Stewardship funds have been crucial to providing more students at San Francisco Community School with more access to a more sustainable school garden. Middle School students currently visit the garden during their school day science classes, and SFC’s School Garden Educator leads a custom-built Middle School Cooking and Gardening After-School Program integrated within the school’s standing after-school program. The result is a thriving garden tended by students of all ages at San Francisco Community School: we have found that students learn a sense of place and participation in the natural world through hands-on engagement with the ecological concepts and practices of organic cooking and gardening.

Middle School students who don’t necessarily take to gardening still thrive, nonetheless, in the kitchen. Here is a story-almost a recipe- for success in connecting youth with their garden through cooking.  After a visit to the garden to pick fresh beets grown from seeds they hand-sowed, the students prepared red-hued chocolate-beet muffins during Valentine’s Day week. Some students had no idea that the leaves and stems of the beet plant are edible, and decided to try cooking and eating them too in order to see how they taste. Other students had never tasted plain beets themselves and either liked or disliked the results. After working together to follow the recipe and clean up, fresh-baked chocolate-beet muffins came out of the oven and quickly disappeared. Some students requested that we set aside muffins for their siblings and family members coming to pick them up (and inquire about the aroma wafting out of the kitchen) and others set about sharing muffins with the other After-School Program Leaders. Lastly, everyone who tried a muffin was sure to ask the student cooks “what’s in it?” In this way the middle school student cooks showed confidence and leadership in describing the beets in the muffins, their origin, and their experience in actually harvesting, tasting and cooking them. Some even asked for feedback about the food, and offered their own critique (mostly, for more chocolate.) The whole community was engaged that afternoon by the simple acts of growing, cooking, and eating our own food- and most importantly the students could acknowledge that, thanks to their work in the garden, they were able to shine.