At William J Bryan Elementary School, fourth grader Sarah Tardieu likes to tell people all about the “toilet paper plant,” a fuzzy, flowering plant of the mint family that people used to use to “clean their bums,” as Sarah puts it.
Odd? Maybe. Resourceful? Certainly. So, why is Sarah learning about TP alternatives during school hours? Well, that’s not the whole story. The toilet paper plant is just one of many in William J Bryan Elementary’s food forest, an outdoor classroom and perennial garden located near the school’s entrance.
“The kids can tell you things about the garden that most of the adults don’t know because they’re so immersed in it,” said Principal Tanisha Cunningham.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
The Education Fund manages 30 food forests at elementary schools across Miami-Dade County.
The food forest was first brought to William J Bryan Elementary School in 2015 by The Education Fund, a nonprofit organization in public-private partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools since 1985. The Education Fund manages a total of 30 food forests at elementary schools throughout the county, as well as an additional 21 edible gardens that are similar to the forests, only on raised garden beds.
Each food forest may differ in size, location and layout, though the program is the same everywhere it’s implemented. Teachers use it as an outdoor classroom to teach science, nutrition and sustainability, among other subjects, while students and school employees enjoy weekly harvests that they’re able to take home and implement into their diets. Some of those harvests are also used in the schools’ cafeterias, so that lunchtime is healthy and nutritious.
“It’s really a comprehensive program,” said Linda Lecht, president of The Education Fund. “The Education Fund is always trying to bring to the school district programming that the district can eventually take over that improves instruction.”
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Food forests have shown to make schoolwork more engaging for students.
Most recently, the organization has incorporated math into the program through a $1 million grant from TD Bank. The Education Fund secured the funding after beating out hundreds of competing grant applicants across North America.
Now, instead of using arbitrary numbers on a worksheet to make their calculations, students can use real-life data to practice standard math concepts like mean, median and mode. The children may go outside on any given day and count the number of berries on a bush, the number of bananas on a tree or the number of pesky caterpillars eating their milkweed. (That’s right: it turns out students aren’t really afraid of insects when they’ve shared a classroom with them since pre-K.)
“[The students] love it,” said Harold Skop, lead food forest teacher at William J Bryan. “They look forward to it every week. Whatever we’re doing out here, it’s different. You see kids who usually don’t volunteer, you see that they have more of an interest.”
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Students learn math and science using real-life data from their food forest at William J Bryan Elementary School.
The Education Fund determined through a 2022-2023 pilot study that 78% of all students participating in the food forest program displayed improvement in their math comprehension, while 71% showed improvement in science.
“It’s a great way to bring theory and application together,” said Cunningham. “You can read something in a book and, yes, you can have an understanding of it, but when you have a chance to interact with it and put your hand on it, that tangibility is something that you can’t get otherwise.”
The Education Fund sends a teacher to each school once a week to help guide the lessons, in addition to hosting workshops and off-site training sessions so that school employees can discover new ways to engage students in a food forest.
“You get so many different ideas,” Skop said. “I think as teachers, you need that kind of professional development because you get kind of stuck in a rut and you’re doing the same lesson the same way, but these are all innovative things that I never thought of.”
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Caterpillars eat up some milkweed from the food forest at William J Bryan Elementary School.
Inadvertently, the food forest has also turned Skop into a lean, mean, propagating machine.
“We started our food forest and I just started propagating everything,” said Skop. “I wasn’t even [a big plant guy] until I started.”
But at William J Bryan Elementary School, there’s one additional element to the food forest that really “paints a picture” of the program’s true potential. It’s called STEAM, and no, that’s not a typo.
You’ve heard of STEM before – science, technology, engineering and math – but in the case of STEAM, the “A” stands for art. William J Bryan Elementary is an art magnet school, and you can see it even in the kids’ science notebooks. Sarah especially loves to draw, so when she was asked to illustrate the life cycle of a butterfly, she didn’t hesitate to bring out the colored pencils.
The school’s art club also utilizes the food forest, as do the special needs classes.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Fourth grader Sarah Tardieu explaining the history behind the "toilet paper plant."
“Really, we try and use it in any capacity,” said Cunningham. “Outdoor classrooms can be used on an interdisciplinary level, and that’s where you really have that magic of academics and creativity and ingenuity.”
Parents get their share as well, often snatching clippings to use in their own gardens at home, and teachers will snag some bananas to bake muffins for the students and staff. On Earth Day, for instance, the children had smoothies using seeds from the forest’s baobab tree.
The food forest isn’t just a classroom after all. It’s a community resource, and not only is it used by the community, it’s also shaped by the community. Though each forest throughout the county will feature some basic crops like spinach or banana – think tropical plants that grow year-round – the rest vary from school to school depending on requests made by parents, students, teachers and custodians alike.
At William J Bryan Elementary, located in North Miami, the large Caribbean population in the area has requested extra amounts of lemongrass and guava. Among students, mulberry is a favorite, especially for Celine Thompson.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
A teacher from the Education Fund visits the food forest at participating elementary schools once a week to help guide lessons.
“Sometimes I take them when I’m not supposed to,” said Celine.
Don’t worry, we’re not tattle-taling. Celine’s friends quickly pointed out mulberry’s tendency to leave a stain, meaning she gets caught “red-handed” quite often as it is.
Just as students can identify which berries are ripest – “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” says fourth grader Chauncey Thompkins, Jr. – they can also readily describe the various flavors, textures, colors and nutritional values of each plant. These are kids who know when they’re getting their Vitamin C in. These are kids who practice composting right on school grounds.
“They can give you all of the information because this is something they’ve just grown up with,” said Cunningham. “It’s just organic for them to know about all of these things.”
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(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Sarah Tardieu likes to complement science lessons with illustrations in her notebook.
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The Caribbean population in North Miami has requested that more guava trees be planted in William J Bryan Elementary School's food forest.
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(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Fourth grader Celine Thompson picks a mulberry from the food forest.
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(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Fourth grader Chauncey Thompkins, Jr. stands next to his favorite plant, the cranberry hibiscus.