Lamentably, our eight weeks of Garden Science classes have come to an end. It was a wonderful ride, and our students have unequivocally acquired mounds of dirty knowledge, and I use that phrase in the best sense.

The program is not actually over – in mid-April we will be installing and/or improving vegetable gardens at our participating schools, and in May all of the students will be coming out to the garden to re-ignite the fire that we have lit in their bellies.

We will not be going back for classroom lessons, and oh, it is sad to think that we won’t be sharing time and stories with the little ones every Tuesday through Thursday anymore. We at The Garden want to give a wide-eyed, uvula-exposing shout out to our volunteers that came out to help in the classroom and our teachers and students from the schools.

Although we breathlessly await the culmination of our GS activities, we at the Youth Garden are gearing up for our delicious summer programs, SPROUT, one-time nutrition and envisci ‘classes’ for youths in the garden; Growing Food Growing Together, a fifteen week family-oriented program that intends to reconnect families with their food and the land from which it comes (more info about GFGT 2010); and Seed to Supper, an eight week interdisciplinary garden-based program for youths.

Chris, our resident farming expert and garden manager, has been assiduously preparing the garden for the growing season, sitting with the her, rubbing her tummy and singing gentle, waking lullabies to bring her out of the long winter’s slumber.

If you or your children are interested in participating in any of the programs listed above, you can contact Kaifa Anderson-Hall at kanderson@washingtonyouthgarden.org. We also accept, and to a great degree rely on wonderful volunteers to make our programs run as smoothly as they do. If you are interested, you can sign up for our volunteer info list on the website. We also have volunteer days in the garden every Tuesday, beginning very shortly. For more info here, you can contact Kacie, our lovely education coordinator, at kwarner@washingtonyouthgarden.org.

Below, I’ve put together a short compilation of clips from the last few classes of Garden Science, which ended with a bang and sizzle by preparing vegetable stir-fry with the students. Mostly just sizzle, actually. If things go as planned, like the ALWAYS do, we should be producing a more substantial video in the near future about Garden Science. WOOOOOoo.

Love and Asparagus (oh so soon)

Andrew

****I am not tech-savvy enough to figure out how to put the video up here, so for now, it is available on the WYG Blog. sorry!

Center City third grade. First class of the week. Team Basil and I are playing in the dirt. Discussing soil. Isaiah says that he doesn’t like the smell of dirt. He likes the smell of fried chicken. We disagree on this topic. Eventually we resolve our differences, agreeing that the smell of chicken in the forest would be pleasurable.

It is our third week of programming, and we are discussing what plants need to survive. The answers we seek are the fundamentals – air, water, light, food, soil. Before disclosing this precious information, we appeal to the class for ideas. To them, the question is posed, “what do plants eat.?” Immediately, as if we had asked on what planet we are sitting, the entire class, in unison, with enthusiasm equal to that if we had asked for volunteers to demonstrate how to eat an entire chocolate cake in 15 seconds, shouts: “TREES!!”

Curious.

At Imagine Hope, our Wednesday school, we had to cram in two lessons this week on account of the Snowlycowtheresalotofsnow days. The students are dissecting soaked bean seeds. They are looking for the sprouted root and leaves inside of the cotyledons. There is the usual snickering because the beans smell like farts and are slimy. After a moment, though, a lovely occurrence occurs.

“Hey! Look! I found it! Me too! I found them!”

The gleeful outbursts begin to waft up from the general classroom area. Like, like snowflakes or raindrops, falling steadily, scattering around the room. That doesn’t quite work… like a sprinkling of water droplets, landing gently on a smooth surface of water, “yes!’s” ring out, the resultant rippling enthusiasm encouraging their classmates to send their own droplets, their own ripples back out into the class. A contained cacophony of bean-themed exclamations – this is the sound of children getting excited about learning.

After Kacie announced to our first class at Imagine Hope that we would be planting seeds on that glorious day, Jahmes (jah-mez) volunteers the tidbit that okra is his favorite vegetable. Jane (a made up name, because I can’t remember her real name) sneers from across the room. Jahmes clicks his tongue, throws his head back and responds: “aww you crazy, you don’t know what okra is? It’s a pointy vegetable with little black dots….um, seeds, inside (seeds were part of our lesson last week. Big points for Jahmes for working this into his put-down), and its real slippery and gooey and it can be fried or you can eat it regular.

At this, I smiled. Way to go Jahmes. Way to stand up for okra. Way to stand up for yourself. Most of all, way to stand up for foods with unconventional textures.

At Center City, we played in the dirt hard (after completing all of our educational duties, of course). We made a dirt castle with four popsicle stick drawbridges (every member of the royal family needs their own popsicle stick drawbridge), and a moat. The moat wasn’t very successful. Unless our measure of success was creating a giant tray of mud. In that sense, we were hugely successful. Needless to say, once the funding dried up on the moat project, a good hand washing was necessary.

I accompanied my team downstairs to the bathrooms, with the intention of washing my hands as well. The girls went to the girls’ bathroom. I asked Isaiah about the location of the bathroom.

“Isaiah, where is the bathroom?”

He looks up at me, and stares an odd, apprehensive stare, and says nothing. Odd…

After a moment of locked eyes, he moves in the direction of what turns out to be the boys’ room. There is a teacher waiting for her students at the door. As I pass this teacher, entering the boys’ bathroom with a young boy, it hits me.

