryl Alston was tasked with helping underperforming students raise their test scores at Dillard Academy‘s Center for Academic, Social, Technology, Literacy, and Economic Solutions (CASTLES) she didn’t start with worksheets and drills. She got her students outside, gardening. “I had to find a hook, something not traditional, different, exciting.” CASTLES is an after-school and summer school program created to help struggling K-6 students in this socioeconomically-challenged area in rural North Carolina.

Thanks to CASTLES’ 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, a partnership with the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), and a local church with available land, and a growing number of other partnerships, the students at CASTLES work some 3 1/2 acres of peas, tomatoes, eggplant, greens, strawberries, cabbage, cucumbers and herbs. They sell some of the produce at a community mini-market and cook some of it for themselves using recipes gleaned from grandparents. They even write and perform songs about their garden, which they recently performed at a W. K. Kellogg Foundation conference in San Jose, California.

Alston, who previously taught high school chemistry partly through a small classroom garden, adapted curriculum for the garden. She knew she had something when children enrolled in the summer gardening program tested out of CASTLES in subsequent years. “This is it!,” she said to herself, “This is what we’ve got to do!” But as children bring home the lessons about cooking and gardening to their parents Alston is hoping the program does more than raise test scores. She’s hoping that students will teach their parents and then the community to eat healthier. “I’m waiting to hear about fewer cases of diabetes!” she laughs.

Cooking With Kids — Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico is known for its rich culinary tradition, but beyond from the hotels, art galleries, and restaurants there are communities struggling to find fresh produce and a healthy way of eating. Cookbook author and restauranteur Lynn Walters founded the non-profit Cooking With Kids: Hands-On Food and Nutrition Education in partnership with the Santa Fe Public Schools in 1995. What started as a small pilot program now serves over 4,450 Pre-K through 6th grade kids at 12 low-income schools.

Through the program, which takes place within the usual school day, students learn how different fruits and vegetables are grown. Local chef volunteers (like Rocky Durham, Fernando Olea, Martin Rios, and Johnny Vollertson) teach the students how to cook using fresh, affordable foods and recipes from a wide range of cultures. Students not only learn about nutrition and cooking, but also supplement their instruction in math, social studies, and science; the curriculum is tied to New Mexico’s state standards.

Walters was originally brought into the schools to improve their lunch program. She started holding brainstorming sessions and brought in chefs, thinking, “If the food is beter they’ll eat it.” Walters quickly learned this was not so simple and that she had to build acceptance of new foods by having the students participate in the preparation of the food as well. Now Cooking With Kids meals are served in the lunchroom twice a month. The program draws some 1200 parent volunteers, so the lessons are finding their way home. And CWK is preparing community events to take part in Santa Fe’s 400th celebration in 2010.


CitySprouts — Cambridge, Massachusetts

Since 2000 CitySprouts has been working with the Cambridge, Massachusetts public schools to develop and implement school garden programs. The program administrators have done an impressive job of building the institutional infrastructure to keep CitySprouts thriving, and this makes a significant difference. The garden programs are integrated into the school core curriculum and teachers are provided with at least three hours of training in the gardens. CitySprouts even offers an environmental stewardship and community leadership internship program for middle school through college students.

Currently there is a CitySprouts program in 10 out of the 12 K-8 schools, with plans to cover all schools this fall. And the garden curriculum goes beyond science; lessons extend into math, literacy, social studies and art, plus hands-on instruction on sustainable agriculture, the food cycle, and the natural environment.

As a community-minded program, CitySprouts offers after school and summer “Drop-Ins,” workshops open to the community on soil testing and garden cooking. In 2008 these workshops attracted more than 2,900 visits. As part of the program, the schools host farmer visits and cafeteria tastings of food grown in the garden–and speaking of the cafeteria, CitySprouts is working with Food Services to bring healthier, more local food into school lunches. It’s an ambitious, far-reaching program, but thoughtfully designed to provide plenty of support, buy-in, and benefits for the entire community.

