ST. LOUIS (February 23rd, 2018)- Students in Gateway Greening’s Seed to STEM program keep growing thanks to a $205,000 grant from the Monsanto Fund for 2018-2019.
Gateway Greening has a long history of assisting St. Louis schools to fund and support school gardens. To help teachers effectively use the garden as an outdoor classroom and learning laboratory, Gateway Greening educators developed the Seed to STEM program.
“The Monsanto Fund grant makes it possible for Gateway Greening educators to provide weekly Seed to STEM lessons in five St. Louis Public Schools. Seed to STEM is a hands-on K-5 science curriculum that uses school gardens to reinforce Next Generation Science Standards, develop scientific inquiry skills, and inspire students to connect to their environment, food system and community,” said Lucy Herleth, Gateway Greeening’s School Program Manager. “With the Monsanto Fund grant, Gateway Greening is also able to support over 60 youth gardens as well as offer monthly educator workshops, district professional development and site-specific trainings.
The Seed to STEM curriculum is also available free to anyone that works with youth through the Gateway Greening website and its monthly educator email newsletter. Gateway Greening estimates that its school garden programs, along with the Seed to STEM initiative, have empowered more than 13,000 students across the St. Louis region to garden.
Lauren Hollis, a teacher at Clay Academy, said it takes “confidence” for educators to garden successfully with their students.
“In the beginning, I was so scared I was going to kill the plants,” said Hollis. “Now I have the experience and someone to answer questions. After going to the garden (for the past year), I would totally teach any lesson outside with confidence and not be worried.”
She also said gardening helps students to understand that food doesn’t just magically appear at the grocery store.
“Gardens help the students learn more about their environment and learn where their food is from,” she added. “Gardens help them see a process – a plant growing or a pumpkin decomposing.”
Clay Academy’s school garden was founded in 1993 and with the support of Gateway Greening educators and the Monsanto Fund, it has become a thriving outdoor classroom. Additionally, continued support from the Monsanto Fund will allow Gateway Greening to expand the Seed to STEM curriculum so that more teachers and students throughout the St. Louis region will have access to the program.
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ABOUT GATEWAY GREENING
Gateway Greening, www.gatewaygreening.org, educates and empowers people to strengthen their communities through gardening and urban agriculture. Led by Executive Director Matt Schindler, the organization supports over 200 community gardens and food projects as well as 60 school gardens in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area.
ABOUT THE MONSANTO FUND
The Monsanto Fund, the philanthropic arm of Monsanto Company, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the communities where farmers and Monsanto Company employees live and work. Visit the Monsanto Fund at www.monsantofund.org.
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School Program Manager Lucy Herleth visiting Ms. Hayes’ fourth grade class at Gateway Elementary to help students plan which crops to grow in their school garden.
How do you foster a sense of student ownership and investment in their school garden? By encouraging them to be a part of the decision making process.
Last week, Ms. Davie’s and Ms. Hayes’s 4th grade classes at Gateway Elementary decided what to plant in their school garden based on planting dates, germination rates, and factored in the days till harvest. But first, they had to learn how to read seed packets and planting calendars so that they could make informed decisions.
School Program Manager Lucy Herleth visiting Ms. Hayes’ fourth grade class at Gateway Elementary to help students plan which crops to grow in their school garden.
Learning to Interpret Seed Packets
At the beginning of class Gateway Greening Educator Lucy Herleth passed out seed packets of different fruit and vegetable types to each student. Some students groaned when they ended up with packets of green beans, while one young lady cheered: “I got tomatoes!”
For many of the fourth graders, this was their first opportunity to read a seed packet up close, so Miss Lucy gave a quick lesson. Building on previous class discussions, students connected the general plant life cycles they had learned about before to the specific information that was provided by the seed packet.
Seed packets provide a wealth of important information: when to plant the seeds, the number of days it required to germinate (appear above ground), the number of days the plant must grow before it is ready to be harvested, and most importantly, the amount of sun and water the plant would need to grow.
After the lesson, Lucy tested the student’s knowledge with a fun pop quiz. Each class was asked to line up in a straight line using their seed packets. Student’s whose crops would be ready for harvest quickly at the front of the line, while students with crops that had longer grow periods were towards the back – and they weren’t allowed to talk while doing it. After two minutes of chaos, the kids were lined up in order and ready to head out to the greenhouse.
