By Michelle Gambon
Michelle Gambon is an educator, the Founder of Community Sprouts, and the Owner of Go Grow Enviro.
Michelle Gambon, “the Compost Queen”, takes an usie with fellow Georgia School Systems educators. All photos courtesy of Michelle Gambon.
What is Farm to School? Well, simply put, it’s using locally grown foods to both feed and teach. At Community Sprouts, we bring nutrition education into Marietta schools and use the sacred spaces of gardening as a classroom for growing and learning. So, when October Farm to School Month rolls around each year, we are all about it!
This past October at Community Sprouts, our students had a blast learning about, taste-testing, and enjoying their experiences with... PEPPERS! It was a true Pepper Palooza!
We were thrilled to work with a few caring community friends, the Marietta City School Nutrition department, classroom teachers, the Cobb County Farm Bureau, Small Axe Peppers , and Georgia Organics to bring fresh peppers to over 1,000 students, demonstrating that the means to grow, prepare, and eat this healthy food is within our students' reach.
It’s amazing the themes and subjects we covered through this tasty veg! We made scientific system connections with producers, consumers, and the water cycle. We touched on mood regulation and also made comparisons of peppers’ heat or sweet characteristics. And, of course, we worked in the benefits of composting, soil retentive work, biome, biotic systems, photosynthesis, and more.
Peppers were a great lead-in to food group education and its tie to students’ health, as well as the International Baccalaureate principles of risk-taking and open-mindedness. And let's not forget that “readers are leaders!” The Cobb County Farm Bureau delivered an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) reading and added it to our library collection so it can be a resource for years to come.
While October Farm to School Month’s “Pepper Palooza!” may officially be over, at Community Sprouts, we’re excited to now have the tools and resources to continue to celebrate these amazing vegetables every pepper season! Check out how we’re celebrating by clicking on the hashtags below…
#farmtoschool #pepperpalooza #eatlearngraduate #growinggardeners #communitysprouts
To learn more about Community Sprouts, follow them on Facebook and Instagram by searching @communitysprouts.
To learn more about Michelle’s Environmental Consulting services, follow her on Instagram by searching @gogrowenviro.
To learn more about Georgia Organics, visit georgiaorganics.org or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.