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Alvarado Elementary Launches School Garden
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La Montanita's School Partner Project:
Alvarado Elementary Launches School Garden
by Joanie Quinn


The northwest corner of Los Poblanos Farm will never be the same. And it’s a good thing. That corner: now dry, compacted and feeling forlorn, has been adopted by Alvarado Elementary School and will soon be irrigated, planted and loved.

The first step to accomplish this transformation came during the week of July 10-14, when 12 teachers and aides from the Alvarado Elementary School staked out an acre of land at Rio Grande Community Farms on City Open Space, and began plans for a school garden.


Alvarado Elementary teachers build a compost pile during School Partner training.


During the week-long seminar, teachers toured Los Poblanos Farm, used soil sieves to determine the soil type at the garden site, conducted meter-square surveys and transects to record the plants and insects, built a compost pile and a compost trench for later comparison, conducted water infiltration tests at various spots in the garden, set up worm composting bottles, compared soils from the garden site (not currently under cultivation) with soil from an alfalfa field, and dissected flowers and produce from the Co-op to study plant parts.

Wyman Edwards, the founder of Rio Grande Community Farms, spoke to the teachers about the history of the farm. Jim Bowers led a workshop on double digging, during which the challenge of getting the soil into fertile condition became all too apparent.

Jane Cotner from the N.M. Department of Health spoke to the teachers about skin cancer prevention (an important topic for gardeners and farmers), and Brett Bakker (of Itchy Green Thumb fame) talked to the teach-ers about the importance of saving seeds and the threats to biodiversity represented by recent trends in agribusiness.

Brenda Cordova-Silva, Chairwoman of the New Mexico Organic Commodities Commission, walked the teachers through the Los Poblanos Com-munity Garden and answered questions about everything from tomato plants that won’t produce, to the effects of the fire at Los Alamos on the farms along the Rio Grande.

This seminar was the culmination of several years of effort to form a lasting link between Los Poblanos Farm and Alvarado Elementary School. Last fall, a school partnership was formed between the Co-op’s Valley location and Alvarado Elementary.

Hope Miner, a fifth grade teacher at the school, and the person in charge of the school’s partnership program, expressed a desire to have the Co-op work on getting the school garden underway, but stressed that overworked teachers needed support in terms of curriculum development if the project was to be a success.

The challenge was to integrate the various gardening activities with the subjects, skills and competencies required by APS for students K-5.

Curriculum Provides Fertile Ground

Dr. Quincy Spurlin, Professor of Science Education at the University of New Mexico came to the rescue and joined the project late in the fall of last year. Quincy, donating her time through the Co-op member/volunteer program, began outlining the curriculum

She applied for and received a grant from the Southwest Education Development Lab to pay the teachers for the pro-fessional development (attendance at the July seminar and followup in-service days) that would give them the tools they needed to make the program a success.

Jim Bowers, the Community Garden Coordinator for WIC (Women, Infants and Children — a Department of Health program that provides food and information to mothers and children


who are at risk for poor nutrition), and Alicia James of GREEN (Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network) joined the process of thinking through the project.

Rio Grande Community Farms agreed to set aside some a space for the garden and to get the ditch in shape for irrigation. The Co-op helped coordinate the project and will be providing volunteers to assist in the garden (School Garden Project - How you can get involved).

Since Rio Grande Community Farms is a certified organic farm it seemed only natural that the umbrella for the curriculum would be “Sustainability”: how organic farming and gardening can promote not only the growing of food that is healthy for the human population, but practices that work in harmony with the ecosystem.

The result was a curriculum based on developing an awareness of the interconnectedness of all life; and how to use that understanding to garden in a way that promotes increasing biodiversity through habitat development, building the soil, composting and green manures, crop rotation, and planting that is appropriate for the climate and culture of the Rio Grande Valley.

Under this umbrella students will have an opportunity to do hands-on science by conducting investigations; and study ecosystems, biology, geology, history, art, math, nutrition, and consumerism in the context of their garden.

In April, at a meeting with the teachers at Alvarado the overall goals of the project were laid out:

1. To create an exceptional learning experience that will bring coherence and continuity to science instruction in grades K-5; developing a lasting foundation of science literacy for students from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds.

2. To support teachers in developing and using a curriculum that will teach science and math concepts and practices through investigatory projects in gardening and farming. To build school-to-community partnerships that maximize the availability of community resources.

3. To develop an understanding of sustainability in our relationships to nature and in human endeavors.

Community Partnership for Sustainable Education

Quincy Spurlin led the July seminar during which teachers had time to break down into grade-level groups to work through the curriculum and discuss what activities could be used in which grade to build a program that would meet APS guidelines for subject matter and competencies. Fifth grade teachers, who are mandated to teach ecosystems, took on the topic of soil: its composition, how it is built, and how it sustains the ecosystem.

The teachers also decided to take on monitoring of the Alvarado garden and ultimately Los Poblanos Farm as a whole. Starting this fall students will make baseline measurements of soil fertility and structure, wildlife populations, and plant communities.

This data will be recorded and used to form the base for comparisons that can help Rio Grande Com-munity Farms learn whether its practices are having the desired effect of creating more biodiversity on the farm. Students will also make recommendations based on their findings for practices that might improve the stewardship of the land.

These findings will be reported to the farm’s Board of Directors at regular intervals. In this way the school will become part of the preservation of this important community resource. Students will learn good farming and stewardship practices as well as how to do good science. And, they will have the reward of bringing to life a neglected corner of the planet.

In the last sessions of the seminar the teachers began the job of planning the garden.

This job will be completed by the students this fall amidst discussion of what the soil is like and how to improve it, what should be planted in the garden that will benefit wildlife and humans, how to manage the irrigation system for efficient water use, what our climate and seasonal cycles will mean, how to garden in a sustainable way that returns nutrients to the garden.

The students will have the joy of participating from the beginning and learning from each step in the process.

This project has the potential to create another web of sustain-ability — a web that can unite disparate sectors of the community in a project that will benefit all involved and the community as a whole.

Alvarado Elementary School, GREEN, La Montanita, Rio Grande Community Farms, Southwest Education Development Labs, UNM, and WIC have already partnered to get the program off the ground.

The hope is that the web will grow to include neighbors of the farm and school, parents, other businesses, farmers, gardeners, environmental and education organizations…

       
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