Soaring to New Heights

 

Lemon on rooftop of L.A.

Today was one of those picture perfect class days, one that, until today, I didn't know existed in real life. Sometimes, most of the time actually, we never feel like we have enough time in the garden. Thirty minutes is pretty short to get 11 students oriented and orchestrated to our garden goal of the day. We always manage, but today, we soared. I am so proud of my 2nd and 1st graders!

While I took the photo on the left on a rooftop in downtown L.A. a few summers ago and our Meyer Lemons from the garden we actually used today are just as beautiful, I feel like this photo represents accurately the bursting brightness and soaring heights we reached with our garden classes today.

It was our 1st and 2nd graders first cooking lesson in our Edible Garden, of this year, and with me. Our chard, though still young, was ready to be harvested and devoured by our 2nd grade gardeners who planted them there.


On Thursdays, our 2nd graders come into the garden in the morning, and after lunch, our 1st graders come in. This morning we made a simple chard salad with carrot shavings and raisins paired with a simple Meyer lemon honey dressing. We made the salad and dressing from scratch, except for the olive oil, salt, pepper, raisins, and carrots (we have them in the garden, but they aren't ready yet). Almost everything came right from our little garden. I did purchase some fully-matured Red Ruby Chard leaves to show students what our chard will look like, and also to compensate for the amount of our young chard leaves we have feeding 33 hungry students.

And, to my surprise, since I have not received the list of parent volunteers yet, I had a parent volunteer today! His name was Josh, and he is the father of 2 of my students. He was very easy going and helped our students wash the chard, lettuce, kale, and mustard green (we mixed things up in the last class with more greens from our garden). During another one of our 3 classes, he helped instruct and lead our students to make the dressing. And before he washed up for the day and said goodbye, he chopped up our chard and carrot stems for the worms.

Everyone loved the salad and some even asked for seconds. It made me so happy to see some students peeling carrots, using the salad spinner, tossing in raisins, whisking the dressing, all contributing to a meal together. And what's even greater, were their smiles and enthusiasm to taste good food that we made together. My favorite part was when we got to just eat and talk, just enjoying each other's company over a simple salad. A big Thank You goes out to Josh who was an awesome parent volunteer. I think his help allowed us to finish each back-to-back class on time and with finesse.

Although Josh wasn't there to make Basil and Mint Meyer Lemonade with us in 1st grade, we still finished each class on time and with sipping leisure. While it would have been helpful to have another pair of hands to fetch ice from the big kitchen and pour hot water into the sugar for the simple syrup, we made it work quite well and my little 1st graders enjoyed the tour around different parts of school perhaps they hadn't really seen before. I will always appreciate a cup of homemade lemonade a little more after today. Just watching all my students squeeze those lemons with the lemon press in their tiny hands, really demonstrated how much each drop is worth.

*photo by Tiffanie Ma