Garden Classrooms

The Joseph Sears School Outdoor Classroom provides students with an outdoor space for hands-on exploration, inquiry, discovery and garden-based learning in all grades K-8 in areas of practical arts, core subjects, social emotional, and health. Surrounded by native plants, butterfly and rain gardens, vegetable and herb beds, fruit bushes and trees, students develop an understanding and curiosity about the natural world. In addition during practical arts classes, students develop an understanding of where our food comes from with the farm-to-table concept - plant, harvest, eat (and enjoy!).

The Chinese International School Community Farm and Garden (hereafter CISFarm) project was hatched in May 2018. The Farm became a reality in Septmeber 2018! 

CISFarm: 3500 sq feet farm built on government leased land adjacent to our campus.

CISFarm seeks to give our urbanized students the opportunity to understand their food origin-how and where it is grown. With few farmers markets or open green spaces to touch, feel, explore, this Farm hopes to fill this void: teach life cycle of plants, insects, fruit, and eventually death and rebirth (composting).

At Youth Farm, we farm to grow. We grow food. We grow community. We grow leaders. We work in diverse neighborhoods across Minneapolis and St. Paul to utilize food as a catalyst for social change, for community engagement, for leadership development - Food is our tool to change the world. We farm to educate and train through gardens and greenhouses. We cultivate leadership through year round programming focused on planting, growing, preparing and distributing the food we grow.

The Northwest School is an urban college preparatory school for grades 6-12 that prepares students to think critically, act compassionately, and own responsibility for their global home. Environmental sustainability (ES) has been an integral part of the school’s mission since its founding in 1981.

The Gardening @ CJR program is run by teachers and students for the last two years. We grow herbs and fast growig veggies that students can harvest before the end of the school year. Students harvest herbs and give them away at a weekly produce program called Hungry Harvest. 

Our mission is to educate students about the role of gardening, healthy eating, and eco stewardship. As a title 1 school, our students need well rounded exposures to nutrition, gardening and eco sustainability. 

We implement an emergent curriculum that promotes creativity and exploration and emphasizes the development of children’s sense of self and social development. Although we are a Montessori school we also strive to incorporate other philosophies such as the Reggio Emilia approach and play-based methods. Our approach to education comes directly from an absolute love of children and childhood. We believe that every child is capable and competent.

In 2017, Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District (TBAISD) piloted the TBAISD Farm to School program to provide school specific Farm to School support and capacity-building to select elementary schools within Northwest Michigan.

"Inspiring and Preparing Young People to Live Consciously with Themselves, One Another, and the Planet."

Learning is Alive: We pursue education fearlessly, knowing that children are naturally “switched-on” when they are learning about something they love. We strive to cultivate and sustain that in-the-moment exuberance.

I have been a volunteer at Mary Farmar Elementary School Garden as their coordinator and Liberty High School Greenhouse for six years.  Both schools have the same mission:  to encourage young people to learn how to live sustainably by caring for diverse and productive gardens. Students eat what they grow in the garden and develop a posititive relationship with healthy food and the natural environment.  All of the activities in the gardens involve hands on participation.

Our garden is an educational, edible, student-driven garden. Park is a Title I school; with 70% of our families considered socioeconomically disadvantaged. Our mission is to introduce new organic food to our students; many live in food deserts within San Mateo. Our garden motto is “we love dirt and dirt is good”. Many  students here have never seen strawberries grow on the vine nor picked tomatoes, squash, or tomatillos.