James Madison Middle School students will get a chance to do something very few students in this country are able to do-raise their own food on campus and eat it.
“Food for Thought: An Edible Education Partnership” is a collaboration of leaders from Roanoke City Schools, Virginia Western Community College, and various community supporters. The purpose is to address the silent epidemic of hunger, port healthy, obesity, and poverty in children. Food for Thought is designed to education youth about healthy food, the environment, and the effects of personal choices.
“It’s about things that our students will be able to do not only with their lives but also with their children as they continue to grow into adulthood as well as to influence and shape the way that they think about not only eating and growing vegetables and plants and those things but also about ways that we take care of our earth and our environment,” said James Madison Principal Stephanie Hogan.
The plants will be grown in several raised beds on campus. She says the students will be able to choose the program as an elective and/or be part of an environmental club that will tend the garden. Even in the summer, she says students, parents, and members of the community can help pull weeds and water plants.
A curriculum written especially for the program will cover nutrition, agriculture, and ecology.
The local program was devised by Cynthia Lawrence who is the founding chairwoman of the organization.
“Food for Thought is very personal for me. When I was the age of these students, I was very heavy because of some of the poor choices that I made. And I didn’t have half of the challenges that kids today have growing up.”
Lawrence now hopes to have four additional gardens planted; one at each of the other middle schools in the city.
Roanoke City School Superintendent Rita Bishop sees the garden as a lasting resource for the community.
“I think that it tastes better if you buy something grown locally. I think it tastes even better if you grow it yourself. And, the way that I look at it is that there’s so much to be learned academically from a garden. And, you know, there’s a spiritual aspect to gardening as well, just watching that whole life-thing happen. And ultimately I believe that we simply fight obesity one tomato at a time.”
Virginia Secretary of Education Laura Fornash and state Secretary of Agriculture Todd Haymore were in Roanoke for the garden’s groundbreaking.