Student Crop Selection
Gateway Elementary has a sizable greenhouse built inside the school – the perfect place to start seed crops at the end of winter. Before anything could be planted though, some decisions needed to be made.
Each student was given a copy of Gateway Greening’s planting calendar. Regionally specific, this calendar shows the seeding, transplant, and harvest dates for many of the crops local community and backyard gardeners commonly grow in St. Louis. For this part of the lesson, each student was asked to find up to three plants that they personally would like to grow in the Gateway Elementary school garden this year.
Next, Lucy asked each student to tape photos of their plants to the wall under the month that the crop should be planted in. With a little help from the planting calendar, students quickly created a colorful display of crops on the wall – and clearly told their teachers which crops they want to grow in the school garden this year.
Fourth grade students using the information found on seed packets and a regionally specific planting calendar to make informed decisions regarding what to plant in their school garden this spring.
Managing Expectations – the Fun Way
By asking the fourth graders to share their plant choices using pictures taped to the wall, Lucy created a highly visual planting calendar specific to the students’ garden. Using their earlier lesson on reading seed packets, Miss Lucy and the kids were able to talk about which plants they would be able to grow and harvest before the students left for summer break.
Many regional crops are harvested during June and July – a time when students aren’t in class. However, there are many crops that St. Louis students can plant in early spring and harvest before summer break begins late in May. Peas, radishes, carrots, and lettuce, to name a few. Limited growing space and time will mean that not every crop the students asked for will make it into the Gateway Elementary school garden this year, but the majority of them will.
When the fourth graders visit the garden this spring, they will get to watch “their” plants grow and try new produce that they chose for themselves.
It may be February in St. Louis, but the fourth grade students of Ms. Davie and Ms. Hayes classes at Gateway Elementary are already getting a head start on their school garden.
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’s Workshops for Educatorspage to explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening EducatorsFacebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out our In the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
Fourth grade students writing out their hypothesis for a recent experiment. During the experiment, students discovered how cold frames built of different materials affected soil warmth.
Fourth Grade Student posing with her structure.
As the weather gets colder, time in the garden gets shorter. However, indoor lessons can still have garden connections! Throughout December, the fourth-graders at Gateway Elementary observed and measured how different materials affected soil warmth. After discovering that cold frames effectively raised the soil temperature, they wanted to engineer their own solutions.
To become engineers, the fourth-graders first needed construction materials. Without knowing what they were going to create, the students had just a few minutes to collect natural materials from the school garden. Some groups scooped up as many pebbles as possible while others hunted for a few perfect sticks. Once inside, Gateway Greening Educator Tonia Scherer tasked half the class to create a waterproof structure and the other half to build a sturdy, windproof structure. Some students struggled, while others quickly problem-solved. They realized that certain materials were better for different functions.
Soon, the fourth-graders learned that engineers also have to work within constraints. Each group was given only one piece of tape and they had to strategically incorporate it. When it was time to test their structures, many stayed sturdy and dry on the inside. The fourth-graders discussed design and material improvements – just like real engineers. In the end, they related their engineering process to cold frames and designs that help to keep garden soil warm in winter months.
Even in the winter, you can discover real-life examples of science lessons. The winter trimester of Gateway Greening’s Seed to STEM fourth-grade curriculum focuses on ecosystem energy flow, engineering solutions, and scientific writing. All three topics combined in the fourth-graders cold frame and engineering experiment. For more winter lesson ideas, check out the Seed to STEM tab on Gateway Greening’s website.
Fourth grade students posing with structure they had engineered to withstand wind and water as part of a recent STEM class with Gateway Greening.
Written by School Program Manager Lucy Herleth
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’sWorkshops for Educators pageto explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening EducatorsFacebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out ourIn the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
This summer, Gateway Greening Educators Meg Holmes and Lucy Herleth had the opportunity to be a part of the Nahed Chapman New American Academy garden’s story by participating in summer school.
Meet the International Welcome School Garden
Students stop to check on their newly planted summer crops during a lesson in the International Welcome School Garden.