Watch the kids at CitySprouts talk about their experiences:

Thurgood Marshall Academy — Southeast Washington, DC

A large, well-integrated program is wonderful, but a program can start with the inspiration of just one or two people. High school biology teacher Sarah Johnson started an organic garden two years ago at Thurgood Marshall Academy with two other teachers. It actually started as an outgrowth of the student green club she advised. Realizing that finding and eating nutritious food was a challenge for the students, Johnson applied for an Earth Day grant and a Washington Parks and People grant to build the first raised garden beds. Over the summer she taught a summer school class on “where our food comes from” and in the afternoon green club members met every single day to garden, harvest, and cook.

To enable multi-disciplinary lessons in the garden the students have planted tobacco and cotton for the history teachers, for example, as well as other plants mentioned in classic literature. In the garden cooking classes (using equipment from the lab) Johnson has found that “you’ll really inspire a desire in students to continue cooking if you don’t keep bound to a recipe.” She give her students an idea, like stir fry, and then lets them decide how to do it. Beyond the classroom she and her colleagues are working with DC Hunger Solution to get fresh food (including the garden’s produce) sold in the corner store across from school. Meanwhile, the gardeners sell some of their produce and some composting worm casings at farmers’ markets around the city.

Johnson says the school administrators took some convincing. Limited space was an issue, “but essentially we were just tenacious in getting it done, and now the administration is very excited about what we’re doing.” A common concern for school administrators is continuity–who will keep the garden going from year to year as staff and students change? TMA’s garden program is young, but so far the excitement and commitment of the students, who come in early and stay late daily, has impressed everyone. Johnson adds, “if there’s not student and teacher buy-in, then the administration will not be supportive. The garden will need this support and enthusiasm to survive; Johnson has just moved this summer to teach in Oakland, California. She has full confidence that the garden will continue in her absence.

Woodland Elementary West — Gages Lake, Illinois

Every spring at Woodland Elementary West, some 400 second-grade students plant vegetable seedlings in their classrooms. Over the months they will tend these seedlings, transplant them outdoors in the school garden, continue weeding and watering, and eventually harvest enough produce for class samples and a donation to the town food pantry.

Woodland’s program was initiated by the principal (now retired) and has been maintained by parents, administrators, and teachers. The school is fortunate to have a very large, campus-style school with ample space for gardening. Through the summer day-campers and parents tend the garden so that when 2nd graders return as 3rd graders in the fall they can harvest their produce. The school uses sustainable practices, like fish emulsion fertilizer and dish soap to repel aphids. The absence of chemicals means kids can touch the plants during tours and spend class time and recess in the garden.

In the last two years the school has donated 1,500 pounds of vegetables to the food pantry. “Pantries always have a need for ‘fresh’ food because it’s healthier than the usual canned staples,” says parent volunteer and gardening author Ann Nagro. “These students are not only learning sustainable agriculture and healthy eating habits, they are also learning that they can change their community.”


24th Street Schoolyard Garden — Los Angeles, California

24th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, California, used to have a one-acre blacktop parking lot. The surrounding neighborhood of West Adam is a food desert, meaning groceries with fresh produce are scarce. Now that lot is a thriving garden with an outdoor kitchen featuring a pitfire pizza oven. Thanks to the support of teachers, administrators, parents, and some key community members like restauranteur Nancy Silverton, the 24th Street Schoolyard Garden is a source of fresh produce for the student and, increasingly, the community.

Through a variety of classes children in all grades spend some time in the garden each week, whether they are gardening or having a science lesson. Package designer Laurie Dill teaches 5th graders herb identification and even shows the kids how to package the herbs to sell to local chefs, who then come in to do cooking demonstrations. She notes that while most children in the class start out knowing next to nothing about where their food comes from, “once you get them talking about it and cooking they start making connections with what their families make. Kids are eating and tasting vegetables all the time in the garden. They take it home, often literally.”

