Gardening and Literacy Education through the Arts

Posted on: June 30, 2017; Updated on: June 30, 2017
By Jalesa Cooley, stucomm@mailbox.sc.edu

In a lesson on the importance of integration in a garden, the students were introduced to Hazel, one of the hens that is housed in the Sustainable Carolina Garden and raised by Carolina Farm and Gardens manager Matthew Kip.
On a visit to the Healthy Carolina Farmers Market, students were taught the importance of making healthier meal choices through trivia games and were rewarded with fresh fruit, vegetable and fruit juice samples.
The students were not alone in gaining knowledge around the garden. The Columbia Parks and Recreation staff often gathered around Kip, eager to learn and indulge in a tasty, fresh snack.
After learning what it takes to maintain a strong garden, the students were given a chance to build their own. Students had to work together to dig up weeds and clear the land of debris before planting could begin.
Once the land was free of weeds, the students gathered straw to lay on the fresh soil.
To demonstrate how simple and tasty it is to eat healthy, the Sustainable Carolina staff helped the students pick ripe fruits and vegetables from the garden to eat at snack time.
"Sustainability is described as catering to the needs of today, but not hindering the capabilities of those in the future. It's remembering not to take too many resources today, so that people in the future can have the same luxuries," says Sustainable Carolina student Max Ciarlone.

Each summer, the City of Columbia’s Parks and Recreation Department collaborates with the Office of Sustainability to host an interactive summer camp for local students. Camp GLEA (Gardening and Literacy Education through the Arts) is a two-week program that strives to teach students the importance of gardening, environmental sustainability and making healthy choices through various activities and team-building exercises. Carolina Farm and Gardens manager Matthew Kip hosted this year's camp along with Max Ciarlone and Stephanie Arnold, two Sustainable Carolina students.

This year, students from the Emily Douglas Park area spent their mornings at Green Quad learning what it takes to live a sustainable life. With the overall focus of health and wellness in mind, Kip decided it would be most beneficial to teach from a loose curriculum and tailored his lessons to the students’ everyday desires. In the mornings, students participated in team-building exercises and were given time for journaling. While some students took the time as an opportunity to write poetry or draw pictures, others created imaginative stories. Once in the garden, the students planted seeds, picked fruits and vegetables and learned important lessons like the benefits of multitasking in a garden.

Although most of the camp was spent working in the garden, the group also took several field trips around Columbia, visiting City Roots, the Congaree River and the Healthy Carolina Farmers Market. Through the interdisciplinary approaches to camp activities, the students strengthened their communication skills while building confidence, making friends and contributing to a natural ecosystem.

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Topics: Students, Faculty, Healthy Carolina