“My original question was…Can we provide refugee students with information that can assist them in overcoming the unique challenges that exist in their classrooms? As the nation’s demographics change, so does our responsibility to meet the needs of this diverse student body. These students have significant implications for educational and social policy. One component of the Nahed Chapman New American Academy ecological milieu was to provide avenues for in-depth discussions of practices that can help all students make informed choices when it comes to our environment. As a result of those discussions, surveys were taken and students decided to plan and grow an International Garden.” – Nelver Brooks, educator and garden leader at the Nahed Chapman New American Academy
Read the rest of Nelver Brooks original story of the International Garden’s founding:The Journey Begins with Us, on the Gateway Greening Blog.
Students transformed weeding into a moment of learning, laughter, and discovery during Summer School in the International Welcome School Garden.
“The first week of summer school, many students visited the school garden for the very first time. They looked around for different parts of plants and noticed how plants changed as they grew. They inspected and planted tiny seeds, crouched down and counted the small seedlings, and looked around for flowers. The best part was when they discovered that the bean plants were ready to harvest. The students picked long green beans and I showed them how to carefully open the pods. Inside of the bean was a surprise – seeds! The plant’s growth was a life cycle, going from seed to seed. The kids then tasted the raw beans or fed them to the worms in the compost bin.” -Lucy Herleth
Summer School in the International Welcome School Garden
During the final week of Summer School, we caught up with Meg as she led the students through an exploration of compost and the process of decomposition.
Meg kicked off each class’s time in the garden with story time beneath the shady trees that line the school’s courtyard. Compost Stew, and A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals is a “rhyming recipe [that] explains how to make the dark, crumbly, rich, earth-friendly food called compost,” and is a fun way to engage students in a conversation about the compost bins in the International Welcome School Garden.
After the story, students were invited to share what they had learned, and what they might already know about composting from their home country. Moments like these are a chance to connect concepts and new vocabulary words to hands-on activities. As Meg says, “Outdoor experiential learning [is important] so that when they’re in the classroom, they have scaffolding to hang their experiences on.”
Curious about the lessons Gateway Greening Educators use in school gardens? Check out our Seed to STEM program on the Gateway Greening website to learn more!
Summer School students discovering common ground while working together to weed the International Welcome School Garden.
Things took a laughter-filled turn as students insisted on taking a detour to the planting beds to check on their crops. This summer, the garden is overflowing with okra, corn, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, hot peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, beans, and even wildflowers for the pollinators – all planted by the students. The detour was full of small moments of joy as students discovered new peppers or tomatoes hiding among the leaves.
Joy has been a regular guest in the International School Garden this summer:
“After learning how plants need food, water, air, and space to grow, the students enthusiastically weeded the corn garden bed. The soil was hard, so it was a struggle to get many of the weeds out by their roots. With each weed, almost every student wanted to show the teachers the plant, waving the weed proudly around. Students even discovered that some weeds at their school looked similar to weeds back in their home country.” – Lucy Herleth
Composting at School
In 2016, the International Welcome School Garden was awarded a three-bin compost system through Gateway Greening’s Garden expansion program. Designed to be easy for people of all sizes and ages to use, the compost bins are perfect for jumping in and exploring during class! Meg made the most of the students’ ‘summer energy’ with a hands-on crash course on how the compost system works.
One of the many challenges faced by urban gardeners is the constant presence of trash blowing around and the International School sees its fair share blow into the courtyard. During the lesson, Meg had each class picking up debris and deciding whether it belonged in the trash, the recycling, or the compost pile. Within no time at all the students had the garden tidied up and moved on to the next project, but the lesson they learned will continue when they return to the garden this fall.
Who knows? The Nahed Chapman New American Academy may decide to join the growing number of St. Louis schools who work with students to divert lunch room food scraps to the compost pile in the coming year.
Worms for Everyone!
By the end of the lesson, most students had transitioned from “ew!” to “cool!”
No lesson on composting could be complete without an introduction to some of our favorite decomposers – worms!
“Vermicomposting systems are easy to set up in the classroom and are a great jumping off point for lessons on energy use, decomposition, habitat, and more.” – Lucy Herleth
Many of the Academy’s students had never encountered the strange looking, wriggling creatures that are worms before and spent several minutes squealing as their peers bravely agreed to hold them. However, after a few minutes of talking about what worms are and explaining how hard they work to make the garden a healthier, more productive space, many of the students began to calm down and ask if they could hold a worm too.
