San Mateo Park Elementary School

Program Type: 
Garden Classrooms
Grade Level/Age Group: 
Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary
Number of Individuals Program Serves: 
379
Year Founded: 
2016
About the Program: 

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.

The students have taken ownership of their garden. We teach students about growing and eating seasonally. We guide them on what and where plants can grow in the garden. They are taught plants and gardening, but also reinforcing lessons learned in the classroom such as literacy, math, and science. We have a morning garden club; at recess there is a garden lesson prepared for the students. At Park School we believe in inclusion; everyone, including our Special Day Class, have access to our garden.

Currently, we use the Junior Master Gardeners, “Learn, Grow, Eat, And Go”, both 4-H curriculums. They focus on gardening and healthy living. In the future, I plan to expand and build upon what we have and add more healthy, fresh, organically grown food to our curriculum.

Program Members: