Richmond College Prep Elementary School-Grandpa Allen Learning Garden

          The Richmond College Prep Elementary School in located in Richmond, California.  It has two large gardens on its campus, the Grandpa Allen Learning Garden (GALG) on the Maritime side, and another large one on the Portables side of the campus.  In the gardens students learn hands-on farming practices such as planting, harvesting, weeding, watering, and seed saving. Through these activities, they follow a project based curriculum practicing Math, Science, English, History, and Art.  Every activity adheres to the Common Core Standards while also nurturing the students' social and emotional needs.   Over the year, each student keeps a Garden Journal to draw and write their findings and experiences in.  Students also learn a sense of place, cultural history, and cultivation and appreciation of Nature and how they are connected, which includes respecting insects and all living things, including themselves.  

         The Grandpa Allen Learning garden is named after Allen Trachtenberg, a former volunteer at RCP.  After his passing, his family raised money and rebuilt the Martime side garden at RCP, naming it the Grandpa Allen Learning Garden or GALG for short.

         Zia Grossman-Vendrillo is the garden educator teaching Pre-6th grade in the RCP Gardens. The school will be adding a 7th grade next year ('17-'18). Zia Graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 2015 and started working at RCP in the Fall of 2016. Before that she worked at Urban Adamah, Save the Bay, Edgewood Center for Children and Families, and has been volunteering with the Insight Garden Program. She attended a school garden teacher training at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. Working in collaboration with RCP, Urban Ademah, RCP Families and Staff, Common Vision, YES: Nature to Neighborhoods, and the Trachtenberg Family, the school gardens at RCP have transformed over the last 4 years into a thriving living learnscape featuring two orchards, a dry creek, a water cistern, a farm space, six raised beds, vermaculture bins, and a compost corner. We use Permaculture principles in every aspect of our garden work. In class, this approach to being in relationship with land is used to help students build connection and community with all the forces of the environment around them.      

          At RCP, students learn and connect with their natural environment through eating what they grow.  In the Spring of 2015, RCP was awarded The Charlie Cart, http://www.charliecart.com/ a pilot program to bring a portable kitchen to school classrooms across the country.  The Charlie Cart cooking classes are held outside in the garden.  Led by Robyn Goldberg, RCP's nutrition teacher, students learn nutrition and food diversity, preping and cooking food of all kinds. We strive to complete the circle by having students harvest in the garden then back to the Charlie Cart to prepare their meal.