Peter Casolino — New Haven Register
ANSONIA A group of John G. Prendergast School sixth-graders Thursday had fun digging in the dirt and building garden beds behind their school.
The city’s school district is one of the districts in Connecticut served by FoodCorps. The nonprofit organization was established to combat childhood obesity and to teach children how to grow their own food.
New Haven resident Eileen Garcia, a FoodCorps member, said Connecticut is one of 12 states with FoodCorps representatives.
She is stationed at Massaro Community Farm in Woodbridge and has been assigned to work with students in Ansonia to teach them about gardening and eating healthy.
“We’re doing a garden build,” Garcia said Thursday. “I’ve been working inside with the kids (in grades 1, 2, 4 and 6) and from now on, we’re going to work outside.”
Students measured 4-foot-by-4-foot garden plots, cleared grass and built 4-by-4 raised garden beds with the help of several teachers and Principal Joseph Apicella.
Earlier this month, Garcia was one of six FoodCorps members invited to help plant the White House Kitchen Garden with first lady Michelle Obama.
Garcia said since 2009 when Obama kicked off her Let’s Move! health initiative, the first lady has invited students to help her to plant the White House kitchen garden.
She said she and the other FoodCorps members worked with fourth- and fifth-graders from Washington, D.C., schools in what she described as “a beautiful garden.” Garcia said the White House chefs also “are very invested in the garden.” She said she helped the students create the first pollinator garden on the White House grounds.
“It was a wonderful experience, and I feel very lucky,” she said, to have been a part of the trip to Washington, D.C.
Garcia said children are “so far removed from where their food comes from,” and the gardening project at schools gives them a better understanding of how food gets from the ground to their plates.
Prendergast sixth-grader Emma Brown said learning to garden is “cool because it’s going to teach kids about being healthy and eating healthy.”
Classmate Cheyenne Mitchell-Robinson said it was “fun to help out” with building a garden. “It’s my last year here, and I want every new kid coming here to know about working in the ground,” she said.
Apicella grabbed a shovel and helped students and several teachers break through the grass to ready the soil for planting. He said the staff thinks it’s great the students will learn to grow vegetables.
Apicella said they will be able to use their crops to make salad and toppings for pizzas for an end-of-year celebration.
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