By Shawnee Adelson, Youth Education Facilitator
For over ten years, Denver Urban Gardens has received funding from the Integrated Nutrition Education Program (INEP) to run a garden-based nutrition education program in a few select elementary classrooms. Each week a DUG educator leads a one-hour lesson with the assistance of volunteer mentors from our Connecting Generations program. Since the goals of our program have been to increase nutrition knowledge, preferences for fruits and vegetables and consumption of fruits and vegetables, we were very excited to see a recent study published in HortTechnology which found that participation in a nutrition education program leads to an increase in nutrition knowledge. However, positive attitudinal (e.g., increased preference for fruit and vegetables) and behavioral changes (e.g., increased fruit or vegetable consumption) were primarily documented in gardening programs. In short, hands-on gardening and nutrition education works.
This information is not new to DUG, but rather reinforces our approach to youth education. Our in-classroom program includes a pre- and post-survey to assess the impacts of the program. Through our surveys, each year, we see our students changing their preferences from junk foods to fruits and vegetables.
One way that we do this is by teaching the basics of healthy snack preparation, using culturally appropriate produce and recipes that are easy to replicate at home. Additionally, consistent messages about healthy eating and active living, modeled by DUG educators, teachers and Connecting Generation mentors throughout the year reinforce concepts that allow them to institute small steps to change. Students are also given the opportunity to grow vegetables in the classroom under lights and eventually out in the school garden.
The increasing numbers of requests we receive to provide this program to additional schools also reflects the success of the program. To meet this demand and to better support educators who want to integrate gardening and nutrition into their classrooms, our lessons are free to download and we offer the Helping Kids Get Healthy workshop series. These workshops allow DUG staff to model seasonally appropriate nutrition and gardening lessons, reinforced by hands-on techniques that integrate the classroom and garden settings. The last workshop of the season, Worm Composting in the Classroom & My Plate Exploration, is October 25th, 5:00 – 7:00pm at Mitchell Elementary School.
In addition to our downloadable lessons and educator workshops, this year we are piloting a new strategy for our in-classroom program, which will align with our organization’s train-the-trainer approach and allow us to reach more schools. We are shifting from a model where a DUG educator acts as a guest teacher to co-facilitating the lessons with the classroom teacher over the course of the year. This will allow the teacher to be thoroughly comfortable teaching the lessons in future years and allow the DUG educator to move on to new schools that desire training.
Schools are chosen based on their commitment to utilizing the garden as an educational tool to teach healthy living (and other subjects such as science and literacy) and the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch. We also assess the commitment and capacity of teachers to continue teaching garden-based nutrition lessons in future years without the direct assistance of a DUG educator. We will however continue to provide Connecting Generations mentors to support students and teachers. The schools we are working with for 2012-13 school year are Fairview Elementary, Maxwell Elementary and Swansea Elementary. All of these schools have over 90% of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch.
Although Colorado is the least obese state in the nation, most recent statistics show that Colorado children are ranked 22nd most obese in the nation. This is exacerbated by the fact that we have the second fastest rate of growth in numbers of obese children. Amidst these discouraging research findings, DUG is encouraged by the enthusiasm of our youth, the successes of our programs and the statistical evidence that we are heading down the path to have a positive impact on eating habits. Each week our students remind us of this impact with their eagerness for a healthy snack and nutrition lesson.
