The Edible Schoolyard

Please note: This post was recently moved from the original SCVi Book Banter blog in order to keep things streamlined.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The beauty of a project-based charter school is that you can do things that regular public schools cannot. The Edible Schoolyard is a book that invites one to "do things," like plant a school garden and see what happens next.

Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse in San Francisco, teamed up with a local middle school to create the national phenomenon that is the edible school yard. It is a hands-on venture that invites kids to participate and always remains a work in progress. Not only does the school grow fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers, the bounty is used by the students to create creative and nutritious meals.

The community partnership formed here between Waters and the school was so powerful that others came along for the adventure and stuck around to help the students and the garden grow to the next level. This is a model that SCVi can adopt and should adopt. This is a project worth our time and effort.

I highly encourage the SCVi community to read this book and begin a dialogue so we can make it happen.