Paving the Road for Community Engagement in a Garden Based Learning
Program
Executive Summary
April 16, 2020
Christina Schmitt

Take a moment and visualize the school system as a river, with the
students in rafts bobbing along. As they drift down the river, educators and
school administrators are devising ways of interacting with them and ensuring
no one gets lost in the shuffle. But while they are creating and building
creative intervention techniques, the children are going to continue to move
along the river. The time to engage and reach them is limited and fleeting.
The purpose of this project was to initiate community support in an effort to
support the efforts of the school principal in engaging with as many children
as possible during the formative years of pre-kindergarten through 3rd grade.
Martin Luther King Early Education Center partnered with The Farm at
South Mountain to expose their students through site tours to urban farming.
From there, it was an easy decision to start a gardening program at the school
itself. Both project partners believe that this is an effective tool to ignite a
student’s interest in STEM fields, as well as increase their exposure to healthy,
fresh foods. And that can be achieved by something as simple as growing their
own carrot. There is something special about seeing a carrot grow from a
seed to a plant and nothing can beat the taste. After experiencing the taste
difference of a store bought versus a garden grown carrot, student perspective
really changes. We believe it builds confidence and expands what they believe
they can do for themselves.
The children at the school are not only facing a future littered with
marketing campaigns for processed and fast foods. There are underlying
2020-04-16

Page

1

Your short title here

issues of food security and access that impacts their daily lives. Every student
at the school is enrolled in the free lunch program, the eligibility of which is
determined by income level or receiving SNAP benefits. Access to healthy and
fresh food options are further restricted by location, as the nearest grocery
store is over 2 miles away. That is a long walk if a family has limited
transportation options, especially if carrying a gallon of milk or a pound of
potatoes. The walk would not be especially cool in the summer, as tree
coverage is minimal and the various empty lots would serve as mini heat
islands. Though these hurdles exist, there is opportunity for a successful
learning garden but it requires a large community investment, in addition to
school staff acceptance.
Utilizing several sustainability frameworks, this project sought to fill a
resource gap through a triple engagement approach that encompassed the
school, the parents and community organizations, and local businesses. By
uniting these three population elements into one shared vision, it increased
the odds of the long term viability of the garden program. Matt Waldman’s
2018 MSUS project, Cultivating Strategic Partnerships in Garden-Based
Learning Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center and The Farm at South
Mountain, served as a foundational base for this project and inspiration for
determining the end deliverables.
The project was able to engage several outside organizations to
participate and dedicate time and money to the school program. By enlisting
the support of the greater community, several necessary infrastructure needs,
such as irrigation, milkweed plants and built square foot garden boxes, were
able to be completed. The positive responses received from students, parents
and teachers were shared with the sponsors.
Employing the school mascot, the Monarch butterfly, as a rallying
emblem to ignite community interest in the garden space, we designed and
built a pollinator garden that we were able to register with the Monarch
Waystation Program. This dedicated space will serve as focal point for future
school events and provide an element of uniqueness for the families to be
proud of.
In order to combine the classroom learning with at home behaviors,
each student received a square foot garden box to decorate and take home.
Due to the efforts of the project team, all the students were able to decorate
and take a box home at the end of the fall semester. This box provided an
2020-04-16

Page

2

Your short title here

opportunity for the student to share with the rest of the family the skills being
taught in classroom. For the project team, it presented a starting conversation
point for the garden program expansion.
Due to the state of Arizona’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the
project was halted midpoint as schools across the nation closed to ensure
everyone’s health and safety. As the duration of the quarantine closed, the
best decision for the stressed teacher, administrators and parents was to
pause all deliverables and regroup at the start of the next school year. The
momentum and energy discovered through course of this project should still
be viable, if not more so, as normal activities resume.

References
Waldman, Matthew. Cultivating Strategic Partnerships in Garden-Based Learning Martin Luther
King Jr. Early Childhood Center and The Farm at South Mountain (2019). Web.

2020-04-16

Page

3