Copyright Santa Clarita Valley Signal
The Cedarcreek Elementary School community celebrated the fruits from years of labor quite literally at a recent ribbon-cutting. The K-6 school on Camp Plenty Road welcomed the community to an outdoor classroom it created, which happened over several semesters, according to Cedarcreek Principal Merly Soni. The campus “focus” is around environmental sustainability, she said in a phone interview Friday, meaning the lesson plans in different classrooms throughout the school integrate the garden and even the culinary arts into an academic curriculum. The practical lessons can help expand students’ vocabulary and math skills, among other benefits, but Soni hears from parents about how exposure to new foods and an understanding of the process from farm to table offer a valuable education. “Our students absolutely love it. In fact, when we had our ribbon cutting, we got so much feedback from the parents, saying that the students go home and every single day, they talk about either what they’ve done in the garden or what they’ve done in the kitchen,” Soni said. It also helps encourage a healthier lifestyle, she said. “We’ve had parents thanking us that our students are their children who would never touch a vegetable, are going home and saying they’ve tried, you know, certain vegetables that they would never otherwise.” Chris Trunkey, governing board member for the Saugus Union School District, called it a unique program to give students hands-on experience in the garden and kitchen classrooms. The edible schoolyard, a concept that’s been around for decades, is really a living classroom, Soni said. A class of third-graders can use part of the garden for math lessons on area and perimeter, so they go outside and then when it comes to kitchen time for recipes, they’re talking about fractions and measurements, she added. “And, of course, a lot of vocabulary, especially because our campus has a large percentage of multilingual learners. Vocabulary is a huge focus,” Soni said. She also thanked the community for the Measure EE funding that made the garden possible, she said, referring to the 2014 bond measure. Soni was in her first year as principal in 2021 when shovels first went into the ground, and says the effort, which included training at other campus gardens, has reaped numerous rewards for the campus. “It just teaches them so much on perseverance and just endurance around what it really takes to grow something and really tend to it, and, you know, take care of it,” she said, adding a garden club also has sprouted up, “so the kids go out there on their own doing lunch, and they’re just out there weeding and really tending to the garden.”