24th Street is the prototype school for the Garden School Foundation, which works in partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District to bring gardens and kitchens to schools (among other goals). The foundation does fundraisers like an Eat the Magazine dinner organized by Edible Los Angeles at Grace and supporting businesses and organizations make both financial, labor, and in-kind donations. But the garden’s success began with the dedication of a small group of people. “If you can get the one receptive teacher the others will follow,” Dill says. “It all depends on principals and teachers who see the benefits.”

Watch this video to see the program in action.

CookShop Classroom — New York, NY

On a warm May day two kindergarten classrooms at Brooklyn’s Teunis E. Bergen School (PS 9) were infused with the grassy scent of fresh-cut vegetables and fruit. Students in one room were carefully slicing apples, green beans, cucumbers, carrots, green onions, and red bell peppers with plastic knives while students in the classroom next door practiced their writing and reading skills as they discussed a recipe for lettuce wraps. Moments later they would all be enthusiastically cramming the vegetable-filled lettuce wraps into their mouths, a spectacle rarely seen among any children.

These are the fruits of a program called CookShop Classroom, created by FoodChange (now part of FoodBank New York) in partnership with New York City’s Department of School Food and Columbia Teacher’s College. CookShop Classroom is a series of lessons centering around 10 different fruits and vegetables. One week the class learns about a particular food: where and how it’s grown, the different parts of the plant, how it gets to the city, what it looks and smells like and how it is typically prepared.

In these hands-on lessons students touch and sample the produce. The following week students prepare a dish using the fruit or vegetable they learned about the previous week. This experience is exactly what researchers say induces children to eat their vegetables: repeated exposure breeds familiarity, which leads to acceptance. Even better, as children learn to accept the CookShop vegetables they also learn to be more adventurous with other foods.

Learning to be adventurous is fun, as the kids themselves will tell you. “My favorite part was when we dipped the apples [into a savory sauce the students made]. They looked yummy and I ate them like a bunny rabbit!” a PS 9 kindergardener Bethlehem enthuses. “I like it best when we were learning how to cook. I liked learning about the ingredients.”


Mullberry Junction Community Garden — Minneapolis, Minnesota

If a school garden is not a possibility for you, a community garden might accommodate a children’s program. Joyce Perew was jogging past a community garden one morning when she noticed how dilapidated it looked. Between jobs at the time, she decided to investigate and suddenly found herself working with a teacher and a master gardener to rehabilitate the garden for an after-school and summer-school program. Perew and her collaborators found and created lesson plans around the garden, teaching students not only how to grow and cook fresh foods but also the kind of wacky lessons that really reach students, like how to make a battery out of a carrot.

Perew’s cooking lessons usually focused on one vegetable or fruit grown in the garden. She would teach a small group a recipe and provide puzzles, experiments, nutritional information, related literature, and crafts. In a group setting peer pressure actually worked in favor of the vegetables; if a few kids liked a dish, others would give it a chance. Perew also gave the kids lessons in ingredients label reading, teaching them where additives like MSG and malodextrine come from. They conducted taste tests, comparing highly-processed boxed foods with their home-made equivalents.

The garden classes had a surprising benefit. For each taste test the students were required to explain why they liked or disliked a food. “A lot of these kids have behavioral problems,” Perew explains, so asking kids to describe their experiences with the foods more specifically “helped kids learn to express themselves more articulately and appropriately.” The gardening and cooking program actually had a civilizing effect on the kids!


School Garden and Cooking Class Resources

Toolboxes:

• School Garden Wizard is a toolbox for starting and maintaining a school garden created through a partnership between the United States Botanic Garden and Chicago Botanic Garden.

• Register your school with KidsGardening.org and find articles and other resources to help with your school garden.

• The California Department of Education, in collaboration with the Center for Ecoliteracy, has distributed more than 25,000 print copies of Getting Started: A Guide for Creating School Gardens as Outdoor Classrooms. Download it here.

• Texas A&M Department of Horticulture’s has a school gardening website.

