My name is Tais Farinha, and I am a Multilingual teacher at Duncan Elementary School of the Arts, a Title 1 elementary school in Duncan, SC with a high Multilingual student population. 

During Covid, I discovered a passion for gardening and its benefits including mental health. Being a first generation immigrant, I wasn’t sure what I could and could not plant in the Upstate of South Carolina. It was through trial and error that I discovered gardening was my therapy: I felt connected with nature. I loved spending hours touching the soil, sowing seeds, watching butterflies and bees do their thing, and then harvesting and cooking all the goodies from my garden with no pesticides or harmful chemicals. 

Later that year, I was talking with a friend about my newest passion and how my body and mind felt better. Fernanda is a master gardener in NC, and suggested that I would contact my local master gardener association and learn about grants available in my area for community and school gardens.

I was 100% determined to make that happen. I spoke with my principal and presented my idea: I wanted to implement a school garden project for my ML students so they could learn the benefits of gardening, as well as composting, and getting in touch with nature. I knew through gardening I was going to be able to provide an opportunity for hands-on, active learning to help connect abstract concepts to the real world, as well as instill pride, ownership, and responsibility in students and community members through integration of the curriculum in areas of science, math, social studies, and language arts.

I was also eager to improve health and nutrition, as we know that children who grow vegetables are more likely to eat them.'

I got connected with Amy Dabbs from the Clemson Extension program. She guided me through the process and next thing I was enrolled in a required gardening online course through Clemson University that showed exactly what to plant and when.

In the beginning of the school year, we were ready to start our garden. Our students were excited and our staff was very supportive.

Throughout the year we have developed a few other programs to add to our garden: we educated students and staff on the benefits of composting and set up a composting program in the cafeteria during lunch time, which helped minimize food waste.

We developed a “healthy kitchen” program where students researched recipes for all the vegetables we harvested from our garden and we tried them in class. Our ML students were also able to “shop” for produce and take them home.

Towards spring time, our students created and managed a school plant sale fundraiser to generate income for needed supplies in the following planting season. They worked on real life skills such as customer service, money concept, and learned the concept of supply and demand.

Before school was out, all of our ML students took home vegetable plants and were encouraged to grow them at home just like we had been doing in school.

It has been fantastic to see how much engagement and growth our ML students have obtained this past year. Our ACCESS passing rate has improved tremendously, as well as attendance and parent engagement. Our ML students, who are typically shy, have been sharing all things they are doing in the garden with their classmates. You can clearly see their sense of belonging and pride!