Written by teacher, Andrea Schaffer:
15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to
work it and to keep it.
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“And
the teacher took the student to the garden, and put him in the garden, to
touch, to see, to smell and to hear, and the child learned and understood.”
Sabrina
Malach,
Director
of Outreach and Development for Shoresh
As I crouched in
the soil of a garden bed of the Toronto Heschel school garden, on that first
sunny Sunday in May, weeding with my two year old nephew, a few of my grade two
students and a future JK student, I was taken by the joy that each child of
every age and each parent and teacher, was experiencing as they worked together
to prepare the garden for the growing season. It quickly became very clear to me that the Heschel
community, teachers, parents and students alike, truly value what the garden
provides for the school. This first Sunday in May also marked Heschel’s famous
Mitzvah Day where the community comes out in masses to support numerous
projects to help the Toronto Jewish Community. Students learn about tikun
olum by experiencing the joy we get from actually doing it. Part of Mitzvah
Day includes parents, children and teachers volunteering their time and tools
to work together to weed, till the soil and build new garden beds. This year
was my first time participating in this day of giving and I was amazed and
inspired by the sheer ruach that the Heschel community brings to their
garden; parents, children, and even families from the neighborhood, worked for
hours in the sun, shleping and digging away with smiles on their faces. Some
children were even working with parents to prepare a salad to share with the
hard workers; an authentic way to foreshadow the results of the work that was
being done.
Students in the Heschel School Garden
I am thrilled to
have learned that school gardens are blossoming all around the GTA, including
among the Jewish Day Schools, as administrators and teachers are learning the
value of providing students with authentic learning experiences and time well
spent in our natural environment. The Toronto Heschel School prioritizes this
kind of authentic education while also working hard to be a leading Eco School
among the Jewish Day School network. Ellen Kessler, the legend behind the Heschel garden’s
inception, once said, “In order to teach our children to protect our
environment we need to first nurture their relationship with it.” Through her
hard work and dedication, the Heschel garden has blossomed and curriculum that
includes outdoor education has continuously been developed. Today, the garden
enhances our students learning about plants and soil, and animals and insects.
It provides authentic opportunities to practice measuring area and perimeter
and of course, allows children to literally taste the fruits of their labor.
However, even more importantly for our Jewish Day Schools, the school garden
allows students to practice many of the teachings of the Torah genuinely and
practically. To learn about the sweetness of honey on Rosh Hashannah students
get to run about in the garden, observing the honey bees at work. To prepare
for the harvest festival of Succot students reap the last remnants of the
Heschel garden’s veggies. To understand the brachot we say upon eating
fruit of the ground students get to see the amazing feat of a seed’s transformation
in to a plant and to more impressively, taste the result of this seeds
achievement. Authentic experiences such as these lead to real learning and real
understanding. It cannot be overstated just how much a school garden can help
teachers teach for understanding, and at Heschel this is a goal in every
subject, in every lesson. As this school year comes to an end Heschel’s grade
three students are busy preparing their famous salad project where students, as
a part of a math unit, plant and harvest vegetables to serve an end of year salad to the entire student body. This
of course, comes after spending weeks estimating the mass and quantity of
veggies needed to feed more than two hundred students and teachers. These
students are applying their math skills while also learning the value of having
a sustainable natural source of food that can provide for its community; an
important lesson for young city dwellers.
In its early years, Shoresh worked closely
with Heschel to design and to develop the garden. Today, the successful
Kavannah Garden and the Heschel school garden are forerunners in providing
Jewish students with opportunities to explore our rich Jewish connection to the
environment. Toronto is privileged to have these urban gardens to enhance the
established Jewish education that our community is fortunate to have and it is
wonderful to know that other schools in the GTA are succeeding at doing the
same. The fact that the Heschel students just can’t wait for Mitzvah Day to
arrive so that they can participate in preparing the garden for its growing
season, and the fact that during recess students run to the garden to chase the
butterflies and walk around the new garden beds, is a testimony to the
contribution that the garden brings to the school’s community. Just as Sabrina,
the director of outreach for Shoresh, so passionately expresses, take the
students to the garden to play with soil and they will learn about soil. Show
the students bees at work and the complex process of pollination can be
understood. In essence, keep us in the garden where we began, to work and
protect the land, and of course, from a teacher’s perspective, bring the
children outside, to smell, to touch, to see and to truly understand the
wonders of our natural world.
