the Garden Stand that Could...

A calm garden morning stirs BIG Garden ideas...

It all started with Ms. Jessica's 2nd Graders one morning during garden class. I forget exactly what project we were working on, but I remember it being a calm morning of work and chat. While I love all my students, I am deeply fond of and irresistibly inspired by these particular students. I'm not sure if it was my connection with Ms. Jessica, their homeroom teacher, when I first began LCS last year; we were both on the same page about Edible Education and had similar dreams to fiercely begin something breathtaking and real. Or, maybe I was so touched by the unbounded support and encouragement I received from their parents.

Maybe it was all of that. Maybe it was because they felt the same way about the garden as I did. Or, maybe it was the Garden who chose this class to leap with.

However we got there, it was during this fateful Garden class last May that it had crossed my mind to discuss with my students very casually somehow showcasing all our hard work to our school community. Ok, that's a lie. I actually had been thinking for a while before that day in Garden about how to present the work we do in Garden to our community in an interactive and meaningful way. I remember having a few meetings with our Dean at the time where we discussed possibly throwing a big celebration in honor of the Garden. Perhaps a Spring Festival, with crafts and food and planting? But then, our Dean suggested tying this idea into so many other ideas: Grandparents Day, Science Fair with 4th Grade...that the essence of what I had envisioned disintegrated into the ethers of space, along with any further meetings with our Dean who probably was overwhelmed at the time, as most Deans are. I began to feel unimportant, but I did not lose hope.

So, I had been pondering in my mind for a few months on how we could present our work, but more than just present, how to really share it with our school. During Garden that day when we had time to chat, and I brought up the idea of sharing our Garden, maybe having a little Stand with some veggies to show what we are growing? They took it further.

This picture was just once upon a dream...

No, Ms. Tiffanie, let's have a Garden Stand, like a Farm Stand, where we sell what we grow and educate people with what we are currently learning in the Garden. Let's have it on Fridays during Morning Sing when our whole community gets together to sing songs and parents stay to watch their kids sing. We can teach what we know, offer fresh, local, organic veggies and herbs while at the same time raising money for our Edible Schoolyard Program. 

Sharing what we have from our garden and raising $$ for it.

In a nutshell. That was what we came up with as a class, a real brainstorm of ideas, a real collaboration, a real discussion, definitely constructivist learning in the flesh.

With our hearts full of excitement, we were pumped, ready to make this happen. Now, I had to carve a path to make it a reality. I had the buy in from students, the motivation, the momentum, and luckily my garden partner-in-crime, Ms. Jessica. So I caught up with her and discussed what we sketched during Garden; her eyes lit up, she was in. Now, time to strategize.

Without Ms. Jessica, Garden Stand would still be just a dream.

Having been at school for a solid 9 months, I began to quickly learn the culture of getting things done. The Me, being a stickler for rules and not wanting to get in "trouble," had to go. So I dropped that part of me like a bad habit. Cold Turkey.

Jessica and I adopted the model "Ask for Forgiveness, not Permission".  Having worked at LCS for a year before I had, I believe she had adopted this model a while ago. And now, so had I. I never got a chance to put together a Spring Festival with admin support, but we started something way better.

Students made tags labeling bundles of kale we sold for $1.

So, one Friday morning, we executed "Operation: Pop-Up Garden Stand". Before any students or many staff arrived, we moved a table we found in the hallway which was used for lunch to the front entrance of school, put a table cloth on it and harvested some kale and made some herb bundles in the garden with students who started to trickle into school. They made cute tags.

And of course we can't forget our sign we made during the week with our students. Students decorated a hinged-sign board which was painted with black chalk paint for our students to decorate with chalk. This was a donation from awesome parents in our class, now a handmade relic we still use every Garden Stand. Jessica and I moved it near our Stand table, which staked like a flag.

Our "Flag," parent donated board sign. 

Students from all grade levels unite to harvest and bundle. 

