The students at Theodore Judah Elementary School have many reasons to feel proud. Over the past five years they have become healthier, more aware of the role they play in our ecosystem and have received some of the top science scores in a district of 60 elementary schools.
Theodore Judah is part of the Science Alive Program. The program focuses on making students aware of the role they play in the natural world and in the process they learn science standards and good eating habits.
Shannon Hardwick, a parent at Judah, started the Science Alive gardens five years ago with the idea of combining science and healthy living.
“Our program has a variety of objectives,” Hardwick says. “We have a main garden in the center of the school yard, another garden behind the cafeteria so the children can watch their food grow, a native plant garden, a composting area for lunch waste and a butterfly pavilion.”
It took a year of planning to get this program off the ground, but Hardwick felt it was time well spent. Hardwick wanted to make sure there would be enough involvement by the students and their parents. Hardwick held meetings to discuss the objective of the garden and how it would be facilitated. If the gardens were going to be successful, this had to be a school project, not just a side note.
The program has evolved since it began and with it more leadership. There is a green team that enrolls around 70 students and a lunchtime club that encourages healthy eating and waste reduction. Hardwick said the program has literally spilled into everything the school is doing.
Each child has a garden period where he or she works with a trained docent to either plant, weed, compost or do what is necessary to take care of the gardens. In a two-week cycle, about 500 students work in the garden.
Many of the parents received training on how to take care of the gardens and have taken on the role of the docent. This program is completely funded by the PTA. Hardwick is also involved in a lot of fundraising and grant writing.
Hardwick said Sacramento City Unified is working on duplicating the Science Alive Program. They are joining with the “Building Healthy Communities Program, a California Endowment Foundation that works throughout the state. Hardwick said the program plans to promote healthy food access and expose children to better nutrition.  The program will be implemented in partnership with Soil Born Farms, which is facilitating a two-year grant to help five other schools grow or enhance gardens on their campuses.
Farah McDill is the sustainability coordinator for Sacramento Unified School District and heads up the Healthy Foods Task Force. She is setting up the program for the five Sacramento elementary schools. She is also a member of the U.S. Green Building Council Fellow’s.
“ The U.S. Green Building Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit community of members, chapters, advocates and practitioners that give voice to our commitment to improve human health, support economies and protect the environment through green buildings.”
McDill said so far, Bret Harte, Pacific and Nicholas Elementary Schools have been chosen to participate. The other two schools have not been decided upon yet.
To qualify, the schools had to commit to having at least two parents and two teachers agree to learn how to run the gardens and create a program that involves the children.
McDill believes this is an important program for the students. She said 72 percent of Sacramento Unified School District’s students qualify for free lunches.  McDill said it is rare for urban students to have access to grow something.
“Students get to plant the seeds, nurture the plants and experience eating what they grow,” McDill said. “The students experience eating new vegetables they don’t have at home.”
McDill wants everyone to know the school district is not funding this program. Just like the Judah gardens, it is completely funded by parents, students and others interested in USGBC’s Green Schools Fellow program. McDill is working with shop supervisors to build gardens the students can maintain. McDill receives grants from various businesses and Lowe’s donated $5,000 to the gardens this year.
“A lot of people understand who is teaching and what is being taught,” McDill said.
“What is important is to understand where things are being taught. How does the space support learning in a healthy environment? The gardens provide a healthy, substitute for the classroom.”
At Judah, the children have permission to eat whatever is in the garden that needs eating. Hardwick believes this is a good way to expose kids to vegetables. They do a lot of grazing in the gardens. Kids become really excited when they get to eat something they have grown. The students tend to graze a lot at recess. If there is something big ready to harvest, two classes share the harvesting; then one class prepares a school garden snack. Once maybe every three months, there are enough vegetables to harvest for the whole school to enjoy. Last year, Hardwick said the students came up with the idea of carrot burritos. They rolled their garden grown carrots and hummus inside the chard they grew. They also made a fennel salad with fresh herbs from their garden.
“The kids think preparing the garden snack is the best job on earth,” Hardwick said. “It is like a huge privilege.”
What’s nice is the students challenge their parents to learn about gardening and composting. Many of the students are growing gardens at home. Hardwick said she receives lots of calls from parents asking about composting.
The students are also learning about the importance of supporting locally grown foods. They learn about shopping at the local farmers’ markets and how fresh food is better than packaged foods.
Both Hardwick and McDill are enthusiastic about school gardens and the important role the gardens play in the students’ lives.
Growing and sustaining a vegetable garden is a fun way to introduce science to the students and it always affects their eating habits in a healthy way.
Hardwick gives campus tours for folks interested in knowing more about the gardens and how they are maintained and welcomes folks to check them out.
Theodore Judah Elementary is located at 3919 McKinley Blvd., Sacramento. For more information call the school at 277-6364.

