McPherson school’s garden teaches life lessons:
Raising children and fava beans
By NATALIE HOFFMAN Register Staff Writer | Posted: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 12:00 am
Napa Valley Register
It takes a village to raise a fava bean.
At McPherson Elementary School, students, parents and residents rallied around a campus veggie garden this spring.
Fifth graders softened up the soil, second graders planted seed, fourth
graders composted, first graders contributed butterfly-friendly plants,
kindergartners decorated garden benches.
Garden supporters came to school last week for a final work party
before everyone scatters for summer. Adult volunteers will keep the
garden going until fall.
McPherson’s school garden initiative connects classroom lessons with a real-world project, with health eating for all.
Joel Duarte, a former McPherson student turned Silverado Middle School
sixth-grader, weeded pepper, tomato and pumpkin plants Wednesday.
Joel worked alongside his grandmother, Ana Sandoval, an energetic woman with a ready smile.
Also lending a hand was Azucena Vega, a McPherson parent who had put her children to work.
“They get really excited about working together as a family in the
garden,” Vega said in Spanish through a translator. Watching the
products of their labor grow and looking ahead to harvesting fresh
fruits and vegetables keeps them coming back to the garden spot, she
said.
Vega’s son, Jaime, is a first-grader, and Jose, 5, is in kindergarten,
but the young pair got to work digging weeds out of a flower bed with
miniature shovels.
Not to be outdone, the brothers’ little sister, 2-year-old Rubi Vega,
tottered around the garden beds, grabbing fistfuls of weeds.
Keeping an eye on the young volunteers was Monica Garcia, a public
health coordinator at Clinic Ole who works with a McPherson group
called On the Move.
Promoting nutritious foods and getting McPherson residents working
together are a few of the garden initiative’s benefits, Garcia said.
Nick Challed, an On the Move employee, said McPherson families have
enjoyed some of the garden’s yields. The garden also supplied the
school’s second-graders with enough turnips and other goodies to run an
after-school vegetable stand.
Since the project’s humble beginnings last fall, parents, students and
volunteers have added a water drip system, composting equipment and
planted tomatoes, squash, carrots and more, he said.
An initial $20,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente’s Community Benefit
Program jump-started the garden initiative last year, and a recent
$25,000 grant renewal will pay to expand the project through next year,
Challed said. Van Winden Landscaping donated plants and seeds.
McPherson Principal Tamara Sanguinetti said the school’s second-graders
wrote a letter to Van Winden asking for a hand with the project.
The project allowed students to put math, science and other core
subjects to use, Sanguinetti said. Students designing the project
leaned on their geometry skills. Other used communication skills to ask
people for donations.
McPherson must focus on its core curriculum since the school is on the
federal government’s equivalent of academic probation, the principal
said.
Showing students how mastering basics like communication and math can
help them in the real world is vitally important, and it can also be
fun, she said.
“It is our job to motivate these kids, and to keep them motivated,” Sanguinetti said.
That’s why the school garden is so important; what child wouldn’t take
pride in growing their own fava beans and radishes?, she said.
Photos by: Jorgen Gulliksen/Register