Encountering new creatures, learning what they eat and how they live, can be an opportunity for each of the students to practice empathy and other social/emotional skills that are an important part of every child’s development.
What’s Next?
Summer school in the International Welcome Garden may have ended for the year, but the lessons will continue this fall when classes resume.
“Not having worked with ESL (English as a Second Language) students before, and always when you have new kids, you are a little apprehensive, but food is a great way to bring people together and it’s a great way to find common ground with anyone.” – Meg Holmes
Students from countries all over the world find common ground during Summer School in the International Welcome School Garden.
Students look forward to the end-of-year salad party, when they can eat the produce they have worked so hard to grow in the school garden.
Gateway Greening’s “Power of Growing Food” was exemplified at Shaw VPA’s end of year salad party in the school garden. After a St. Louis spring of unusual weather, planting and replanting crops that did not make it due to weather or friends that live in the garden, watering and weeding, the 2nd graders at Shaw VPA finally gained a full harvest out of all of their diligence and hard work.
Harvesting for the Salad Party
Students harvested produce they had cultivated in the school garden to create their salads.
A running theme discussed with students at Shaw VPA throughout the school year was the parts and functions of a plant. The end result was that by this spring, instead of just harvesting a specific crop, the students were asked to harvest different plant parts from their crops. When asked to pick a plant part that they’d like to eat, the students exclaimed “seeds!” and “fruit!” before heading for the peas! They have been watching the life cycle of the peas closely for Gateway Greening’s First Peas to the Table Challenge. Students are instructed to harvest the most plump pea pods. The peas always end up a favorite because they soon realize the author of First Peas to the Table, Susan Gribsby, says, the peas are as sweet as candy.
After harvesting their peas, the students wanted to add flowers to their salads. To continue with observing the life cycle of a plant and encourage pollinators in our garden, we have allowed one section of our radishes to flower. Radish flowers, as one student describes, taste like sweet, spicy broccoli and made for a great addition to the salad.
Staying with the radishes, students went underground to the next plant part, roots. I’m always surprised by how willing the students are to try anything and how much they love radishes!
At this point, we were missing a big ingredient to our salad: leaves of course! As a group we found that the lettuce had formed perfect heads, and then tried different methods of harvesting the lettuce. In the end, the students attempted the cut and come method, just taking a leaf here and there as I assisted by harvesting an entire head.
Clean-up in the School Garden is a Snap!
Clean up after the salad party was a snap, with second graders lining up for a chance to clean their dishes.
Once the students had thoroughly rinsed their harvest, they each tore up their own ingredients into bite sized pieces, tasting each item as they added it to their bowl. At this point I usually hear some requests for ranch dressing during our yearly salad party. To encourage the student to try new things, I prepared a simple Vinaigrette dressing in advance. (Equal parts olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with a shake of salt and pepper!) The students are always adventurous, taking a little taste at first before realizing it tastes pretty good! Usually they end up requesting more. By the end of the year, these kids have some refined pallets.
After eating, any leftovers are taken to the compost bin. Not much was added to the compost bin after the salad party, the salad was such a hit. All that was left were dirty dishes, and that was quickly resolved by making a tub of soapy water. The second graders washed and rinsed their dishes before stacking them neatly.
Having a salad party allowed the students to truly get a chance to admire and enjoy all of their hard work from start to finish, seed to table.
–Written by Meg Holmes, Youth Educator at Gateway Greening
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’s Workshops for Educatorspage to explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening Educators Facebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out our In the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
Students at Clay Elementary were excited to spend time watching over baby chicks this week – and learning about life cycles as they did so.
Discovering Life Cycles
Spring in the school garden means new growth and discoveries! While the students are busy noticing changes in the garden, special visitors have arrived at Clay Elementary to teach the students about life cycles. Gateway Greening partners with University of Missouri Extension, Jefferson County, to provide chicken eggs and incubators to the Clay Elementary preschool, kindergarten, and second grade classrooms.
Incubating Chicks in the Classroom
During the first week the incubators were kept in the classroom, where students expectantly monitored and turned the eggs three times a day. They observed that the incubators kept the chicken eggs at a toasty 98 degrees and watched videos to learn how the embryo changes inside of the egg. The kindergarteners even learned that the yolk sac gives the embryo nourishment to grow, just like the seed provides food for a plant embryo in the garden.
