On a beautiful summer day, a group of rising third-graders gathered in the Columbia Heights Public Schools’ fruit and vegetable garden. Their mission: identify bees pollinating the flowers.
One group of children followed Melissa Trent, the district’s agriculture specialist, to a sunflower.
“You can touch the flower,” Trent told them. “Gentle hands.”
A child gingerly brought a finger to the center of the flower, and grinned.
“Does it feel like it’s alive?” Trent asked.
“It was sticky,” the child said.
Blooming Heights Edible Schoolyard, a districtwide teaching garden between a cluster of Columbia Heights school buildings, is a highlight of many students’ summer learning experience in the summer Encore program. The program also features three weeks of reading and math along with hands-on activities like visits from the local library and the Bakken Museum.
The district holds the program every year and makes it available to every child entering kindergarten through eighth grade as an effort to combat the “summer slide,” in which kids lose some academic progress during the gap between school years.
But this year, after a winter when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained seven Columbia Heights students and dozens of their parents, causing hundreds more to hide at home in fear, the program feels especially significant.
“We’re practicing some skills that students may not have gotten to the full extent during the school year if they were absent or online,” said Danielle Ketchum, the incoming principal of Valley View Elementary School, who leads the elementary summer program.
“Not being in school makes a big difference. When you’re not at school, you’re not learning, but also if your social-emotional is being affected too, that impacts your learning as well.”
This year, the district made extra recruitment and programming efforts to support kids’ needs.
The district was “really intentional about calling families and saying, bring your child, bring your child,” said Superintendent Zena Stenvik. She stressed that the program is not what families might typically think of as summer school: it’s geared towards fun. “Here, they get music and art and PE, and all the kids get different enrichment activities.”
The district expanded those enrichment activities this year to give kids more hands-on experiences. It also increased support services for kids by having social workers on site, as well as mental health services through the Washburn Center for Children.
“It’s extended learning and fun with your friends,” Ketchum said. “You don’t get to see your friends during the summer the same way you get to see them every day. You can come here and build a new community because we have kids from all three schools coming together.”
Ashley Sigcha Farez, 17, works as a kindergarten teaching assistant for the summer program, as part of a district effort to encourage students to pursue careers in education. She recalled students disappearing from classrooms over the winter during the height of the ICE operation.
“When that moment happened, it was really empty,” she said. “You didn’t see a lot of people outside, especially in classrooms. They were empty. Now seeing kids back to normal, having fun, smiling, makes me feel happy.”
Things haven’t entirely gotten back to normal. At the summer program, staff took turns filling in for an immigrant employee who hasn’t been able to come in since her work permit wasn’t renewed. And some families and staff have left the district after the intense immigration enforcement operation, including some who are self-deporting.
Some school staff have said Columbia Heights students will need months or years to heal from their experiences this winter.
But the palpable joy of learning in the summer program provided some needed relief — and helped students get academic support, too.
A healing garden
In the garden, Trent led the children in a pollinator relay: running back and forth from their home base, or hive, using a turkey baster as a proboscis to extract nectar from a flower and return to their hive. Joyful shrieks filled the air as the teams raced to collect nectar.
For the kids, the garden is a place of wonder, Trent said.
“When they first sit down, they’re just completely in awe at everything there is in front of them to look at,” she said.
Hand-painted signs in English, Spanish, Ojibwe, Dakota and Somali label various plants in the garden — tomato, squash, apple. Trent is deliberate about growing plants that resonate with students’ cultures, including the Indigenous companion planting “four sisters” of corn, beans, squash and sunflower; peppers from Latin America; and Asian basil varieties.
“Students who might not feel a deep connection to the classroom within their four walls, when they come outside and they see plants that they recognize from their culture or from their kitchens, it automatically gives them a sense of place and community,” Trent said.
Kids often recognize chamomile as a tea and medicine the matriarchs of their family use.
“When they see it, their eyes light up and they tell me the name of it in Spanish — ‘manzanilla!’” Trent said. “Then they proceed to tell me who drinks the tea [or] uses the plant in their families.”
Kids also have the opportunity to explore native foods that are new to them, like currants and Juneberries, she said. One child told her that tart currants are now his favorite fruit. Another student told her they’d never had a fresh cucumber from the garden until now.
The garden also provides job opportunities for high school students, funded through a partnership with Anoka County. Those students help take care of the garden, and Trent lets their questions about plants and culture guide her instruction.
Every year, the garden helps connect kids to nature, culture and healthy eating, while providing a safe and happy space, Trent said. And this year, she said, that’s especially needed.
“I definitely think the garden plays a role in healing from some of the trauma of the past, because the garden is a safe space that’s full of life and beauty, and plants and insects that inspire every kid that visits,” she said. “It’s a happy space for them, and it’s a space that they feel like it’s theirs.”
