This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
11/16/2016 07:30 AMGardeners know that big things can start very small. Leslie López, who founded the Gardening Club at Jeffrey Elementary School, believes that teaching children to grow and harvest plants can have wide-ranging benefits, both educationally and socially.
“The students learn how to be sustainable, how to do it at their own home, and how beneficial it can be, not only to themselves but to our community,” says Leslie, who teaches Spanish at the school.
“The intention of our garden,” she says, “is to give back. So during the summertime, we harvest as much as we can, and we were fortunate to donate 37 pounds of food to the Madison Food Pantry.”
Leslie planted the seeds of the project when she started at Jeffrey, in 2013. She got approval to install raised boxes in a school courtyard, but they had to be built.
“It fell into our hands that there was a Boy Scout, Patrick Fahey, who was trying to become an Eagle Scout,” she says. “He took it upon himself. He found the funding.”
In the confined quarters, Leslie and the club grow, among other plants, tomatoes, squash, peppers, eggplants, sage, basil, sunflowers, and zinnias.
The garden’s first full growing season was in 2015, but it wasn’t an auspicious beginning.
“I thought we were doing so well,” Leslie says, “and the plants had, like, stopped growing. We had our plant sale, and literally we were selling these things that were like two inches. We were like, ‘Please just consider a donation to the gardening club. I’m not sure if this plant’s going to make it.’”
This year’s seedlings were another story.
“Every parent said, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve never seen so many tomatoes off of one plant,’” Leslie says, “They were like ‘I don’t know what you did.’ I was like, ‘I did nothing. I just gave it love, you know what I mean? Just like I give the kids.’”
Leslie divides up the labor by grade level. In the fall, the 2nd graders harvest the crops remaining from the previous summer, as well as do maintenance. In the spring, the 3rd graders grow seedlings in a closet-like space that Leslie has turned into a greenhouse and then transplant them to the courtyard.
The 4th graders help raise funds for the club year round by checking the recycling bins in the school hallways for redeemables, which Leslie cashes in at Stop & Shop.
Another fund-raiser is the school’s “farmer’s market,” which Leslie and the older students run in the fall.
“I keep a little area in the teachers’ lounge,” she says, “and I say, ‘OK, this is what’s hot and fresh out of our courtyard.’”
The kids have to give up something to participate.
“They do this during their recess time,” Leslie says, “so they sacrifice recess once a week. That’s huge. I don’t know if I would be able to do that as a child.”
In summer, when much of the crop is harvested, Leslie relies on volunteers. Still, she comes in and works on the garden herself almost every day.
Agriculture has fascinated Leslie from an early age. The daughter of immigrants from Colombia, she remembers visiting her grandmother’s farm in that country as a child.
“I would just see all these things that you read about in books,” she says, “coffee beans and banana trees and all of these fruits and just the different types of vegetation.”
Along with her two sisters, Leslie grew up in West Haven and Guilford, attending Catholic schools. The family always kept a garden.
Leslie’s mother would show the girls how you can make an avocado pit sprout in water or can germinate food scraps. Leslie draws on those lessons now, showing her students how to grow a new plant from the bottom of a bunch of romaine.
Leslie attended the University of Connecticut, where, although she was impressed by the school’s horticultural programs, she majored in television production.
After graduating, in 2000, she worked in radio for Cox Communications, then for the Nielsen ratings service. With the birth of her first son, however, she decided she wanted a change.
She had a lot of child-care experience, both through her large extended family and through working as a camp counselor and swim instructor. She got a master’s degree in education at Southern Connecticut State University.
“I thought, ‘If I want to make a difference, that was my calling, making a difference with children, because they’re our next leaders,’” she says.
Leslie’s first teaching job was at Christopher Columbus Family Academy, in New Haven, a Title I school at which most students receive free breakfast and lunch and many come from homes in which Spanish is the first language. It was there that Leslie created her first school garden.
“The intention,” she says, “was really to show they could do something little that could flourish into something bigger—and giving back, whether it was giving it back to them or giving it to those that needed it most. The students loved it and felt that they contributed to something bigger.
“We actually created a summer program,” she says, “because a lot of kids don’t have anything to do in the summertime.”
Leslie says that gardening can be used to reinforce classroom lessons—for example, kids can learn fractions by cutting vegetables and practice estimation by guessing how many seeds are in a tomato—but in the New Haven school, it had a more immediate benefit: The students who worked in the garden could help feed their families.
She says, “The kids were just like ‘Oh, my gosh, is this for me? Are you serious? I can take this home?’”
After four years, Leslie moved on to Jeffrey, an easier commute from her home in Madison, where she lives with her husband, Joe Cuticelli, an executive with Sodexo. Together, they have four children, aged 4 to 17.
In her spare time, Leslie runs. She recently completed the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. She says she appreciated seeing the landmarks and monuments through “a different lens” and hopes that she can bring the experience back to the classroom.
At Jeffrey, Leslie is the chair of Sunshine, a support group for fellow faculty members going through difficult life transitions.
She also has involved some 4th graders at Jeffrey with a program called Warm the Children. The students raise funds to collect hats, gloves, and used books. In December, Leslie and the children go to her old school in New Haven and distribute the goods to the children there.
“It is an enlightening moment for kids to learn about what’s happening outside of our little bubble called Madison, Connecticut,” she says. “I give a speech about how they will all look different to the students they’re going to see. Because they all look like me. They all have dark hair. You all have blond hair.”
The Madison kids get a chance to use their Spanish skills, but they’re mostly affected by the gratitude the New Haven kids express.
The Jeffrey students, Leslie says, “are like ‘All I did was give him a book and a hat and gloves.’
“When they come back,” Leslie says, “I give them Santa hats, because they’ve been Santa’s helpers.”
Leslie believes that growing and donating food has a similar effect on the Jeffrey students. “I’m trying to teach them this is something small that we’re doing here locally, but the impact you can make is so much deeper,” she says.
“It’s hard for them to internalize it,” she says, “but they know when they grow something and they know it’s going to somebody who doesn’t have that, it instantly puts a smile on their face.”
To nominate a Person of the Week, contact Tom Conroy at t.conroy@Zip06.com.