Student at Clay Elementary carefully holding a newly hatched chick – part of a hands-on lesson in life cycles.
The following monday, real excitement began in the incubators! The second graders’ chicks were ambitious, with one chick fully hatching before the students arrived at school. Throughout the day the second grade’s eggs continued to hatch until they had ten cheeping chicks. The preschoolers and kindergarteners were disappointed. No chicks had hatched in their classrooms, not even a crack had appeared.
The next day, the preschoolers and kindergarteners nervously checked their eggs – and cracks had started on a few of the eggs! The egg tooth, the part of the beak that helps a chick break open its egg, was even visible in a few of the cracks. Throughout the day, the preschoolers and kindergarteners observed as more eggs cracked and chicks appeared. They were worried when the chicks looked wet and sticky, but under the warm incubator lights the chicks quickly dried out until they were fluffy and yellow.
When the chicks fully dried out, they were carefully moved into a bigger box while the students eagerly monitored the chicks and listened to their “cheeps” to figure out if they were content in their new home. Finally, the students learned how to gently and safely handle the chicks. Happily, the chicks were as soft as they looked!
What happens next?
In the coming week, Clay Elementary students will observe how the chicks rapidly grow. The second graders are measuring and weighing the chicks, and the kindergarteners and preschoolers are studying what chicks need to survive. Before the end of the school year, full grown chickens will visit, so students can see just how much chickens change over their life cycle.
Written by Lucy Herleth, Gateway Greening Youth Educator
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’s Workshops for Educatorspage to explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening Educators Facebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out our In the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
Thursday, May 11, is Give STL Day, and this year Gateway Greening is raising $10,000 to support programs that are more than “just” gardening – like the creation of new Seed to STEM curriculum for St. Louis educators!
Drawing on more than 5 years of experience working with local K-5 teachers, the Gateway Greening Youth Educators are building a new curriculum, Seed to STEM, to help St. Louis teachers take class outside.
“We know, on average, children need to spend more time outdoors and moving than they currently do but it is difficult to fit it into the school schedule. Incorporating the school garden into the school day means that teachers and students have the opportunity to get out, move, and get their hands dirty every day, which improves mood, concentration, and learning.” – Kathleen Carson, Gateway Greening Education Manager
This new curriculum pairs Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS) and Saint Louis Public Schools science curriculum to ensure that lessons developed in the garden are more than just “extra activities.” Instead, Seed to STEM curriculum provides teachers with an opportunity to meet their curricular goals while still taking their students outside for hands-on learning activities.
“Gardens are a place of wonder and science just outside the school door! In school gardens, kids spark their curiosity and engage with the natural world. It is easier than ever to make science connections come alive with the Seed to STEM curriculum.” – Lucy Herleth, Gateway Greening Youth Educator
Exciting news! A generous donor has offered to match every dollar we raise during Give STL Day – up to $5,000! Donate now to DOUBLE your impact and support another year of youth gardening and urban agriculture in St. Louis!
Throughout St. Louis City and County, school gardens are providing valuable outdoor classrooms and living laboratories.
Children do not yet have the life experiences that allow them to incorporate the new information that they hear or read into their understanding of the world the way that adults do, making it critically important that students “get their hands dirty.” As educators, we want students to touch, feel, manipulate, and observe their surroundings with their own senses so that when the students encounter more abstract information, they have experience to “hang” it on. School gardens are cost-effective spaces in which to offer that experience.
“Our garden is a place where kids grow all kinds of things. They grow fruit, vegetables, spices, knowledge, experience, teamwork, and fun. It allows our students to be a part of something that they can create and see grow. That is the power of our garden.” – Mr. C. Rooney, Interim AP, and Garden Leader at Shaw VPA Elementary
Make a difference in St. Louis this Give STL Day – Give a gift to support programs like
Seed to STEM!
Discover more Gateway Greening supported projects at work in St. Louis:
Dig it STL – We believe that young people are powerful, and that their involvement in our community food projects is the key to a healthy and sustainable future for St. Louis.
Gateway Greening Urban Farm and City Seedstherapeutic job training program – The Gateway Greening Urban Farm is a 2.5-acre vegetable farm in downtown St. Louis. The site is used as an outdoor learning laboratory to teach the community valuable skills related to employment readiness, therapeutic horticulture, food systems, and so much more.
