It’s recess time at LeConte Science Magnet School, and not all kids are playing soccer. A third-grader bounds through the garden gate.
“Anything I can pull today?”
In this neighborhood two blocks off Berkeley’s famously frenetic Telegraph Avenue, a quiet revolution is underway. Berkeley Unified Public Schools Farm and Garden Program immerses kids in the soil, seeds and sunshine of a well-tended garden. The program helps students make connections between plants they grow and foods they eat.
In a sunny courtyard between two wings of the school, chickens lay eggs in boxes and scratch near a compost pile of school lunch scraps. Neat rows of onions, garlic and lettuce grow just feet away from where students study math, Spanish and social studies.
Benjamin Goff, a garden educator, spends sunny days cajoling and inspiring the students of LeConte as they plan, plant, water, weed, harvest, and eat veggies and fruit from the school’s garden.
It’s Goff’s job to make sure the kids here get their hands dirty — and learn something in the process. The goal of the garden curriculum, according to Goff, is to “change the way kids learn about nutrition.”
As a perfect opportunity to integrate several school subjects, students study the Three Sisters, the complementary Native American crops of corn, beans, and squash. In social studies, they investigate Native American agriculture and the mythology of the Three Sisters. In math, they measure the perimeter of the garden beds. In science, they learn about plant cultivation requirements and design planting plans factoring in spacing and water requirements. Finally, they draw the planting plan to scale.
The garden allows hands-on, practical learning, but it is a productive mini-farm in its own right. Students recently completed a marketing project, mixing freshly harvested herbs and vegetables into a custom salad dressing. Students designed art for the bottle label, and the project raised over $800.
But don’t mistake the garden as a cash cow for the school.
“Production isn’t our focus,” says Goff. “[It’s] here for kids to make connections.”
A Connecticut native, Goff grew up in the East Bay area. He studied sustainable agriculture at Evergreen State University in Olympia, Wash., where he realized large-scale organic farming might not be for him.
“I didn’t want to find a new piece of land and farm it. I’m a city kid.”
Returing to the Bay Area, Goff saw a way to combine his love for growing with a knack for teaching.
“I wanted to work in a school garden.”
Often, the garden offers students their first authentic contact with the agricultural food chain.
“To see a chicken, it blows their mind. They come out here and are afraid of chickens.”
Goff hopes his students’ experiences in the school garden will translate into better nutritional habits.
“I heard one kid was eating tofu and greens.”