Common Ground’s student volunteers and staff with King/Robinson staff.
King/Robinson seventh grader Dorian scooped a shovel full of dirt into a garden bed newly built by Common Ground high schoolers in his school’s courtyard.
Soon enough, he celebrated, “the mood will be more beautiful here.”
That was the scene Friday morning at the 150 Fournier St. school’s courtyard as student council members joined a dozen Common Ground juniors to spruce up the Newhallville middle school’s garden space.
Friday’s work marked some of the first steps taken by King/Robinson staff to reestablish a functional school garden that, hopefully, will soon help feed the school’s families. The gardening effort is being led in part by Valarie Knowles, the school’s discovery lab educator, and reading support staffer and retired principal Mia Edmonds-Duff.
Common Ground’s visit to King/Robinson Friday was one of 15 volunteer projects that students at the West Rock high school undertook to respond to real community needs. Environmental educator Melissa Gibbons and Common Ground Schoolyards Program Manager Robyn Stewart helped the group of high schoolers and middle schoolers build brand new garden beds, fill them with soil, and clean up the space to prepare it for planting vegetables.
Seventh graders Dorian and Milad agreed that they want to help their school to be more beautiful. Several other student council members noted that they like dirt and plants. “I like people learning together to make something better,” Dorian concluded Friday.
This year King/Robinson staff worked to secure a food insecurity grant that will help the school to bring fresh foods directly to its families. The garden will offer a pathway for families to engage the school more and foster a sense of ownership of the space for students and families.
Some students suited up in gardening gloves and eye protection while others preferred to get their hands dirty to “connect with Mother Nature,” as one seventh grader explained it.
“Something about being in nature makes you feel like you can do more,” Knowles said.
Common Ground junior Angie: “Most of the kids here are visual learners like me.”
When the occasional worm or centipede made an appearance in the garden Friday students like Common Ground junior Angie quickly leaped in to escort them deeper into the soil — a skill she learned to love despite being fearful of garden critters in the past.
Throughout the morning Angie helped to drill the pieces of wood for the garden beds together with her peers. “Most of the kids here are visual learners like me so it was easy to show them how I learned to do most of this stuff,” she said. “Like when they would scoop up the dirt, I showed them to cup it with their hands.”
As students worked Gibbons reminded them as they spotted bugs that they want those predatory critters in the garden space to kill bugs that like to eat the produce. When Gibbons found a praying mantis egg sac in one corner of the garden, she carefully moved it away from their Friday work but made sure to place it back after completion in hopes the praying mantis will protect the garden. “We want them to come out because we don’t want bugs to attack the food that we’re growing,” she said.
When crickets were found Gibbons informed the students that crickets work as great decomposers that eat dead leaves.
After finishing one task students moved on to the next immediately. Some even requested to skip lunch in order to continue helping the team build up the garden. Every little job proved to be important from picking up left over twigs, plucking weeds, and running wagons to the school’s dumpster to clean up trash.
King/Robinson’s preschool-through-sixth graders will join Gibbons in maintaining the space for the remainder of the school year.
Between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Friday the group worked to rebuild two of the six garden beds and fill them all with fresh soil.
When Dorian told Stewart he finished up with sweeping the courtyard sidewalk he asked for another job and she assigned him to fill the final garden bed with the remaining sitting piles of dirt.
When Milad found a grub in the soil Friday, he was informed by a classmate that as it grows it would next become a beetle.
Two of the garden beds continued to produce collard greens and comfrey that were planted by the students last year.
Next, Edmonds-Duff said the school will have a hydroponic system built indoors to offer more hands on and engaging learning for students and their families.
Educator Paul Clare (right) works with students to build garden bed.
Common Ground science educator Paul Clare joined the group of juniors Friday. He said Friday was the second school-wide day of service done this year. “It speaks to collaboration and the power of maintaining the environment,” he said.
He celebrated that Friday allowed Common Ground and King/Robinson to strengthen their relationship. One of many goals, he said, is to introduce the middle school students to the pathway that exists for them to follow through on their interest in environmental education.
“This is a model for building community partnerships,” he concluded.
While working in the garden Friday, junior Kymani Chapman recalled growing up helping his mom do work in her home garden of flowers and fruits. Because he’s familiar with assembling garden beds, he said he enjoyed doing that the most on Friday. He even learned along the way new techniques for building from the middle schoolers. “Being outside and working with our hands makes it fun to learn,” he said.
Chapman is Common ground’s student representative for the board of directors, which tasks him with bringing forth student opinions and requests to the charter school’s governing board.
“I didn’t realize it was this easy to be a role model,” he said.
He concluded that, after becoming a student leader and bettering his garden skills, he now looks at the world differently. When he’s passing by green spaces in his neighborhood of East Rock, he’s now prompted to think of how things can be improved to better and beautify the community. He added that he’s also gained new independence skills by learning to build and use a drill over the years.
“This reminds us that you don’t always need a reward for your work because what it really comes down to is we can’t live good if this isn’t good,” he said.
Two newly built beds at King/Robinson, now ready for produce.
Searching for bugs!
Clare with juniors Kymani Chapman and Vanessa Gilliams.