Storybook– We could tell you all about our network of more 220+ community gardens, but it’s more fun to let you read their stories, in their own words on the Gateway Greening Storybook.
Students at Mallinckrodt Academy beginning a lesson with mindfulness exercises.
This spring, youth educators Meg Holmes and Lucy Herleth have been working with Brown School practicum student Eli Horowitz to develop a mindfulness program to use in conjunction with Gateway Greening’s Seed to STEM curriculum. This project was inspired by City Seeds, the therapeutic horticulture job training program that has been offered to St. Patrick center clients on the Gateway Greening Urban Farm in various forms over the last 10 years. We know from both health studies and our own personal experiences with City Seeds that being outside and in green spaces has a positive impact on well-being. That is improved by being intentional about how one is working in that green space, coupling it with reflection, meditation, and journaling. As St. Louis Public Schools placed a ban on out of school suspensions for children 2nd grade and under, it seemed like an opportune time to add an additional component to our school garden arsenal.
What is Mindfulness?
A Mallinckrodt Academy student participating in mindfulness exercises in the school garden.
Mindfulness is the practice focusing one’s attention but in a relaxed and nonjudgmental way. Often it starts with focusing on physical sensations like the feeling of breathing.
In the near term, this practice helps students to slow down and calm down, which can help students with transitions between classes and activities. In the long term, it can help students to develop a better awareness of their body, thoughts, and emotions, which, in turn, helps students deal with stress and improve impulse control.
In addition to this, it is a transferrable skill. Focusing attention is an essential skill for our little scientists, whether it is observing pollinators to designing experiments. Being able to slow down and really pay attention is what science is all about.
Instigating the Mindfulness Program
Meg, Lucy, and Eli started the mindfulness program by working with 1st-5th graders at Mallinckrodt Academy and Clay Elementary. For the past month, they have been starting their Seed to STEM classes with 5 minute focused breathing exercises in which students are guided to focus on how their breathing feels. As the exercises finish, Eli asks each student and teacher to share feedback on how they feel with a quick questionnaire. This has allowed Eli to track the impact of regularly including mindfulness in class time. Students and teachers alike have indicated that they like to do the mindfulness exercises and feel more calm and focused when they’ve finished.
Written by Kathleen Carson, Gateway Greening Education Manager.
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’s Workshops for Educatorspage to explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening Educators Facebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out our In the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
Students volunteering at Gateway Elementary’s school garden in spring of 2017.
Creating Curriculum for St. Louis Educators
Gateway Greening youth educators have been working in local schools for the last five years, coordinating with teachers to get children outside and working in the garden. Through their work with local teachers, the Gateway Greening education team quickly realized that a curriculum that paired current education standards and outdoor lessons was needed.
Building on the five years of working with K-5 teachers and strengthening the life science focus of the program, the Gateway Greening education team launched its revamped curriculum program, Seed to STEM, in the Summer of 2016.
What is Seed to STEM?
Gateway Greening youth educators are working with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and Saint Louis Public Schools science curriculum to ensure that lessons developed in the garden are not merely “extra activities.” Instead, the Seed to STEM curriculum provides classroom teachers an opportunity to meet their curricular goals while also taking their students outside and engaging in hands-on learning activities.
Students at Gateway Elementary discover earth worms in the school garden.
School gardens are valuable outdoor classrooms and living laboratories. Children do not yet have the life experiences that allow them to incorporate new information that they hear or read into their understanding of the world the way that adults do. This is why it is critically important that students get their hands dirty. As educators, we want students to touch, feel, manipulate, and observe their surroundings with their own senses so that when the students encounter more abstract information, they have experience to “hang” it on. School gardens are cost-effective spaces in which to offer that experience.
What does that experience look like for St. Louis students? When lessons are taken outside to the garden, students are asked to talk about habitats, hypothesize what part of the soil they would most likely find worms in based on what they know about habitats, and test their hypothesis by finding the worms. Another lesson may find students tipping over the logs in their garden’s stump circle to find what is living underneath.
Teachers often ask their students to measure the growth of the crops, comparing the growth of plants in the sun to plants growing in the shade, and connecting those measurements back to a photosynthesis lesson in the classroom. There’s a lot to be said for learning about food webs and, if we are really lucky, watching a hawk nab a squirrel in the middle of a garden lesson. Or, somewhat less dramatically, watch the parasitoid wap larva kill a caterpillar.
