April 2016 Photo Moment of the Month

Our work with Watsonville schools is growing like spring carrots!

Third grade students from Alianza Elementary School enjoyed freshly harvested carrots, camaraderie and learning outdoors as part of our spring season of academically enriched after-school programs in the Blooming Classroom.

We were also excited to host new school-day field trips for 120 Amesti Elementary 2nd-graders at the Blooming Classroom in April, and to lead a productive School Garden Meeting and Lesson Share Out for 12 teachers from Amesti and Mintie White Elementary. Our FoodCorps service members, Diana and Lidia, are providing hands-on garden-based lessons for 15 classes each week - that's 450 students! The school gardens are getting a boost, too, as we pilot a new Watsonville School Garden Corps of college interns at Starlight and Hyde Elementary Schools to help build and maintain garden classrooms and propagate thousands of plant starts. Working with enthusiastic students, teachers and administrators, we're thrilled to be growing these integrated programs and resources to make inspiring gardens a part of everyday life at these schools.A big thank you to UNFI Foundation, the Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust, Naturipe Berry Growers, the Whole Kids Foundation, the Stocker Family Fund of Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, and a generous anonymous donor for making this all possible!

"There's a real difference between knowing about something and knowing something. A child could know everything there is to know about carrots; but when she wriggles her first carrot out of the soil, she knows that vegetables are delicious, she knows that the food we eat comes from the earth, and she knows that she's part of a web of life."

~ Whitney Cohen, Life Lab Education Director