How many times have you walked past a home garden overflowing with ripe fruits, luscious berries and leafy vegetables, wishing you could sink your teeth into just about everything?
Soroptimist International of Sacramento, Inc. (SIS) is giving you the chance with the 2nd annual Edible Gardens Tour. The tour will take visitors through six different edible gardens in East Sacramento.

Get growing
Susann Hadler, who has lived in East Sacramento for more than 30 years and chairs the Fund Development Committee and Edible Gardens Tour for SIS, said an edible garden is balanced landscape that combines edible plants, such as fruits and vegetables, with purely ornamental plants.
“You’re incorporating plants that you can actually eat into your landscaping,” she said.
For example, one of the gardens on this year’s tour is the home garden of interior designer Amanda Fossum.
Fossum was inspired by the Edible Gardens Tour last year to not only do more with her garden, but also become part of the tour this year.
“I thought if we could show what we’ve done in just two years of owning our house, it would encourage other people to start their own gardens or even be on the tour themselves next year,” Fossum said.
Fossum’s garden includes a covered patio, fire pit and raised beds made from recycled cedar and redwood. It also extends from the backyard to the front.
For the second year of their garden, Fossum said she and her husband decided to “double down” and plant as much as they can. The garden’s bounty includes four different fruit trees, zucchini squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, two different varieties of tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, peppers and cucumbers.
Another garden on the tour this year will feature what Hadler called a “sustainable English cottage garden.”
Hadler said the home itself looks like an English cottage with gardens in both the front and backyards featuring sunflowers, artichokes, tomatoes, beans, strawberries and blueberries. And then there’s a more whimsical garden that features a two-story chicken coop and raised beds for growing vegetables and herbs.
Also on the tour for 2012 is the Science Alive garden at Theodore Judah Elementary School, which features edible gardens, native plant gardens and a butterfly pavilion.
“What they have done is amazing – they’ve really taken science out of the classroom and put it in what you could call a living laboratory,” Hadler said. “They’re excited about being one of the featured (gardens).”

Coming up green
Although edible gardens are the focus of this event, the main purpose is for SIS to raise money for its philanthropic endeavors. SIS is a service club for professional business women whose mission is to improve the lives of women and children.
Last year, Hadler said their first-ever Edible Gardens Tour saw about 600 attendees and raised almost $10,000 for the Guardian Scholars Program at California State University Sacramento.
The program provides a campus-based program to support current and former foster youth successfully complete a college degree. The funds raised also went toward scholarships SIS gives out each year to high school and college students.
This year, funds raised through the Edible Gardens Tour will again go toward scholarships, as well as two main charities, Hadler said.
The first is the Children’s Receiving Home Independent Living Program for Foster Youth, which Hadler said focuses on helping foster youth become independent members of the community once they become young adults.
“There are programs that they go through that guide them on such things as renting an apartment, how to go to the DMV to get your driver’s license, and how to make sure you’re getting the right cell phone contract,” Hadler said.
The second charity is the Lilliput Children’s Services Emergency Kinnect Program.
Hadler said this program provides clothing, toys, formula and diapers to children to have been removed from a home due to an emergency situation until they can be placed in a stable environment.
Fossum said she is proud to be a part of this year’s Edible Gardens Tour to help support SIS in its fundraising efforts for others, and she benefits as well.
“I’m considering opening my own small business right now, so in terms of having other women in the community as a support network, I think it’s a great organization,” she said.

corrie@valcomnews.com

Spring has sprung in Sacramento and that means the gardens are blooming and butterflies are beginning to hatch at the Science Alive program at Theodore Judah Elementary School in East Sacramento.

DIG IN! Students at Theodore Judah Elementary School find that digging into the garden is growing their science and math skills. / Photo courtesy, Shannon Hardwicke

According to Principal Corrie Buckmaster, Science Alive is a supplementary part of the school’s core science program that is funded by the school’s PTA. She said all the students at the school, from grades kindergarten through sixth, participate in the program.

