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Table of Contents

Cover Story

Cover Story - Spanish Version

Mini-Lesson

Comprehension Quiz

Teacher's Guide and Worksheets

Food for Thought

--By Elizabeth Winchester

It's science class for some eighth graders at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. But the students aren't sitting at their desks. Instead, they are harvesting fava beans and planting corn in their school's one-acre garden. Everything in the garden--from broccoli and carrots to strawberries and oranges--is grown organically, without the use of harmful chemicals.

King students have been digging into learning this way since 1997. That's when Alice Waters, a famous chef, started a program called the Edible Schoolyard at their school. Teachers and kids incorporate the organic garden into many lessons. In math class, they measure vegetable beds; in art, they draw the wonders of nature, and garden ingredients create cultural feasts for social studies lessons. While they learn, the kids develop a taste for healthful eating.

THE SEEDS OF LEARNING

North Country School in Lake Placid, New York, is another school with deep roots in garden-based learning. For almost 75 years, lessons at the boarding school have been connected to raising livestock and tending gardens. Kids participate in "complete cycles of food production, from planting and harvesting to preparing and eating," says John Culpepper, the school's farm manager. Much of the food served at North Country is homegrown, even the maple syrup. "Knowing you helped produce it makes it [taste] so much better," says Anthony Edwards, 12.

According to the National Gardening Association, about 25,000 schools in the United States involve students in gardening, and the numbers are growing like weeds! "School gardens are useful tools in improving children's nutrition and environmental awareness and [providing] a sense of peace in our fast-paced world," says Eve Pranis, the association's director of educational media.

Waters hopes that more schools will follow the example set by King Middle School. She wants all 17 schools in its district to have similar garden programs. Waters's goal is to turn lunch into an academic subject. Students would get a grade for helping to prepare locally grown organic foods. What grade would you get for healthful eating and caring for the earth?

Next: Frog Frenzy!