From right, Lane Middle School student Matt Bergeron cranks the handle on a composter as students Duyen Do, Viviana Arellano, Claudia Cedeno, Taylor Jada Garcia and Felix Alvarez-Millard watch. The students are learning in a garden laboratory with help from OSU Extension staff. (photo: Leela Ross)

Under the program, the six-graders at Lane Middle School spend 1 ½ hours a week studying among arugula, beets, carrots and cabbage at the 12-acre Learning Gardens Laboratory, which is across the street from their school.

Taught by four students in PSU’s Graduate School of Education, the six-graders have been learning since the start of the school year how to design a garden, grow and identify plants and make compost.

“We want to help the students understand where their food comes from,” said OSU Extension horticulturist Weston Miller, who manages the site with help from Extension program assistant Beret Halverson. “We do this by having them get their hands dirty.”

But their education goes beyond gardening. They’ve also learned about biological diversity, food chains and the lifecycle of earthworms. They’ve taste-tested pears, dunked potatoes in water and watched them sprout roots, drunk tea made from Oregon grape, watched birds, and made sauerkraut to learn about fermentation. The instruction fits in with the students’ science curriculum and takes place during the time slotted for their science classes.

For many of the students, it has been a new experience, Halverson said.

“A lot of the children in the neighborhood don’t have backyards,” she said. “They’re not used to being outdoors and getting their boots muddy. Educating them about these things at a young age is important because they’ll value the environment when they’re older.”

This month, the students will see the fruits of their labors in the garden when they harvest radishes they helped plant. The radishes will be served in Portland Public Schools this month as part of the district’s Harvest of the Month program, which dishes up an Oregon-grown fruit or vegetable on lunch trays twice a month.

Over the next two months, the garden is expected to donate about 800 pounds of radishes to the school district’s cafeterias, Miller said.
For next school year, plans are in the works for students to harvest additional vegetables for the monthly lunch program, he said. Last fall, the garden donated lemon cucumbers to the school district for Harvest of the Month, and it gave Lane’s cafeteria tomatoes and greens that students had grown, Miller added.

The Learning Gardens Laboratory consists of five greenhouses and land that has been set aside for gardening, cover cropping and open space. PSU leases the property from Portland Public Schools and Portland Parks and Recreation.

~ Tiffany Woods

Out of the oven comes "bone bread," a twist on breadsticks around Halloween time to excite Iris Carrasco's young cooks. (photo: Lynn Ketchum, EESC)

A mini kitchen has become Iris Carrasco’s classroom, and kids at Oregon’s largest after-school care program are eating up the results.

Spicing up the recipe are hands-on nutritional cooking, kitchen safety, fitness training, family “cook off” competitions, and a vegetable garden created from a former parking lot.

And all of this has been cooked up not far from the Oregon State campus, at the Girls and Boys Club in Albany.

Carrasco, a new OSU Extension nutrition educator last January, saw an unused kitchen, rolled up her sleeves, and whipped up a batch of young cooks eager to make their lives healthier.

Learning goes with cooking when Iris Carrasco explains the nutrition side of foods and eating. (photo: Lynn Ketchun, EESC)

School buses bring 250 elementary and 100 middle school students to the Boys and Girls Club every weekday afternoon. Their enthusiasm for Carrasco’s guidance has swelled enrollment and created a waiting list.

The non-profit club has 13 nutrition classes a week, two or three a day, geared for each grade level. The kids scurry to the now-heavily used small kitchen for Healthy Kids Club, knowing that only 10 can cook in the kitchen at one time. And there’s a protocol: clean hands and surfaces, safe handling of knives, aprons and “listen to learn” time before cooking begins.

Then kids dive into making skillet granola, a healthy “make-ahead” dish; not-so-scary cabbage; banana pancakes with whole-wheat flour; and smoothies made with tofu.

Families joined in earlier this year for an Iron Chef competition. Each had 30 minutes to chop vegetables, add spices, and cook and display a complete meal.

The club’s parking lot turned out to be an ideal site for a garden, which draws kids from all grade levels.

The intensity of "hands-on learning" is shown on one youngster's face while Iris Carrasco looks to answer a question from another. (photo: Lynn Ketchum, EESC)

“They are genuinely interested,” Carrasco said. “Some are intrigued by the bugs, some love being out in the sun, others like to smell the flowers or get their hands in the dirt. All enjoy growing vegetables they can take home and share with their families.”

Carrasco integrated the Linn County Master Gardener Program into setting up a gardening club, asked a local nursery for donations, and worked weekends to prepare 15 raised-bed plots. In October, families savored the aroma of fresh tomatoes from the new garden as they prepared for a salsa-making “extravaganza.”

Students now work out in the gym for at least 30 minutes in the Healthy Kids Club’s “walk and talk” component, co-taught with the Boys and Girls Club staff. The girls and boys each have their own gym times so they can move at their own pace in a noncompetitive environment, Carrasco said.

The youngsters draw and paint in the well-equipped Food-As-Art room to illustrate, for example, how food is fuel. “They can easily equate a sleek Ferrari and its need for gas with a healthy breakfast,” Carrasco said.

Happy and healthy go together like a home-grown squash and a young cook's smile. (photo: Lynn Ketchum, EESC)

Getting middle school students engaged has been more of a challenge, but Carrasco started “Club Napoleon” (based on Napoleon Dynamite), it continues to grow as the pre-teens follow the same experimental learning model that draws younger kids to the kitchen.

And, the tasty healthy food they cook “keeps them coming back for more,” Carrasco said.

At the club, nutrition takes on a digital flavor with MyPyramid.gov, produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and used in the computer lab by the older students to create personalized eating plans and work with interactive tools to learn about healthy eating.

Carrasco admits to going home feeling exhausted. But, she says, “everyday the kids teach me lessons, and when you look in their eyes, you see they really enjoy being here.”

On the horizon for Carrasco and her young charges? “Food is Cool,” a short musical the students will produce this spring.

~ by Judy Scott