“The children go to (science) lab or garden once a week, so half would go to lab and half would go to garden and then the following weeks the groups would switch,” Buckmaster explained. “And the concepts that are covered in the garden obviously coincide and support the work that they’re studying out of their science standards.”

Dig in!

The Science Alive program is lead by its coordinator, Shannon Hardwicke, who is a parent of three current Theodore Judah students. Since the start of the program five years ago, Hardwicke is in charge of coordinating and training the 30 to 40 parent volunteers, or docents, that take the student groups out into the garden each week. She also restocks garden and lab supplies, and coordinates all the activities in the science labs to “make sure they’re all based upon standards and we’re hitting all different grade level activities,” she added.

Since the Science Alive program began with the construction of one garden, Hardwicke said it has grown to encompass two edible gardens, a greenhouse, a butterfly pavilion, and a few native plant gardens.

Buckmaster said the students love the butterfly pavilion as they are able to watch the creatures through a life-cycle. And the edible garden gives students a chance to try vegetables they might not normally have the chance to.

“We want children to understand how good food tastes that’s fresh from the garden,” she added.

The Green Team

Another part of Science Alive is the Green Team, comprised of about 50 to 60 students for grades first through sixth, which works to help “green” the school’s campus

Hardwicke gives an example of a recent Green Team project, where the students discussed what changes they might make in their local neighborhood regarding plastic bag usage.

“The kids were brainstorming, ‘Could we approach our local supermarket and ask them to stop using plastic bags, or are we going to write our assemblymember,’” she detailed.

Also during the year, Buckmaster said the students explore ways people can use resources better and present a poster on their findings. Additionally, the Green Team is in charge of putting together an annual assembly by planning and writing skits that teach students about environmental concepts.

Project Green

The Science Alive program also spurred a large project this year for the school, which participated in the Project Green competition through the Sacramento City Unified School District. According to Buckmaster, the school board had set aside $5 million of remaining unused previous bond funds for schools to present proposals on how to green their campuses.

YUM. This “Science Alive” student at Theodore Judah Elementary School can tell you that foods taste better when they are picked fresh from the garden. In addition to growing kids’ science skills and environmental knowledge, the program also encourages better nutrition. / Photo courtesy, Shannon Hardwicke

For their Project Green submission, Buckmaster said students from grades third through sixth took part in a comprehensive review of the campus. For example, the combined third-fourth grade class did an urban forest audit of the campus and made recommendations on where different types of trees should be planted, while sixth graders did a study of green building technologies and built a green model classroom to scale.

“The students took their normal math, science, writing, evaluation skills and had an opportunity to put those into practice in a very tangible way,” Hardwicke said. “I think they also started to see that they could create change by using their education, using their skills and academics. And that was really valuable – I’ve seen the students realize wow, this is not just a practice, this is something tangible that is making a change and that’s been very exciting for them.”

Buckmaster said Theodore Judah presented their project during the Project Green Showcase held in April and are now waiting to hear back where they stand in the competition. If their project is selected for funding, the school would be looking to remove its current portable buildings and to construct a new two-story classroom building built using green technologies, as well as the construction of a bio-swell with a watershed feature for collecting rainwater.

“We’re just hoping to bolster some changes on our facility that are going to have an instructional purpose and take us to that level,” Buckmaster added.

Growth spurts

In addition to helping the students grow into environmental stewards, Science Alive has also helped bolster science learning.

Buckmaster said the school currently has the highest fifth grade science test scores in the district, and she also knows they’re quite high compared to other schools in the county.

“We’ve seen some pretty significant student achievements produced as a result of this instructional approach,” she said.

Hardwicke said the program has also helped students who may not be successful learning in the traditional classroom setting.

“They’re given an opportunity to have success in a different way,” she explained. “We have some students that have learning disabilities or (are) autistic and they just thrive in the garden – they can demonstrate their skills in just a completely different realm and it’s really valuable.”

Overall, Buckmaster said the Science Alive program is helping Theodore Judah become a very green and environmentally-conscious school.

“This generation of kids, that’s on their radar – it’s a topic of their time,” she added.

corrie@valcomnews.com

Little green creatures are terra-forming East Sacramento. They are not from Alpha Centauri and they don’t speak Martian, but they are members of a Green Team.

