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.
I absolutely agree, Ms. Bernardi. Wouldn't it be amazing if every public school in the U.S. had a sustainable edible garden? Not only do school gardens make the connections you mentioned, I believe they teach self-sufficiency. In general, Americans are totally dependent on corporations to feed us. Teaching our children the importance of some degree of self-sufficiency in our convenient/dependent food culture is a huge boon to having a school garden.
Good luck with Healthy Schools' legislation. I hope to see more legislation in more cities just like that.
I understand the issues your school is facing. Vandalism is a real problem for school gardens. However, a garden that brings together the community in its design , creation and maintenance is usually a garden safe from vandals. If every student in the school feels a sense of ownership of the garden it will be protected. If the community comes to understand the value of the garden and becomes united through the garden, this also serves to prevent vandalism. Start small but make a big production out of it...maybe even try to get the would-be vandals involved...