An “All-Inclusive” Curriculum
Students at Mallinckrodt Academy move class time into the school garden.
In addition to the rich environment that a school garden can offer for the life sciences, it is also a place to draw in any of the other subjects or skills taught in St. Louis schools. Math and language arts are a particular favorite with teachers and are regularly incorporated into outdoor lessons in the school garden.
One of the most important lessons explored in the school garden is social-emotional skills; using the school garden as a space to practice the skill of “[p]aying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally: (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p.4). This spring Gateway Greening youth educators have been working with Eli Horowitz, a Washington University Brown School student, to work on mindfulness in the garden.
During a mindfulness lesson, students may be asked to focus on the feeling of their breath entering and leaving their body, or the feeling of the breeze on their skin. This practice helps children (and adults) develop better self-regulation, relieve anxiety, and improve concentration. These mindfulness practices are also a transferable skill that can be useful in making scientific observations.
Gateway Greening youth educators are currently working with classroom teachers at four Saint Louis Public Schools to align lessons with both the growing season calendar and the academic calendar, building a Seed to STEM curriculum that any teacher in the St. Louis region will be able to access and adapt to their school garden.
Written by Kathleen Carson, Gateway Greening Education Manager.
Reference: Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion.
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’s Workshops for Educatorspage to explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening Educators Facebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out our In the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
Second graders of Clay Elementary learning about Ecosystem Connections in the School Garden with Gateway Greening Youth Educator Lucy Herleth on a rainy April morning.
It has been a rainy April, but the Clay Elementary second graders are still out in the school garden. Rain often keeps students inside, just as the seeds need to be planted. Instead of stressing about a ruined planting plan, we’ll throw on an extra layer and head outside!
Ecosystem Connections
Second graders discover wiggling worms in the school garden, learning ecosystem connections on a rainy April day.
The second graders are currently learning about ecosystems and a rainy day is the perfect chance to see ecosystem connections. Luckily, Gateway Greening’s Clay Elementary program recently received a donation of rain coats from Frogg Toggs. After quickly dressing in the new rain gear and grabbing science notebooks, the second graders were able to visit the garden on a recent rainy afternoon. First, the second graders met in the gazebo to discuss how springtime is such a special season for the garden. Gardeners may not like all the rainy days, but it keeps the plants very happy.
Now comfortable getting a little wet in their raincoats, the second graders grabbed trowels and created a trench to plant seed potatoes. It took everyone working together to create a trench the entire length of the garden bed. While digging in the wet soil, students observed the soil and the worms wiggling throughout – another ecosystem connection. As they finished creating the trench, the second graders brought out rulers to practice their measuring skills. They double checked that the holes were deep enough and that the seed potato pieces were far enough apart. Tools and hands were a little muddy but potatoes were planted!
The Clay Elementary second graders were excellent gardeners, even in less than ideal conditions. They helped to plant seed potatoes that had to get in the ground and learned that rain does not have to stop the outdoor fun. They got a little damp post Seed-to-STEM lesson but were more energized than ever to get out in the garden.
The Takeaway
Don’t let a little rain stop you from getting out in the school garden. Encourage students (and teachers) to wear clothes that can get muddy and get outside, even if it is just for a little bit.
Written by Gateway Greening Youth Educator Lucy Herleth. For questions about this article or the Seed to STEM program, please contact Lucy at 314-588-9600 ext 106, or send her an email at [email protected].
Discover more about what is happening in St. Louis school gardens this spring:
Second Graders at Clay Elementary heading back inside after a lesson in ecosystem connections in the school garden – despite April showers!
Looking for more ways to incorporate the school garden into your lesson plan? Stop by:
Gateway Greening’s Workshops for Educatorspage to explore monthly workshops that address the challenges and opportunities represented by teaching in school gardens
The Gateway Greening Educators Facebook group to connect with other teachers throughout St. Louis with similar interests in school gardens
Check out our In the School GardenYoutube playlist for short, actionable how-to videos that are seasonally relevant.
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Throughout St. Louis City and County, school gardens are providing valuable outdoor classrooms and living laboratories. 
