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Welcome, my name is Marta Shahsavand, I am the principal of Richfield Dual Languages
School. So we are in RDLS today celebrating National Food Day together with the harvesting
of our work garden. Behind me we have this beautiful garden. Now is almost gone because
the cold weather is coming but it is a garden that was planted by our students in the spring
time, and parents have been taking care of it throughout the summer and now in the fall.
The students actually are the ones also coming sometime during the week to do the harvesting
and learning about the process of going from a seed to a vegetable and then how we even
eat them.
We love having the garden because we can eat stuff right out of it and it is really fun to have.
My name is Karen and I work here at the Richfield Duel Language School in Richfield on this
warm October afternoon. I am the manager of food service here. We walked you know we walked
all over this building trying to find a good place for the garden. Anyway we ended up here
in this beautiful west side of the building where we have lots of sunshine. The kids are
getting very excited about it. We have twelve raised bed gardens, two raised beds for each
grade level. They are teaching the kids everything from math, estimating, to art, music; I mean
we use it as an outdoor classroom now.
Yes we do work in the garden usually for science.
We study like the texture and the taste and how it looks and how it sounds.
My name is Jessica Smith and I work with the Bloomington Division of Public Health on a
Statewide Health Improvement Program which is SHIP. And I have been working as a school
liaison for Richfield Schools since 2010 on all of our SHIP strategy in the district.
School gardens are a great way to get or provide an opportunity for students to have a hands-on
learning experience. They get out in the garden see local fruits and vegetables to really
link healthy food with healthy living. And help them create life-long habits so they
can teach their families and carry on throughout their lives.
I was just telling Bill this story about Mattie came home last year and asked why don't we
ever have parsnips and I had never had a parsnip before. So we went to the grocery store, she
helped me find it, we brought it home and she ate it raw and then we cut it up and cooked
it and that is kind of a story of that they are exposing us to new vegetables and things
at home. And now we garden at home a ton and it is just really exciting.
I absolutely love the changes that they made at RDLS. It's really been fun because I have
been actually helping in the garden on occasion as a volunteer parent and Alex loves the garden
and they have been offering a lot of the produce from the garden into the lunch room and so
where he was kind of so so about school lunches before he is more and more excited. He comes
home talking about what they grew in the garden and seeing it show up at lunch in the cafeteria
so it has been pretty fun.
Richfield Duel Language School is a great school, they really are a champion; they have
implemented a lot of strategies to develop a comprehensive approach to healthy schools.
School gardens mean harvesting healthy habits that can last a life time.
WE LOVE THIS FOOD!!!!!!