Good god! I’m a perv! Does it count if I didn’t know? That must be what the stare was about he didn’t want me to come into the bathroom with him cuz its pervy and adults don’t use the boys room adults use the mens room because little boys use the boys room and only pervs would want to use the boys room with little boys. Good LORD what have I done?!

I hesitate just as I pass her, looking for any discernable traces of disapproval. Any eye twitches or mouth-corners heading south. I linger just long enough for my smile to fade and the atmosphere become awkward. No sign of objection…and I’m in the boys’ room.

Everything turned out fine. I washed my hands. Isaiah washed his hands. One of the kindergarteners the teacher was waiting for walked out with his pants undone. Everybody wins. Turns out I’m not a perv, but adults usually use the adult bathroom.

Franklin and I are holding hands. Well, I am holding Franklin’s hands, which wriggle wildly in mine, trying to free themselves. Franklin’s teeth shine behind his broad smile. There is a small speck of dirt on his right cheek. He’s talking about gettin’ bad guys or mud popsicles or how you plant seeds in space. I’m talking about putting basil seeds in little plastic cups with dirt. At least I’m trying.

Osagie (oh-sah-jee), sits between us saying ‘can I hold your hand? Can you hold my hand? Will you hold my hand? So I hold Osagie’s hand and he squeals, pulling them away, smile bursting onto his face, soil flecks flying into the air like an ocean mist.

Franklin’s the bad boy kind. Generally indifferent, always talkative. Very capable, very smart. Franklin liked playing in the dirt. Franklin couldn’t stop demonstrating the life cycle of plants in the dirt with his fingers. To get Franklin to pay attention, I threatened to hold Franklin’s hand. To get Franklin to calm down, I held Franklin’s hand. He shrieked and made a scene, like cool kids do, because he liked it. But not as much as he liked planting seeds.

If you have any questions, comments, general concerns, or would like to help assuage my fears of being a perv, you can contact me at aplotsky@washingtonyouthgarden.org

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in third grade. In retrospect, it was silly of me to assume that the person-sized broccoli stalk with a face, sitting in the driver’s seat, was driving the car. As Andre dutifully pointed out moments later, broccoli don’t even have thumbs. Too true, Andre. Too true. Thankfully, he, a member of Ms. Harris’s third grade class at the Center City Public Charter School in Trinidad, didn’t make me feel too stupid at my outlandish suggestion. It was, after all, our first day in the classroom, and everybody wants to make friends on the first day.

I’m the new guy at the Washington Youth Garden, an educational nonprofit based out of the National Arboretum (one of the true jewels of the nations capital), which has been inspiring children and families to explore their relationships with food and nature for way longer than urban gardening has been cool. Established in 1971, the WYG manages a one-acre vegetable garden at the arboretum and runs a variety of interdisciplinary, hands-on educational programming.

Specifically, I am working with the Garden Science program, which includes an 8-week environmental science and nutrition curriculum in six 2^nd and 3^rd grade  D.C. elementary school classrooms.* The program culminates in a trip to our garden at the Arboretum, where the students finally get to let eight weeks worth of suppressed energy and excitement come flooding out. They rampage around the garden, playing with dirt, picking up bugs, and of course, productively observing and working in the garden.

There are a great many reasons why the Garden Science program is a wonderful service to the greater community and an integral asset to the local/sustainable/urban/whatever you want to call it movement that is currently whipping winds of progress around the DC area. Environmental education. Informal learning. Inspiring hope. Nutrition education. Respectfully informing children that neither pizza nor shrimp are vegetables. Smiling. Empowering children. Planting seeds. The list goes on. Embedded among the myriad justifications of Garden Science is the simple fact that the WYG is doing good work for good reasons, and have been doing so for nearly 40 years. Shazam.

Personally, I am excited to have the chance to be working with kids in a gardensciencey-infused atmosphere. To see the smiles that light up their faces at the mention of growing seeds and visiting our garden. To suppress my smiles when their faces scrunch and distort with the desperate straight-armed fingerwiggle maneuver, so desperate to provide answers to our questions. To see the potential in each and every child in the classroom. To get to know the students, and give them something to believe in.

Right, so why do you care what I have to say? I’m getting there.

Relatively speaking, I’m a rookie in this game. For me, youth garden/science education is the latest stop on a ‘tour,’ of sorts, of work around the theme of food and agriculture. So, as I spend time in the classroom, getting to know the kids and re-assimilating to the 3^rd grade wavelength, I’ll make my best attempt to exhibit one of the fundamental pillars of successful classroom behavior: sharing.

Throughout my stint at the WYG, I will be writing weekly(ish) updates on the progress, content, and any or all funny, heart wrenching, politically or socially applicable, fun, thought provoking, visually appealing and/or silly bouts of creativity–like Eric’s ApplejuicePiemachine, a complex contraption involving quantum physics and elaborate engineering that consists of an apple-shaped central chamber that can dispense apple cinnamon, apple pies, apple cider, apple juice, apple trees, and of course, apples, at one’s convenience…but I digress–that come from our regular classroom visits. I’d like to think of this as a kind of window through which one can get an insider’s view of the Garden Science project. I hereby invite you to join in on the fun.

If you have any questions, comments, general concerns, or inquiries into the feasibility of re-creating the ApplejuicePiemachine for commercial purposes, you can contact me at aplotsky@washingtonyouthgarden.org

*The Garden Science program serves two classes in each of the following schools:

Imagine Hope Community Charter School

Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School

Center City Public Charter School, Trinidad Campus