Why Should Delaware Care?
Despite living close to farmland, students throughout Delaware often do not know how their fruit and vegetables actually get to their plates. A school gardening program that works with more than 60 schools throughout the state allows students to gain first-hand knowledge about where their food comes from and the work it takes to grow it.
On a humid afternoon in May, five Beacon Middle School students spent part of their afternoon racing back and forth through the school’s kitchen alongside the soft hum of salad spinners and running faucets.
The students were not rushing to turn in assignments, or even to wash dishes. Instead, they were cleaning and preparing spinach, carrots, snap peas, and rainbow chard. The veggies, grown in the school’s garden, would later be eaten during lunch.
“I think you’re having too much fun over there,” seventh-grade science teacher Jacqueline Kisiel told her Cape Henlopen School District students over the chatter.
Kisiel oversees her class’s participation with Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids, a nonprofit organization, funded in part with state and federal dollars. The organization partners with more than 60 Delaware schools to build and maintain school gardens.
For the students participating in the program, the gardening work serves as more than an excuse to play in the dirt. It offers lessons about science and nutrition that helps students understand where their food comes from.
In recent months, Kisiel’s students have planted and harvested enough vegetables to feed their entire seventh-grade class.
For some students, like seventh grader Braxton, gardening work provides the opportunity to take on a leadership role with his classmates.
Kisiel assigned Braxton the role of the class’s “water boy.” He’s taken on the responsibility with enthusiasm. He reminds Kisiel when the plants need to be watered. He also guides classmates when it is their turn with the hose, letting them know when the veggies have had enough.
But his favorite part is seeing how much the plants have grown.
“Not everybody got to come out here to see how big they got through the process,” Braxton said.
How does the school garden program work?
When a school first connects with Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids, the first step is to determine how they will fund the garden, as not every school can fully support the program itself, Executive Director Lydia Sarson said.
Sometimes the nonprofit works with donors, funders, and granters to bring gardens to Delaware’s schools.
After the money portion is determined and a partnership between a school and an organization is established, Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids’ staff will visit the school to work with groundskeepers to help build the garden and order seeds.
Sarson said students can start planting seeds as soon as the garden is built.
The organization also has program coordinators who help schools with first-time gardens and train teachers to eventually run the garden themselves.
All of that work costs a lot of money.
And around the time that the Beacon students’ plants were sprouting from seeds, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids nearly $300,000 through a farm-to-school grant.
It was the organization’s third award from the federal program.
Sarson said the funds will allow her nonprofit to expand program coordinator training and programmatic support.
“We want to make sure that they are as ready for the teacher training for the garden support as possible,” Sarson said.
Bringing farms to schools
Although Booker T. Washington Elementary is less than 5 miles from a prominent Kent County farm, most students have never actually seen a farm before, school nurse Megan Holdridge said.
“So here, at least they’re able to see this is how it goes – farm to table,” she said.
Holdridge is not alone in her belief that students should know where their food comes from. Monica Dickens, a paraprofessional at the South Dover Elementary School, told Spotlight Delaware that many of her students believe fruits and vegetables come from grocery stores, not farms.
Dickens said when students see vegetables like lettuce growing, they ask her if it is “really really lettuce?”
The Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids program model is typically made for elementary schools serving students in kindergarten and fifth grade. Each of the grades has certain gardening tasks, with younger students taking on easier roles, such as planting, and older students participating in harvesting and composting.
Still, Sarson said the Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids program can be adapted to fit in schools that primarily focus on younger students.
At East Dover Early Childhood Center, which serves preschoolers and kindergarteners, the 5- and 6-year-olds are the garden leaders. Although their younger classmates are in charge of preparing the soil, the kindergarteners are studying the plants and writing down their own observations.
Toward the end of their observation day, the kindergarteners gather around their teacher Amy Stewart, and discuss what they saw in the garden.
“Are you guys going to be ready to harvest sometime soon?” Stewart asked the students. “Do you think they need a little bit more time?”
The students chant back that the plants do need more time before they can be plucked from the garden and used for their school lunches.
The kindergarteners turn in their papers with their plant observations and line up to return to the classroom.
There will be more time to harvest as the plants continue to grow.
