Final ESY Reflection

[The beautiful ESY garden.]

I did my service learning this semester at the Edible Schoolyard. There are several Edible Schoolyards throughout the city. I worked at the first and largest location in the city at Samuel J. Green Charter School on Valence Street right off Freret. The Edible Schoolyard is a nationwide organization that works to educate kids through the land. They setup extensive gardens, filled with mostly vegetables. The kids help maintain the garden, they come out to the outdoor classroom for lessons that incorporate something to do with the garden, they learn to cook the food, and they even have counseling sessions in the garden. It is a very unique and extraordinary program in my opinion. ESY allows kids to learn from the most elemental functions of the earth. It is a simple, yet powerful idea.

[The marsh patch at ESY. There are plenty of local species throughout the garden. It is particularly important that the students learn about the vital role the Louisiana marshes play in their environment and culture.]

My duties there were essentially to help maintain the garden. I worked my way up to more jobs as the semester went on, starting at watering, and ending at tilling and harvesting. The few hours a week I would spend there were a relieving retreat to a sort of oasis in the middle of a city. On the volunteer sign out sheet, there is a box that asks the volunteers how they felt when they left. I always felt fresh and found myself smiling as I left. That box on the sign in sheet is, again, a very simple but powerful reflection of the ESY philosophy. They truly create an environment of consciousness through connecting to the land and getting students to understand the functions of their environment. There are signs throughout the garden that work to promote consciousness. Things such as “breath” and “be cool” and “shine on me.” It’s a nice reminder to cultivate those virtues as you cultivate the land.

[The outdoor classroom at ESY. Complete with ceiling fans... fancy!]

The ESY team creates an environment of care and love, energy which they dedicate to their cultivation of the land as well. Every time I came in there, they always greeted me with a smile and a warm welcome. They were always willing to teach me and their students whatever sparked their curiosity. ESY’s environment of consciousness radiates through the community. They open the garden up for open garden day every Saturday and welcome anyone to come in and help out in the garden. It is a way to let the community get in on the amazing operation they have created. It acts to spark consciousness about the possibilities of caring for the land, caring for our bodies with nutritious foods, and caring for our community by creating an environment of camaraderie.

[The arugula I trimmed a few weeks ago. Look at those beauties!]

One of my favorite days at service learning is when I was working closely with Ben, one of the Delta Corp members they have on staff. He was teaching more about the practices of gardening. Most days I would be out there alone, which was a very nice meditation time for me, but it was nice to have a partner in the garden every once in a while. Ben told me about his dream of starting a farm that exclusively serves a school campus. He said that such an institutionalized local exchange would help to grow consciousness and responsibility. He said it would help to create an intimate experience between people in food in an environment that is already focused on learning and expanding their minds and understandings of the world. It would essentially be a large scale ESY operation. I thought that was a very interesting idea, and a very effective one at that. When a system of sustainability is institutionalized in a community, it becomes a part of the culture. Such values have come to be a central to the culture of my life, and I hope the culture I increasingly consider myself a part of continues to grow. Thanks to programs like ESY and dreamers like Ben, hopefully we can continue to build an environment of sustainability and mindfulness.

[One of the many signs throughout the garden.]

I had a truly nourishing experience at ESY this semester. The fact that service learning was included in this class helped create a holistic environment of learning that was stemmed from the course. Watching films outside of class, bringing the discussion into the classroom, bringing a social and technological aspect to the environment with the blog, and then putting the philosophies we learn into practice through our service learning. I felt as if I was able to bring the lessons of the classroom into my time at ESY, which only helped to contribute to the community of learning and engagement at ESY. These students are very lucky to be surrounded with people who care to participate and encourage engaged learning.

[One of the benches made by a local New Orleanian artist.]