Twenty years ago, a few of Los Angeles’ West Adams residents and their friends had a novel idea: take a jackhammer to break up the asphalt and cement at their neighborhood’s 24th Street Elementary School to plant shade trees and a garden.
They created the Garden School Foundation to support the project, which school and foundation officials believe was a farsighted decision. Elizabeth Hall, the foundation’s head of outreach and development, says the 24th Street School gardens are critical to teaching climate literacy to 453 pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade students. About 90% of the students are classified as low-income at the Title I school.
There is a deep desire on the part of the school’s teachers to teach climate literacy , said Hall. But few LAUSD teachers have been trained to do it.
An outdoor learning center sits at the heart of the 24th Street Elementary School garden, which now covers a lush acre with groves of shade trees, an orchard with kumquats, apples, pears and pomegranates, and too many vegetable, herb and flower beds to count.