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Plant a Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative, Miami-Dade County, FL

The Entry Point to a Smart Education System

The Education Fund--a local education fund--and its partners are implementing an action research-based collaborative, interdisciplinary, seed-to-table garden approach that focuses on improved eating habits and academic success.

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Their Story

In 2004, Slow Food Miami, inspired by a similar program in California, began working with several Miami schools to plant gardens and engage students in the food-production process, with the goal of altering nutrition habits. Slow Food Miami then approached The Education Fund to adopt the project for widespread dissemination, and in 2007, the Health Foundation of South Florida awarded The Education Fund a $200,000 grant to launch the Plant a Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative (CNI). The goal, according to Linda Lecht, the president of The Education Fund, is to “change the landscape forever.”

The long-term objective of CNI is to stem the harmful effects of childhood obesity, which disproportionately affects low-income children of color.

In each of five pilot schools, two second-grade classes (a total of 220 students) plant vegetable and herb gardens. In addition to learning about botany through hands-on work in the garden, students grapple in their classes with nutritional literacy, healthy eating habits, and culinary skills. Equally important, teachers integrate lessons from the garden into the mathematics, science, language arts, and arts curriculums.

Parent and Community Partnerships

The project serves as a venue for community gardeners and health advocates to actively participate with educators and students in the learning process. Parent participation is critical. The Education Fund trains participating teachers to engage parents by involving them in their child’s nutrition-related homework, with the hopes of educating the whole family about healthy eating. Each school also hosts workshops for parents, which include presentations from chefs, gardeners, and health-care professionals.

Teachers play a key role in documenting student experiences, impressions, and learning. In partnership with Barry University, teachers are trained to engage in action research, and meet monthly to analyze collected data and share findings. The action research helps assess how well the garden initiative meets the school’s learning expectations. It also empowers teachers to create a voice for policy recommendations and to advocate for expanding the program districtwide.

Scaling Up

The success of the program has led its sponsors to consider expanding it. CNI has created an advisory committee to identify and attract additional partners. A local university has inquired about sending a team of medical residents to assess the health and wellness of students. Local farmers and gardeners are visiting schools, and within schools, the project is bridging a gap between academic and support staff. The cafeteria staff work to meet the changing nutritional needs of students, and custodial staff help to plant and harvest vegetables in the gardens.

Over the next year, The Education Fund hopes to triple the number of participating schools. Ultimately, the Fund would like to see the model in every school in the state of Florida, so that gardens are as commonplace in schools as school libraries. And parents would like to see it expand to middle and high schools, so that lessons about nutritional literacy are reinforced and further developed throughout a child’s growth.

Work with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform

Leaders from The Education Fund and the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and an associate professor from Barry University participated in the 2008 Emerging Knowledge Forum. The panel led a discussion of CNI and its implications for building smart education systems in other communities.

What EKF participants have to say:
"...by participating in EKF we had a chance to understand the importance of implementing CNI in a school system as large and diverse as Miami-Dade County, where we are working with very low-income families from a diversity of ethnic and racial backgrounds. By making CNI successful here, other school systems should be able to replicate our results. Our time away as a team allowed us to think out-of-the-box and come up with some additional strategies to deepen CNI."
-- Jo Anne Bander, Slow Food Miami

"Having a secure, healthy source of food is a basic need, and by participating in the EKF, the simple basic foundation of what a child and family needs to ensure a healthy environment was kept at the forefront, along with technology and other educational initiatives presented."
-- Penny Parham, Miami-Dade County Public Schools

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For More Information

• Collaborative Nutrition Initiative Site Profile 2008 [PDF: 5 pages]
• Slow Food Miami
• The Education Fund
• Health Foundation of South Florida
• Plant a Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative (CNI)
• More about the Emerging Knowledge Forum
• More about Smart Education Systems