It was a HIT. It felt like an outdoor market in some foreign land. There was no line, a little chaos in the air, just dollar bills and hands pointing to various veggies on the table. Our Dean came over to see what the excitement was about and looked a bit stunned, maybe nervous. We raised about $60 or so. I turned it into school the proper way and it never got into our budget....another lesson learned. So we had to take care of the funds ourselves and with each Garden Stand we provided for our classes: potting soil, bird feeder project kits, compost, wind chime project kits, seeds, supplement veggies for cooking lessons, food for our citrus trees, paint, and for our ULTIMATE wish, a new toolshed.

Busy, busy morning rush...

Figs, homemade fig preserves and Pomegranates from our trees Fall 2014.

We've had to add on another table.

Our old toolshed is being eaten away by termites. It had been deteriorating since last year, probably even before my time began at LCS; the left door hangs on by one hinge, and I hit my head everyday on the low frame. So, before last Summer began, our students set a goal to raise $1,000 through Garden Stand for the new toolshed.

10 Garden Stands and dozens of projects later, we have reached our goal and our new toolshed is on its way as I write these words. This is a real experience. These are our school ESLRs (Expected School-wide Learning Results): Demonstrating Respect, Taking Responsibility, Persevering, Seeking to Understand and Communicating Effectively, all coming to life. This is the epitome of constructivist learning.

How is it the epitome of constructivist learning? Well, the picture above says it all. Students took ownership of a project, something they wanted to be a part of and dedicate themselves to. Not only do we harvest what we have from our garden and sometimes glean from neighborhood trees to sell, we also have an Educational Table where we teach. That's right, students teaching grown-ups. They collaborated with one another to educate our community of parents and students about: Monarch butterflies, germination, not wasting utensils for school hot lunch, to name a few. They even collaborated with the Kindergarteners in October who presented their studies of pumpkins, one example of cross-grade-level collaboration. Not only were they educating our community with the Kindergarteners about the stages of life, shape and properties of pumpkins; on a deeper level, our 2nd/3rd graders were being role models and leading them. It was an exciting Halloween Garden Stand, as you can imagine.

Fall 2014 @ the Ed. Table we were all about pumpkins. 

Ms. Sarah's kinders made predictions about pumpkins.

Handmade paper flowers by parent. 

Persimmons and Kale @ the Garden Stand.

The Garden Stand has become everything I hoped it would be and so much more I could never have imagined. It has brought so many students from different classes together and also so many people of our rich community together. Parents are reconnecting after a busy week over some garden tea at the Garden Stand, or buying Rosemary herb bundles and using it for their roasted parsnips for dinner (true story). It has inspired so many students and families; I could probably write many more postings about how, but I'll just save that for a future book, perhaps?

It's an endless circle of inspiration. The garden inspires what we showcase at the Garden Stand and the Garden Stand inspires what we learn in garden. The momentum is high and our customers love our displays and products. This year we have made: fig preserves, lemon preserves (from our trees in the garden and made by amazing parent-volunteer-extraordinare Cassey J.), homemade laundry soap with 3rd graders, compost from our composting lunch and snack waste, persimmon cookies (made by yours truly from my Grandma's Hachiya Persimmons), paper which we turned into bookmarks and seed paper with 2nd graders, flower presses, succulents in a shell (when we studied propagating succulents), granola bars and fidgets (made by amazing Cassey J. and which sell out every time), snack sacks (made by amazing Victoria A.), utensil sets wrapped with cloth napkins made by our 3rd graders for their B.Y.O.U (Bring Your Own Utensil campaign for hot lunch).

Paper we made and turned into bookmarks.

Fig preserves made from our figs.

Laundry Soap by our 3rd Graders. 

Flower Presses, made last May; one of our first novelty items.

Succulents in a Shell by our 3rd Graders.

This project and what it has sparked within other people continues to inspire and rekindle my joy and pure passion for gardening and teaching. Every day I get to work with our Earth and some truly wonderful kids. It has reaffirmed so many of my life choices, especially when times were turbulent and confusing trying to find my way here. With every Garden Stand, my soul ignites and anything is possible.





*Photos by Tiffanie Ma