About Us
Our Mission
The mission of the Edible Schoolyard Berkeley is to teach essential life skills and support academic learning through hands-on classes in a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom. The Edible Schoolyard curriculum is fully integrated into the school day and teaches students how their choices about food affect their health, the environment and their communities.
The Edible Schoolyard Berkeley
The Edible Schoolyard Berkeley is a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom for urban public school students at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. This model program for edible education is fully funded by the Edible Schoolyard Project. At ESY, students participate in all aspects of growing, harvesting, and preparing nutritious, seasonal produce during the academic day and in after school classes. Students’ hands-on experience in the kitchen and garden fosters a deeper appreciation of how the natural world sustains us and promotes the environmental and social well-being of our school community.
The Organic Garden
In the spring of 1995, an abandoned lot adjacent to the school was designated as the garden site. Landscape architects, chefs, gardeners, and teachers were invited to share their vision of a garden where students would participate in hands-on learning. Sixteen years later, the acre of land is lush with seasonal vegetables, herbs, vines, berries, flowers, and fruit trees. King Middle School teachers and the garden staff work together to link garden experiences with students’ science and humanities lessons for truly integrated experiential learning.
The Kitchen Classroom
The Edible Schoolyard kitchen is an experiential learning classroom
where students accompany their humanities teachers to experience culture, history, language, ecology, and geography through the preparation of food. Warm, bright, and cheerful, the kitchen is a backdrop for enthusiastic students who view the garden through the north-facing windows–making the tacit connection between seasonality, plants, and food.
Students cook together with freshly harvested produce from the Edible Schoolyard garden and eat a freshly prepared dish, sharing the fruits of their labor around a communal table. As they harvest, cook, and eat their way through the school year, students’ experience lessons that support academic learning in the classroom.
Community Programming
The Edible Schoolyard Berkeley engages the wider community of King by extending programming to evening and weekends. Families participate in three Saturday work days, helping to maintain the garden and sharing lunch together. Parent and families also participate in evening classes held in the ESY kitchen. These classes give students an opportunity to share lessons learned with their families and provide tools for families to cook fresh meals.
The Edible Schoolyard Academy
During the summer months, the Edible Schoolyard Berkeley hosts an annual Academy. The ESY Academy is designed to support emerging garden and kitchen programs nationwide and to strengthen resource and information sharing among them. Led by Edible Schoolyard staff and guest presenters, the Academy provides a three-day edible education immersion. Through hands-on activities, presentations, guided discussion, and curriculum building sessions, participants will learn to use tools for teaching edible education—an integrated approach to education in the garden, kitchen, and classroom.
