The Garden Club

A requirement for my education class (Literacy in a Cross-Cultural Perspective) is that we have to participate in a Community Based Learning project that entails us going to area schools to tutor kids learning English as a second language. I signed up to work in an after school program with the Garden Club at the Gerena school in the North End of Springfield and today was our first day! The North End is the poorest neighborhood in Massachusetts and I believe in the top 10 for the nation and Gerena was established as a Montessori school in the community.
There were only 5 girls present (Tatianna, Victoria, Vanuschka, Samantha and Miriam) though the teacher, Gabbie, told us that 13 kids had sign up. Somehow, I found out that Gabbie went to Newtown Friends School but that she would have graduated before I could have been playing sports against them. Go Quakers!
The first thing that we did with the students was go around and introduce ourselves and say our favorite fruit and vegetable. First we had to establish what makes a fruit a fruit and a veggie a veggie--using the tomato as a trick question.
My favs are mangoes and snap peas....and my name is Erin but you should know that and if you don't well.....why are you here??
After that, we went down to the storage room to show the kids all of the different gardening tools and to get a wheelbarrow to carry everything outside in. Gabbie explained to the kids what a grant was and how the school was able to buy everything they needed to start the Garden Club.
The literacy component that was worked into the day's activities were that everyone was given a scavenger hunt list about things they would see and find in the garden and the girls would have to read the questions and write answers about their discoveries. The is also a cooking component to the club and once we start doing that they will be responsible for writing recipes and I hope that we can put together a book for them to take home at the end of the semester as a souvenir. We did some weeding, general clean up and started a compost pile but the best part was watching them get excited about identifying what each of the plants were. Realizing that inside the paper lantern shaped orbs tomatillos were growing and that the huge sprawling vines and flowers were going to be bringing us pumpkins was super cool.
I have also never seen a group of young girls that were so into bugs. Victoria ripped open a tomatillo 'lantern' to find a green and pink catepillar and spider that were eating an afternoon snack and got everyone to look and touch. Again, super cool.

I was surprised that the Smithies were as quiet and shy as the students but I of course was trying to break the ice right away to let the kids know I was excited to be there and that they could open up to if they wanted. I hate awkward but it seems like a necessary social phase sometimes.

okay I have to run to an Anthro Club meeting now and then to my museum class!!

love to all
emr