Holyoke elementary school students are learning about food justice from the ground up—literally planting seeds and then watching them grow into familiar vegetables that they then study and eat.
Holyoke Public Schools is in its second full year of partnership with FoodCorps, a national food justice program connected to AmeriCorps, said HPS Director of Science Eric Levine. The program allows students to plant gardens, see how plants grow, learn about how their environment works, and make a connection to the plants they’ve grown and the foods they eat.
This year, three FoodCorps staff are spending time with hundreds of students at all six HPS elementary schools, as they learn about food, nutrition, gardening, and sustainable agriculture, and how all of these are important components of food justice.
FoodCorps staff member Will Taylor says the program “empowers us to help kids become agents in their own food systems from a very early age. They get to be partners in their own school gardens” while also allowing FoodCorps to help build gardens in public spaces.
Some of the planting begins indoors, with students planting carrot seeds in small pots, for example, that are watered regularly and allowed to mature a bit in grow carts before being transplanted outside. This process “allows kids to get a really clear picture of the seed that I planted then became a carrot that we then prepared in a yummy way and we got to eat,” said FoodCorps staff member A.B. Morris, “which I think really brings together kids trying new foods in a really exciting and engaging kind of way.”