By Dawn Grantham
Dawn Grantham is a Partner in Education consultant at Columbus State University.
Note: Because of its supportive principal, Dr. Dawn Jenkins, and its ingenuity in organizing a school garden with very little outside resources, South Columbus Elementary School (SCES) was one of two schools in Columbus, Georgia, selected to participate in a school garden-to-market initiative as part of a USDA Farm to School Grant awarded to Georgia Organics. The grant required schools to partner with a local farmer, whose charge was to guide students in the planting, growing, harvesting, marketing and selling of produce grown on the school campus.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead, anthropologist, recipient of the Planetary Citizen of the Year Award in 1978.
One happy Market Day participant. Photo credit, all images: Jenna Shea Photojournalism.
We met in the school’s library. We sat in child-friendly chairs, that cut slightly across our lower backs, at child-friendly tables, where our bent knees either nudged the table underside or rested at the table edge. We talked. We planned. We brainstormed. We scheduled.
Here, we gathered: the local farmers, the assistant principal and four classroom teachers, a supportive parent, the school district’s nutritionist, the grant representative, the local extension agent, and me. We formed the school garden-to-market committee, known as Eagles Go Green! (EGG!).
For an hour, once a month from November 2021 to May 2022, we emphasized hands-on opportunities for students with the farmers, and we created lists of experts from the community to invite to the school to tie their knowledge of agricultural and environmental practices to curriculum state standards. In our meetings, we agreed to survey students and staff to direct our course. We reserved dates to dig, plant, harvest, play, and to celebrate.
For promotional purposes, we approved a kick-off event, video productions, scheduled photographers, and a t-shirt design. For fun, and because we valued fine arts, we outlined the integration of an art project. We met and we talked and planned and we brainstormed, and very early in our collaboration, we quickly forgot that cultivating a school garden is hard work.
We let go, and we leaned in. We each yielded and stepped up into the ebb and flow of a collaborative process, trusting wherever it took us. Our personal visions retreated as the project took on its own life. And, whatever our initial apprehensions – perhaps, it was the time commitment, or the expansive scope of the school-to-market project, even the challenge of managing 313 students – they dissolved.
Farmer Jenn Collins helps with a selection of seeds. Photo credit Jenna Shea Photojournalism.
Some small miracles occurred. Funding from the grant allowed the farmers to plant a campus orchard of fruit trees and bushes, an item that had been on the school’s wish list for years. In working alongside the farmers and through easy conversations and simple gardening instructions, students began talking about careers in agriculture.
Because of the students’ curiosity and willingness to participate, Assistant Principal Vicci Griffin noted that EGG! “extended the four walls of the classroom allowing a natural gradual release of learning”; Principal Dawn Jenkins shared that it “was a dream come true” because the development of EGG! brought her students and the school to a level of real-world learning.
What we all plainly saw as significant in the unfolding of the school garden-to-market experience was an element of awe not only among the students but also among the adults, who were brought back into the hold of wonder and learning. It's amazing how beautiful vegetables are when you truly see them again for the first time: color, shape, aroma, taste, texture.
On Friday, May 13, 2022, a combined EGG! Market Day and Field Day took place at South Columbus Elementary School.
Jenna Mobley, photographer and Georgia Organics contributor, captured beautiful faces, focused efforts, and generous spirits of the market experience through her photographs.
In collaboration with the EGG! student marketing team, coached by school paraprofessional, Jakira Palmer, Farmer Brad Barnes and Farmer Jenn Collins, the married team of Dew Point Farms, organized an attractive market display of produce from both the school’s garden and from their farm. The students made well over their monetary goal of $200.
Across the sidewalk, art teacher Alexandra Countryman reminded students of their study of local artist, Alma Thomas, and then gave painting instructions while UGA Extension Agent, Ashley Brantley, and Jada Bone, Muscogee County School District’s nutritionist, fitted students into smocks. Shelia Brown, a master gardener volunteer, helped direct paint strokes on the two community canvases; Muscogee County School District's Content Specialist for Art Education, Dr. McCullough, offered district support.
Principal Jenkins and 5th grade teacher Patrice Blassingame, with a bird's eye view of the field, kept the flow of shoppers, artists, spectators and athletes on schedule and in the right place.
The SCES staff, led by their EGG! Committee colleagues, Amanda Joiner, Patrice Blassingame, and Deidre Howell, visibly supported the school garden-to-market project from beginning to end.
And, Kimberly Della Donna and Kimberly Koogler of the Georgia Organics Farm to School program, were both on the EGG! Market Day scene to join in the celebration of farmers, young and seasoned.
In organizing South Columbus Elementary School’s school garden-to-market experience, EGG!, it was easy to make an agenda and keep people to their speaking parts. We easily recognized that a garden’s success requires effort and time to experiment; it requires specific tools and materials and growing strategies, and it requires committed people. But, what was a little more challenging, and certainly out of any one individual’s control, was the development of synergy that came with the understanding and appreciation that the project was bigger than any one of us. Again, we learned to trust the process, and in doing so, we established an expectation, relied on the skill sets of new friends, and faced a daunting project together.
The wonder of it all!