Cal Neighbors

A newsletter for neighbors of the University of California, Berkeley

Fall 2001

City and campus launch safety campaign
UC Berkeley helps guide new parents
Chancellor honors university-community partnerships
Have cottage will travel
Campus YouthWorks program celebrates successful summer
Under Construction
Growing science lessons
A garden wedding
Fall semester events
Home games
Growing science lessons
by Robert Sanders
As gardens sprout in schoolyards around the country, a group of educators at UC Berkeley is intent on making sure they nourish the mind as well as the body.

"We're trying to make the school garden an integral and exciting part of the school's classroom curriculum," said Jennifer Meux White, associate director for education of the UC Botanical Garden and a specialist in science education. "The garden can be a rich learning experience."

White and her colleagues received a $500,000 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to take curricula they have developed around school gardens and tested at the botanical garden and schools throughout California, and re-tool them for teachers around the nation. The grant was one of 29 awarded this summer by the institute to science museums, nature centers, aquariums, zoos and other informal science education centers across the country. Together, the grants total $12 million.
In 1995, California's state school superintendent Delaine Eastin mandated "a garden in every school" to "create opportunities for our children to discover fresh food, make healthier food choices and become better nourished," according to the California Department of Education. Yet, little money was devoted to helping teachers make the best use of gardens, White said. "After the initial burst of enthusiasm, gardens would often languish and die because they had not become an integral part of the curriculum," she said.

In 1997, White received a $275,000 grant to begin developing tools for classroom teachers to use in conjunction with the gardens. Four years later, two curricula have been developed, tested by more than4,000 students, and today they are being used by many teachers across the state. One, "Botany on Your Plate," brings biological and cultural concepts into a series of activities and discussions of what we eat. The second, "California Habitats Alive!" focuses on plant diversity. The new
student counts tomato seeds
Student Stephanie Valdez at Oakland's Lazear Elementary School carefully counts tomato seeds as part of a lesson on estimating.
grant will pay for publishing and distributing the curricula, training teachers and parents, and adapting the curricula to states other than California.

"This is a movement all across the country," White said. "More and more evidence shows that getting children out of the classroom is a powerful learning strategy that takes advantage of their enthusiasm and interest. Out of doors, a lot of new observations and questions come up that reinforce and add to the lessons."

Rebecca Burke, a sixth-grade teacher who came to Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School two years ago, has been using gardens in her classes for more than five years, developing her own teaching materials and creating her own projects. After working with White for two years, she is enthusiastic about the ideas and concepts of the new curricula.

"Gardening is pretty infectious - it's easy to reach kids through such activities," Burke said. "What's really great about Jenny's curriculum is that it helps me teach difficult concepts in ecology. It's hard for kids to understand how it's all connected - concepts like biodiversity and different habitats."

King Middle School is known for its "edible schoolyard," supported by famed restaurateur Alice Waters. But the curriculum works for schools without such backing, such as Lazear Elementary School in Oakland, where White has worked with second-grade teachers to create a raised bed and wine barrel garden over an asphalt area.

"We try to help each school have a garden it can support," White said.

At Lazear, the cultural aspects of food and plants are particularly appealing to the primarily Spanish-speaking children. White was able to obtain from the UC Botanical Garden two seedlings of the sacred tree of Mexico - the hand-flower tree, flor de la manita, revered by the Aztecs and used in medicines for relieving pain and inflammation - for the kids to plant and care for. She also is providing mulberry trees to feed silk worms used in a popular classroom teaching unit.

"We encourage schools to plant not just any plant, but to ask the faculty, community and families what they would like to grow," White said. "These gardens won't survive without teacher, community and parent support."

For information about developing school garden curricula or about the School Garden Conference for Teachers on March 2, 2002, e-mail Jennifer White at jmwhite@ uclink.berkeley.edu or call (510) 495-2805.