• Download Farm Aid’s Farm to School 101 Toolkit here.

• Sustainable Table’s guide to school garden and food projects.

• Gardening ABCs is a website dedicated to school gardens created by Anne Nagro, a parent volunteer with Woodland Elementary West in Illinois. She has also written a book on her school’s project, Our Generous Garden, available in a dual language (Spanish-English) edition by Dancing Rhinoceros Press.

• Joyce Perew, who taught at the Mulberry Junction community garden in Minneapolis, has lessons available for sale. Contact her at joycookingforkids@gmail.com.

Organizations that provide and/or support school garden and cooking programs:

• Slow Food in Schools works with local Slow Food chapters to create Garden to Table projects in K-12 schools.

• Alice Water’s Chez Panisse Foundation leads an Edible Schoolyard Academy for educators. In the future the organization will be forming affiliate model programs and will develop a suite of tools to help districts across the country change their school meal programs.

• RecipeForSuccess is a non-profit charity dedicated to combating childhood obesity by changing the way children understand, appreciate and eat their food.

• The Life Lab Science Program (by the University of California, Santa Cruz) is a nonprofit organization and has been working in the field of science and environmental education since 1979. With their award winning curricula and programs, the organization helps schools develop gardens where children can create “living laboratories” for the study of the natural world.

• The National Farm to School Network is a collaborative project of the Center for Food & Justice (CFJ), a division of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College and the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). Farm to School brings healthy food from local farms to school children nationwide. The program teaches students about the path from farm to fork, and instills healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime. At the same time, use of local produce in school meals and educational activities provides a new direct market for farmers in the area and mitigates environmental impacts of transporting food long distances.

• Seeds of Solidarity is a nonprofit organization that provides people of all ages with the inspiration and practical tools to use renewable energy and grow food in their communities, Seeds of Solidarity has a number of school based garden partnerships, afterschool programs, and a teen program that teach young people to grow and cook fresh food.

• 21st Century Community Learning Center Grant supports the creation of community learning centers that provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children, particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools.

• The W. K. Kellogg Foundation provides grants for projects focusing on education and learning, food, health and well-being.

• The Earth Day Network provides grants for classroom civic and environmental education with hands-on learning experiences that provide an opportunity for students to remedy local environmental concerns.

• Your school can raise up to $5000 for your school garden through Lowe’s Toolbox for Education.

• The National Gardening Association and The Home Depot offers a Youth Garden Grants program.

• Chlorox Green Works offers a Green Heroes grant program.

• Real School Gardens is a grassroots gardening program that helps children by supporting elementary school communities as they design, install and sustain outdoor classrooms (gardens).

• The Sylvia Center offers garden-to-table nutrition education year-round in classrooms all over New York City. From May through October, they host school and camp groups at Katchkie Farm, in Kinderhook, NY.

• City Blossoms is a Maryland-based organization that uses gardening to create environmental, nutritional, and cultural connections for children and youth.

• Growing Chefs offers educational programming in farming, gardening, and cooking with simple recipes using seasonal ingredients in the New York City metro area.

• Mud Baron helps schools in the Los Angeles area start and maintain gardens.

Read more about school garden projects around the country:

• Oregon’s planned Farm-to-School Program

• School gardens in Los Angeles

• New York City’s Garden to Cafe pilot program

• School Garden Project of Lane County, Oregon

Prepare yourself for some challenges:

• Zerofoodprint asks if Farm-to-School is a pipe dream.

Extra credit:

• What’s on Your Plate? is a documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics, narrated by two eleven-year-old New York City public school students.

• Look out for the forthcoming documentary A Community of Gardeners, which includes the Washington Youth Garden and the C. Melvin Sharpe Health School Garden.

• School Lunch Talk is a blog about public school food.

• Chef Ann Cooper, who revolutionized the Berkeley school system’s cafeterias, keeps a website and blog.

Photo credit: CookShop photo by Michael Harlan Turkell