School gardens are changing education for Connecticut’s urban youth
“For some of these kids, a few months ago when we started doing this was the first time they’d ever really gotten their hands in the dirt.”
By Megan Briggs, WSHU
wbur
May 23, 2022
Excerpt:
Common Ground is a New Haven environmental education center planting outdoor classrooms across the city and as far as Hamden and Wallingford. Their Schoolyards Program has partnered with over 20 New Haven public schools and led the installation of a number of school gardens, most recently at John S. Martinez. Common Ground outdoor learning specialists typically visit partner schools at least one day per week.
On this day, Brandstatter led a group of pre-Kindergarten and fourth grade students to cultivate the garden beds. Students worked together to transfer soil — enriched with hearty earthworms — with trowels and buckets from a pile outside the school into the new beds.
Schoolyards Program manager Robyn Stewart emphasized the range of skills young kids develop through outdoor learning.
“Kids are interacting in a different context,” Stewart said. “There’s more opportunities for both independence, developing independence, but also developing teamwork and collaborative learning.”
Even a simple task like moving soil presents opportunities for personal growth.
“This is kids engaging in real work that needs to be done. And there’s also a lot of fine motor [skills], gross motor and teamwork going on here,” observed Stewart.
