School Garden

Purpose

Growing up in an urban or suburban environment, most of my students do not have access to a garden and have never grown plants before. By creating a school garden and visiting a professional youth farm, my students will feel engaged in their school community and understand the plant life cycle in a deeper way than they could learning about it only in class. Through our field trip, they will also be exposed to people and programs that encourage youth activism and environmental connection. Grow Dat Youth Farm’s mission is to “inspire youth and adults to create personal, social and environmental change in their own communities” (City Park New Orleans, 2019), and I decided that combining a trip to this farm with making our own garden would encourage my students to feel invested in their community and help them believe in their ability to create change.

Besides helping my students become nature advocates, this opportunity also opens doors for them to experience their own impact on plant growth and their relationship with nature. Students will practice responsibility knowing that if they do not give the plants special care and treatment, the plants won't be able to thrive. They will also have a sense of responsibility and ownership over a section of our school.

My final step while preparing this resource for my students was to invite a trauma-informed meditation teacher to visit our school and teach the students different practices they can use to calm down in nature. This meditation program I am organizing will help students navigate and access the garden as a peaceful place they can visit to calm down or reflect.

Preparation

My first step in preparing our garden was to pick a location. There is a small stretch of empty land (pictured below) between our classrooms to the left and the cafeteria to the right. I thought that this would make be a nice, quiet place to beautify with a student garden.

I then emailed my campus principal to explain my original plans to her. I planned to create the garden in the spring for better weather, but started preparing in the fall.

In January, I created this notice which I sent home to all kindergarten families. Within the next month, I received over 50 metal cans that we will use as small recycled planters for the students to put seedlings in. This also connects to our goal of keeping the garden eco-friendly.

Garden Flyer.pdf

Another way that I will support the creation of our school garden is to gather advice from Harry Alper, a garden teacher who works for Edible School Yard. Edible School Yard (https://esynola.org/) is a New Orleans-based program that focuses on exposing children at Title 1 schools to the benefits of growing plants and cooking locally grown foods. Using his expertise as a resource to help plan our garden is one way that I intend to ensure the longevity of my project so that many students may benefit from this garden for years to come.

School Garden Creation

The process of creating our garden required lots of planning and some community outreach. One of the things I wanted to do with this project was to make sure that my students understood the process of a plant life cycle, while also understanding the benefits of nurturing and raising a garden in their school environment. Exposure to these ideas and the garden resources I have provided will help my suburban students engage with nature and make an impact on our school.

One of our Louisiana Student Standards for Science is to "use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals... need to survive" (Department of Education Louisiana Believes, n.d.). When creating our social studies Curriculum Map for the year, I decided to introduce the plant life cycle early on. My students completed the lesson below in September, and we reviewed these plant life cycle concepts before we began our spring planting.

plant needs_cycle.pdf

While our lesson mentioned above prepares students theoretically, creating a garden in reality allows students to access this knowledge about plants and put it into practice. Creating this garden acts as a hands-on opportunity for students to not only understand but take part in the plant life cycle. It also helps students feel connected to our school by knowing that they can create something beautiful on our campus.

One goal of this activity was to make sure that every child felt responsible for and involved in its creation. Here are the steps each child took to help create our garden at school:

1) With adult assistance, students took turns pouring dirt from our supply bag into their chosen recycled can container.

2) Then, each child went to the seed selection area, where student volunteers explained the seeds they had and asked the students to choose the seeds they wanted from a variety of vegetable and flower options.

3) Next, students went to another student volunteer so she could water their container using our watering can. This volunteer will be responsible for watering the plants and eventually training others how to water them as we walk by the garden on the way to lunch each day.

4) Finally, students placed their containers in a sunny spot in the garden for them to grow. Here it will be easy for them to observe when they start to sprout. After the seeds sprout, we will move them into larger planters so that they can grow more.

Seeds

Example sprout

To help students understand what happens to their seeds while they are underground, we also put beans in plastic bags with a wet paper towel in them. These beans, when left against a window in our classroom, will begin to sprout from being exposed to water and sunlight. Once they sprout, students can watch how the roots and sprouts grow for a few days before we transfer the beans from our bags out to the garden.

Field Trip

Grow Dat Youth Farm, like our school garden, provides a point of access for our students to learn more about the natural world than they likely would in an urban or suburban environment. Visiting the farm after beginning our garden would help students connect their actions to the career of farming, while also inspiring them to keep working on our garden to help it thrive.

More information on the farm can be found here:

Grow Dat Youth Farm

Website: https://growdatyouthfarm.org/fieldtrips

Location: 150 Zachary Taylor Dr, New Orleans, LA 70124

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, our field trip to the farm was indefinitely postponed. We were intending to go on Friday, April 3rd, 2020, but found out on March 12th that all field trips were cancelled. If Jefferson Parish Schools reopens and allows field trips to begin again, then we will try to go before the end of the year. Below is the email from our Lower School Principal confirming the cancellation of all field trips.

Meditation Lesson

Many of my students have experienced trauma in their lives, so an additional opportunity this garden presents is for students to use this place to practice trauma-informed meditation. In regular meditation, practitioners are often asked to "stay with sensation, discomfort, or emotional distress" for a period of time, which can feel overwhelming to people who have experienced trauma (Tarrant, 2020). Teaching students how to use grounding skills and be more involved with their environment while meditating helps them distance themselves from bad experiences and feel a clearer sense of peace.

I have invited a meditation teacher, Renee Benson (Renee@ya4la.org), who specializes in trauma-informed meditation to visit our school and practice meditation with each of our kindergarten classes in the new garden. This will also help students associate the garden with a place of peace that they can visit to calm down in the future as needed.

Source: Pxhere

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 virus, my school campus was closed from March 13th, 2020 onward. We still intend to practice this meditation lesson after the school reopens later this spring or in the fall, as students may need this program more than ever after experiencing such a drastic change to their routines.

Another option I have arranged is to have Renee record a video with meditation techniques that we can post on a school-specific youtube channel for our students. This will allow students to still reap the benefits of her meditation instruction online. My plans with Renee to arrange this are outlined in the email below.

Conclusion

There are many different points of access for my students provided through this garden. First, students feel involved with creating a space focusing on nature inside our school. Second, students learn more deeply about the plant life cycle through our garden and can grow things in a way that they cannot at home. Additionally, students would have had an opportunity to explore farming and food production through our field trip, which opens doors for students to navigate agriculture as a profession. Finally, students learn how to meditate within the garden, which will help them be able to connect peacefully with nature to deal with past trauma. Some adjustments to this plan have been made due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but I have worked with others to try to ensure that my students are still able to experience as many benefits as they can from this access opportunity.

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References

City Park New Orleans. (2019). Grow Dat: Growing Food, Nurturing Leaders. Retrieved from https://neworleanscitypark.com/in-the-park/grow-dat.

Department of Education Louisiana Believes. (n.d.). Louisiana Student Standards: Science. Retrieved from www.louisianabelives.com.

Tarrant, J. (2020). Trauma-Informed Meditation. Retrieved from https://www.pesi.com/blog/details/1283/trauma-informed-meditation

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