On Earth Day: School Gardens Help Albany Kids Grow

As the 41st Earth Day blossoms Saturday, and people around the world take stock of how to save the planet from pollution-induced climate change, Albany students are doing their part.

In throughout the students are growing lettuce, beans, chard, spinach and other vegetables – some of which is then used in the school lunch program.

Students at all the schools are composting their lunch plates and trays and leftovers, and recycling nearly everything else. They are also learning life-long lessons about growing food locally and reducing their carbon footprints.

In a short few years, Albany has moved to the vanguard in the “green schools” movement.

“Hardly anyone else (among school districts) is utilizing school gardens for school lunches,” said , executive chef for the district. He's one person who can be credited with Albany’s advances as a green school district. 

He is proud that lettuce served in school cafeterias around the district is grown in the “Edible Forest” school garden at the . That garden is tended by Hoffman and high school student volunteers – and explored by the preschoolers.

Meanwhile beans, chard and carrots grown in school gardens at , , and have turned into lunches or snacks at those schools.

On Earth Day, kids at every school in the district can claim to know about gardening and about composting.

At Albany Middle School, kids participated in an Earth Day festival that tested their knowledge of composting and recycling in a game.

Lining up to the “Recycle Race,” kids were given a bag full of paper, plastic and other not-so-dirty trash. They raced against a clock to get all the items placed in the appropriate bins with as little left over as plain trash as possible.

“Two years ago we didn’t have lunch composting at all. Now it’s in every school,” said High School student Meagan Tokunaga, as she hosted the “recycle race” at the middle school as an intern for the city.

Tokunaga launched composting at the high school last September as head of the school’s Earth Team and now, she says, trash containers at the high school after lunch are usually less than half full, whereas a year ago they’d be completely full if not overflowing.

Meanwhile, high school kids, or for that matter anyone with a Facebook account, were invited to pledge an act of green – such as walking to school each day, planting a tree or installing a solar water heater – on the “Billion Acts of Green” app now found on Facebook in collaboration with EarthDay Network, the organization that spearheads Earth Day inspired activities around the globe. (Pledge your act of green online here.)

Teachers in all the schools are figuring out ways to green their curricula or at least build in trips to the garden.

“I just want to get my students out in the garden, let them get their hands in the soil,” said middle school science teacher Joanna Pace, who started the garden many years ago.

"It is so important to be out of doors and have real interaction with insects, plans, soil. So much of what we do is now in front of screens. I say let’s go outside. Let’s smell it, touch it," she said.

To help teachers build lessons, Hoffman has launched an “Eco-Literacy” committee involving teachers from all schools who meet regularly to talk about how to fit ecology and garden lessons into instruction.

“They could use the gardens in math: for instance, measure the (vegetable) beds and figure out calories produced per bed, and how many students could be provided lunch from this bed,” he said. “Or they could calculate the reduction in their carbon footprint by eating this locally grown lettuce, the lettuce from their garden, instead of lettuce that’s trucked in. Food eaten in America on average travels 515 miles,” between field and table, he said.

How will you celebrate Earth Day? Tell us in the comments.

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.