It was too cold to go outside during the first day of spring, but the pre-kindergartners at Clay Academy of Exploration and Civics were still looking forward to learning more about gardening from a man they referred to as “Mr. Nick.” Mr. Nick is Nicholas Speed, a youth educator for Gateway Greening, whose Seed to STEM program was recently awarded a $205,000 grant from the Monsanto Fund for 2018-2019.
Gateway Greening has helped students and teachers in St. Louis schools support their own gardens for many years. The Seed to STEM program acts as an outdoor school that connects PK-5 students to gardening and nature. Five schools are currently benefitting from it, including Clay Academy, an elementary school in the St. Louis Public School District whose students are 98.1 percent African-American.
The gardens are used as classrooms and learning laboratories, which has allowed students to get hands-on experience with learning about the soil and food they grow. This day’s lesson centered on earthworms.
Speed placed a large dishpan full of pipe cleaners, paper cups, and various other items on a small table in the corner of the colorful room and headed toward the front of the class. The students had all just finished their alphabets, led by a student, and settled down on color carpet blocks.
“Who all remembers what we did last week?” Speed asked. “Earthworms!” one child shouted.
Speed asked the children questions, based on three of the five primary senses: touch, sight, and feel. He discussed with them the different colors of worms that they thought existed and the kind they saw. He finished the activity by reading a book, “The Earth, the Alphabet, and Me” by Christine Pesout.
“I like to read them a story first, and then get into the arts and crafts,” Speed said.
Nestled down at their tables and chairs after story time, the kids anxiously awaited their next activity: making their own earthworms. Speed pulled out colored pipe cleaners and asked each child to choose two. Using paper cups, green tissue paper, and glue sticks, he showed each of the students how to create a scene of pipe cleaner worms wiggling through grass. Their teacher, Lauren Hollis, helped along the way.
Once the activity was finished, “Mr. Nick” gathered all the glue sticks and packed up. As he headed out toward the end of an hour, the students ran up to him, giving him a hug.
“I was going to call off because I didn’t feel well,” he said. “But then, I powered through and came in anyway. Moments like that are what keep me going.”
The 5th grade class, taught by Laura Erickson, had a slightly different plan. Three groups of five or six students were asked to assemble in the classroom to continue work on their capstone project for the garden. It’s something the students will design to leave as a legacy for the next class.
“We’re going to repaint the mural,” said one young lady who is part of a group called the Garden Stars, “and it’s really tall.” The mural is about 40 feet by 10 feet, and the students want to refresh it while leaving their names.
Another group of girls decided to build bird houses and feeders. And a group of boys said they wanted to repaint the garden bench, plant blue and white flowers after the school colors, and paint a large cougar – the school’s mascot – somewhere in the middle.
“We need a lot of equipment,” Erickson said, “and we put up a fundraiser on our Facebook page to help with getting supplies.”
The day’s activities concluded with a video from Sir David Attenborough, the famous naturalist and BBC broadcaster, on a giant earthworm in Australia. The worm, called the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, is almost 8 inches long when born, and can grow up to 6 feet long. The kids squirmed in wonder as the scientist explained the worms have been rumored to live for about 20 years.
The kids begged for one more video, featuring a red leech devouring a giant earthworm, which they saw from the thumbnails that appeared. Speed gave in to the crowd, allowing them two minutes to watch the video, and gave the kids a little fun while the grown-ups gaped in amazement.
Erickson quipped, “We’ll have one week where something weird doesn’t happen!”
To help the 5th graders finish their capstone project, visit https://www.slps.org/clay.
To learn more about Gateway Greening’s Seed to STEM program, visit http://www.gatewaygreening.org/seed-to-stem/.
