Spring Reflections and Summer Dreams

Spring garden programming has come to a close and our team has fully transitioned into summer mode aka garden maintenance. During April and May we saw about 11,227 students. Many of these students were counted twice as their teachers opted in to bring their students to both the early and late sprig sessions. Others we were not so lucky to see twice as they had other conflicts such as CMAS, kindergarten or 5th grade continuation. While we will miss the energy of students during their summer vacation we are excited to take on independent garden projects, test new gardening methods and techniques to make sure the gardens continue to transform into an oasis on each school campus.

Student looking at spinach through a magnifying glass

Students helping each other plant

Friends planting a seedling

Every month the entire team gets together for a step-back to connect with one another and have larger conversations about what is going well, what needs to shift and to action plan for the dreams we all have surrounding the gardens, student facing work and food distribution. During this most recent step-back our Program Specialists learned where they will be distributing food this summer and we also reflected on the spring. I had a series of 5 questions for everyone to answer and I wanted to share some of the responses:

Question: What is something you are proud of from spring programming?

Answers: "I’m proud of myself for stepping outside of the box and trying new experiences. I’m usually a reserved person and this has helped me grow and be more confident in speaking"

"Not having so much as a barrier to the Spanish dominated classes! The improvement of my bilingualism is way more smooth compared to last year."

"Letting things go (do it like this/that) and enjoy the creativity/curiosity/discovering joy that kids bring to the garden"

"Proud to discover that working with kids wasn’t actually draining for me! I actually had a lot of fun"

Students and their classroom teacher sending their freshly planted seeds and seedlings well wishes!

The other questions revolved around personal and professional goals for the summer, hyping up each individual team member and thoughts on potential shifts for fall programming. It was been fun to watch our team grow in confidence and find their teaching style over the past couple of months. The pacing of our programming and the number of students that we see is not for the faint of heart and I am excited to partner with them as they take care of gardens this summer and continue to watch them successfully provide garden programming in the fall!