The small beings are students at Theodore Judah Elementary School. They dig, collect and process more than 50 pounds of compost and maintain multiple gardens on the elementary school campus.

The Science Alive program at the school makes this all possible with the student Green Team.

Shannon Hardwicke is their fearless leader.

Hardwicke cultivated the program in 2008. The school’s principal approached her with a simple garden plan that grew and grew.

“Now we have a whole campus science and green program with a multi-zone garden,” she said.

Hardwicke loves the mess of country life and so do the children.

“I have three kids at the school. This is the perfect place to work,” she said.

Hardwicke is the only paid employee of the program. She receives a small salary from the school’s PTA. All the other adult coordinators are volunteers.

The program is a lunchtime optional class. Kids eat lunch and then hit the dirt. They are part of the school’s Green Team that works the land. It’s a commitment for the pint-sized farmers.

“It’s a lot for a seven year-old to give up lunch free time,” she said.

Hardwicke watches a batch of children chew, as they hurry eating so they can get to work.

“We started with just a few kids and now we have more than 45 students on the Team,” she said. “At first it was just the elementary pupils. Today the primary, pre-kindergarten and pre-school are involved.”

The pupils study science lessons and manage multiple stations in the operation. There are several vegetable plots, a compost operation, a green house, butterfly pavilion, and the students participate in a nationwide study.

Science Alive is also a pilot program for Sacramento City Unified School District.

Harvesting dirt

A rangy girl with turned backwards, adult-sized gloves, (on the wrong hands, too) held up a wriggling line on her palm, “Look, it’s a worm!” she crowed. A smiling circle gathered to stare at the worm and then enthusiastically began to mine for more.

“OK, let’s put the worms back,” a volunteer gently steered the group back to work.

It’s dirt season and the kids love it. On a cool school day, a cluster of pupils moved earth. They dug, sifted, and bagged pounds of fresh, rich compost.

Students labeled lunch bags with crayon and lined up the soil-stuffed sacks on a table.

“This is harvest time. They’ve been prepping, turning, adding to and ripping biodegradable lunch trays for the compost all year. Now we’ll be selling it at a fundraiser,” Hardwick said.

Tap and stack

“I guess you could call me a waste manager,” Yolanda Milken smiles.

Milken is one of the volunteer parents.

Garbage mounts up quickly at a school. Milken figured out a way to cut down the number of trash pickup days and use more waste in the compost heap.

Students now empty milk cartons before throwing them away.

“With the milk out of the carton, the garbage doesn’t stink,” she said. “This cuts garbage pick up from five days a week down to two.”

Each student also carefully taps food leftovers from their trays into a collection can. This is added to the compost.

Flight

Behind a group of portables, stands a tall, black mesh tent. This is the Butterfly Pavilion.

Monarchs and other types of butterflies are nursed here. The students raise the wild things from eggs, through babyhood to adults, and then release them.

The pollenators help the kids complete the growing cycle and teach them about the circle of life.

Scientific inquiry

A tripod with a mini solar panel crouches over a broccoli patch at the school.

The Science Alive program at Theodore Judah Elementary was awarded $20,000 from Hidden Valley and selected to be one of five American schools to participate in an agricultural study.

A solar camera watches one section of the garden and the growth is measured and compared to four other student gardens across the country.

“We’ve had a slow start with the odd weather, but we’re still participating,” said Hardwicke.

The classroom

One half of the project is practice and the other half is theory. The project’s science lab gives teachers a hands-on area to teach conservation principles and green technology.

Kindergarten teacher Audrey Marshall is a teacher-partner.

“I’m part of the Green Team. Several teachers and I bring students to the class,” she said.

The community

“I never envisioned all this when we started. Our kids learn real science and conservation techniques,” said Hardwicke.

The Green Team is a group effort. Dozens of volunteer parents help at the school.

“The adults all work together and shuffle responsibilities to sustain the Green Team,” Hardwicke said.

The community also pitches in. Seland’s restaurant is one of the local waste-contributing vendors.

Compton’s Market hosts an annual fundraiser for the school. Students sell bags of super dirt (compost) to neighbors at the event and enjoy a festival with a barbeque and other fun activities.

The women have gone far beyond sustaining the Team. They’ve created a nationally recognized pilot program. They’ve got the ‘green’ stuff and they are growing.