Gathering around a row of raised garden beds on a recent Monday afternoon, kindergarten students peer through magnifying glasses to observe something: a red wiggler worm making its way through a plastic straw.
It’s one of the many hands-on lessons in the Seeds to STEM program that introduces science, tech, engineering and math to young students at Maple Primary Center in Historic South Los Angeles. Other activities include cutting fruit to teach students how to count, and learning about the different colors by sorting fruit based on colors.
The multi-year program is operated by nonprofit organization Growing Great in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. The program is funded by the NIH’s Science Education partnership award and aims to develop students’ STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills in a fun, accessible way.
The nonprofit focuses on bilingual programs on nutrition, STEM and literacy for children from underserved communities in Los Angeles. At Maple, which is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, 96% of students are economically disadvantaged, Latino children make up 93.6% of students, and Black children make up 4.5%.
“A lot of the kids still remember the worms from last year,” said Maxine Watson, the lead STEM educator from Growing Great. [Maple Primary Center’s principal] Miss Sharyn Clarke guarantees that the worms needed to be in this year, without question.”
Before commencing with the observation of worms, Watson asked students what they knew about them. Students knew that worms don’t like to be out when it’s hot, worms do like to eat leaves and dirt, and worms are good at digging tunnels in the soil, which helps the roots of plants to breathe.
After a student places a worm into a plastic straw, they can see how worms move in a tunnel, building on something they learned about worms before. While some students didn’t want to touch the worms, most of them worked up the courage.
These hands-on activities help make up for what students lost when schools had to switch to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think it’s just made such a difference because not only was it a loss of learning but social interaction as well,” Principal Clarke said. “[Students] interacting with [Maxwell] and getting to interact with each other … getting their hands enriched in that soil and playing with worms. There’s nothing like it.”
Eventually, students will harvest vegetables from the garden and take them home. The garden bed currently has carrots and radishes. Leafy vegetables such as kale and lettuce will be planted in coming weeks, culminating with a salad lesson at the end.
Many of the students live in food desert neighborhoods and may not have the space or opportunity to grow food, and don’t have access to fresh produce.
“Families have to walk a long distance to get them,” Clarke said. The nearest Ralph’s is about two miles northwest of the school and the nearest Food 4 Less is about 1.6 miles south. While it takes about 10 minutes to get to them by car, it takes up to 40 minutes to walk.
While convenience stores and butcher shops line Maple Avenue, they may not have the range of produce that Ralph’s does. The inflation-driven high cost of fresh fruits and vegetables is another barrier for families.
Students are being educated about nutrition and get the chance to try fruits or vegetables they may not have tried before, increasing their taste palette. “Those experiences are harder to have when you have a smaller grocery store budget,” said Jennifer Jovanovic, Growing Great’s executive director.
The program also gets parents involved through tasting sessions at open houses and cooking lessons via Zoom, where parents and children learn how to cook vegetables from the garden. The Zoom lessons increased the program’s outreach to many parents who worked late, according to Jill Coons, Growing Great’s director of education.
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Maple Primary Center and Greater Good hope to continue their partnership, which began in 2017. While Greater Good helps teach activities to teachers and provides them materials via a grant, the school maintains garden beds and gets the cafeteria and teachers involved.
Greater Good’s handouts are illustrated in English and Spanish and filled with diverse characters to ensure that students feel included and represented.
“We’re creating the next scientist, the next engineer with the love of STEM,” Clarke said. While some students in Los Angeles may have the resources to learn STEM at home, Maple’s students have Greater Good to teach them. “Now our kids are one step closer to being on that level playing field” she said.
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