Fifteen years ago, Holland Brown volunteered to teach a gardening lesson in her kid’s kindergarten class at Lowell Elementary School. There she met fellow kindergarten parent Karen Taylor, and after a few lessons with the children in the small garden bed outside of the classroom, they had an idea.
They created a curriculum where science, social studies, math and English topics were supplemented with nature and gardening. Today, their curriculum reaches almost 10,000 students a year through partnerships with 16 elementary schools throughout the city, and they have plans to spread their roots once again.
“She and I had a mind meld about how much of what’s happening in the classroom can be reinforced in the actual world,” Brown said. “We became really excited about this idea of an element of nature education to be an elementary school experience in every grade.”
Ground Education has formalized a partnership with LBUSD to reach every elementary student in the district through lessons during the school day as well as pilot programs of after school gardening.
“What we’re working on with the district is what growing faster looks like both in terms of building the gardens and bringing the education program along with it,” Brown said. “The first thing that the district has asked us to do is develop a program that extends the garden learning beyond the traditional school day.”
The Ground Education team has grown at an impressive pace. Along with Brown and Taylor, the 15-person team includes garden educators, horticulturists and interns of former teachers, farmers, herbalists and other environmentalists.
Lessons vary for the 9,500 students that benefit from the program, from kindergarten to eighth grade. Each classroom in the 16 elementary schools has a monthly opportunity to visit their school’s garden, either revitalized or built from scratch by the Ground Education team, to get their hands dirty and brain working in different ways.
“There’s a high excitement level to come into the garden and see what nature has to bring that day. It’s a place where kids feel excited regardless of what else was happening in their school day,” Brown said. “There’s a sense of wonder and open endedness and curiosity that is just naturally fostered … They are empowered to do the work of the garden.”
Educators are sent to different schools everyday, as long as it takes to get each classroom in the garden once a month. One lesson for kindergarten classes is to watch how vegetables decompose and further enrich the soil that they came from. Other lessons involve animals that are often seen around gardens, as students learn how birds build their nest out of items they find in nature and are encouraged to explore the garden to build their own nests.
Lessons for older students connect ideas of caring for the environment and reducing waste in their homes. Fifth grade classrooms are shown how to make a pesto sauce out of garden scraps that usually get thrown out, creating a tasty and memorable lesson.
“It creates memories and a real connection that extends back into the classroom and through the rest of the day,” Brown said. “It’s really gratifying to have the district understand the impact of the program and be excited to partner with a Long Beach nonprofit like ours to make this a reality.”
Ground Education is working with the district to create a master plan “of how to get a garden in every elementary school,” where some gardens will have to be built from scratch. Brown estimated it will take about four years to reach the almost 50 schools in the district and roughly 29,000 elementary students.
The 16 elementary schools that Ground Education has already been working with will be the pilot locations for the after school programs. The program already has after school directors who work with The Boys and Girls Club and Franklin Middle School.
“Our reason for being was … to eventually partner with every elementary school in the district. It is always the goal,” Brown said. “That’s really where we want to put our time and talent. And now the more we’ve grown, the vision still feels like a stretch vision, but it feels like something that’s going to happen.”
In a survey conducted by Ground Education, 96% of teachers said that they saw an increase in their student’s excitement for learning and 100% of teachers said that the program supports their student’s emotional and social wellbeing.
“So that was a gratifying statistic because we want to not only be reinforcing and helping teachers in science and social studies and English Language Arts, but we also want to help create a culture of excitement about being in school and about learning and recognizing people learn in different ways,” Brown said.
