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As a bustling college campus, it is easy to forget that Tufts lies within a broader community of families and educators. Professor Jess Bloomer and her course, Planting Seeds of Curiosity and Justice: School Gardens in our Public Schools (EXP-0002), seek to bridge that social divide by providing students with access to the larger Tufts community through an unusual recourse: school gardens.
Jess Bloomer and students in her course met in school garden at the West Somerville Neighborhood School. Photos taken by Benjamin Mallon, Class of 2020.
In support with Groundwork Somerville, a local nonprofit that aims to connect people with natural spaces and improve access to natural works, students maintain their own school gardens and educate others in the process. While students travel once a week to care for their gardens and assist in gardening classes, the rest of the course is spent in discussions surrounding equity and justice within the public school system, digging into the question of whether public schools are truly living up to their mission. For Professor Bloomer, Deputy Director and Farm Manager at Groundwork Somerville, that mission remains largely unfulfilled: “Public schools are a commitment by society to provide good and equal education for all,” she comments, “but they often fall short.”
Each week, the class discusses the different ways in which school gardens can ameliorate public education through mind, body, and justice. Most recently, students focused on the benefits to physical health and wellness. Besides supplying schools with fresh produce, gardening also provides students with access to physical activity, an easy and productive alternative for those schools deprived of recess time. Benefits from school gardening are equally remarkable for the mind as well. Typically, public school caters only to aural or visual learning; however, gardening cultivates a variety of learning styles which allow children a deeper engagement with their own learning process.
Apart from Professor Bloomer and Groundwork Somerville, there has been considerable interest in school gardens throughout modern American history. Gaining momentum with the World War I effort dubbed the United States School Garden Army, school gardens have existed in America since the early 1900s. For these American school garden founders, gardening was a way to connect urban children to their Jeffersonian “yeoman farmer” roots. Fast forward to today, and you will see that many schools have installed their own gardens, particularly after the environmental movement of the 1970s, and more recently because of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. For example, Somerville alone houses ten school gardens, primarily due to the efforts of Groundwork Somerville. Why, then, has this practice not been standardized in public education if it has existed in America for centuries?
“While there have been school gardens over time,” Professor Bloomer informs, “there hasn’t always been an understanding of how to use them effectively...The next exciting steps [for public schools] are not just installing gardens but proving that they can be useful and impactful.”
But Professor Bloomer is not worried about the benefits of school gardening: “School gardens are a live space for learning that really grab the inherent curiosity of children...they provide a new angle on learning that’s curiosity based and reaches across all disciplines.” By involving Tufts students in the research behind improving public education, Professor Bloomer and Groundwork Somerville break ground on an essential question for the future of the American public school system: “What happens if we loosen our grip on the high stakes testing of education and instead think of how to build lifelong learners?”
About the Author
Emma Hodgdon is a senior studying English literature. Apart from reading Gothic fiction, she can be found practicing cello for the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, or dancing with the university’s ballroom dance team. She spends her free time experimenting with calligraphy, learning to speak Chinese, and caring for her succulents, Verotchka and Geraldine.
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