The Edible Schoolyard

Today’s society is providing our children with unhealthy foods. Families usually eat out or away from home. This pattern is affecting our youth. Our children need to be introduced to health foods and possibly participate in the preparation of their meals. Alice Waters from Berkeley, California felt we should take it a little further than that and incorporate health foods into our academic curriculum. At Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, Waters created a learning environment that is essential to the students learning and diets, with the permission of the principal who thought it was an excellent idea. King’s cafeteria had been closed due to the overpopulating student body. The students were being served microwave bag lunches outside on the blacktop. Water suggested that the students plant and care for a garden on an acre surrounding the blacktops at the school. This would become their learning environment. She also reopened the cafeteria so the students could utilize it as a learning tool, cooking and eating the foods from the garden instead of the bag lunch they were receiving everyday. The students sit in the center of their garden learning many subjects and eating their home grown produces. “Children learn about the connection between what they eat and where it comes from, with the goal of fostering environmental stewardship and revolutionizing the school lunch program.” Waters believed children learn more when they are eating because they are using all their senses. This area of the school was named The Edible Schoolyard.

I really enjoyed the pod cast. It revealed so many unique ways to educate your students with something as simple as foods. This schoolyard also teaches students long-lasting life skills. I will definitely integrate a few of these activities into my lesson plans. One idea that I thought of while typing this post is when I teach my students their organic shapes, we can grow some fruits prior to the lesson. This will not only teach them science but provide them a health snack.