Micheltorena Elementary School

Kids are awesome! No, really, they are! They intuitively get things that take adults years to understand, and they don’t have all of these ingrained barriers. With that said, let’s get dirty. Compost. EWWWWWW right? Not really as it turns out, I only heard one “ew” from my classes and we moved on. I was…

One of my biggest challenges has been teaching children on the autism spectrum, not because they are different, but because I had such a limited scope of what these kids are able to accomplish individually. Initially, I believed that the lessons were too complicated for them to grasp, and after seeing how well they adjusted…

The kids at Micheltorena had a great time with our reduce, reuse, recycle lesson. Not only were the kids already fairly aware about recycling, but they were ready to get their hands dirty by helping me sort items we use on an everyday basis at home. After reviewing definitions of reduce, reuse, recycle, we laid…

Friday April 20th was our last day at the Micheltorena garden for the Spring semester. Although it was sad for everyone to say bye to the animals and plants, we still had a lot of fun! We spent the day doing maintenance, watering and weeding, and hanging out with the bunnies and chickens a lot….

Before Spring Break, I decided to have a festive St. Patrick’s Day-themed lesson at Micheltorena, because we have a few clover patches that were ripe for weeding. I love our clover patches. They are pleasing to the eye, and so green and soft, even though they’re considered a weed. They’re also a wonderful cover for…

We had a lot of fun Friday at Micheltorena, even though it was quite cold and windy outside. Instead of having an outdoor lesson, I went from room to room for a warm and cozy indoor lesson. It was so fun to see the students in their own environment. I had a great lesson planned…

We had a wonderful day in the garden last week over at Micheltorena Elementary. Two weeks ago, I noticed a caterpillar on one of our fennel plants. It was beautiful, and at the end of every class I pointed it out to my students so they could also bask in its prettiness. If that was…

With October almost over (!!!) I wanted to do something festive with the Micheltorena classes for Halloween/fall. Luckily, our garden had one perfectly orange, round pumpkin in the patch that was ready to harvest. I decided to make my lesson of the week language arts-related. It was the first time I had my students write…

I have the special opportunity to work at Micheltorena Elementary School this year! The school’s garden has a really cool origin story. The garden space used to be an additional school parking lot until some Micheltorena neighborhood community members decided to rip out all that concrete and make it a community garden! That was over…

Boy, the kids love the garden! Today during their recess time, the students poured into the garden and worked/played with a big pile of beautiful oak mulch delivered for free to the garden by J&T Tree Co. The kids were pure physical activity as they mounted the pile, shoveled mulch into wheelbarrows and distributed the…

  Micheltorena garden shed gets a makeover just in time for this Saturday’s Halloween Big Pumpkin Festival. 10/29/2011 from 10-5

Today, led by volunteer extraordinaire Aaron Murphy (from the Echo Park Time Bank) we installed the solar panels (which connect to batteries and converters)  atop the garden shed we built last week. The shed will hold garden tools, collect rain water into barrels and garner the sun’s rays to power the irrigation timer, lights, music,…

Today we installed a gutter and downspout into DWP provided trash can turned rain barrel. We’ll be able to use some rain water for the garden but most importantly, the whole neighborhood will be able to see how easy it is to implement and try it at home. Stay tuned for the upcoming triple threat…

Community members came together in stellar fashion to build a garden shed for Micheltorena. We had school parent Peter Healy, Teacher Lisa Lewis’ husband Burnie Neal, Silver Lake neighbors Bill Mahoney, Sergio Scabuzzo and Allison Behrstock, and heading the effort Echo Park Time Bank Members Aaron Murphy and Troy Gilbert form Troy Construction a great…

It takes a village… point in case at the Micheltorena School and Community Garden.  All through the summer the garden stayed open on Wednesdays and Saturdays although the school was out on vacation.  More and more community members, attracted by the garden beauty and warmth, come in and contribute =  Pickling classes, garden maintenance, composting,…

LAWeekly’s  Kathy A. MacDonald visited the garden and blogged about us. Here is an excerpt, for the whole article visit LAWeekly’s Blog. “Chalk one up to green. Overlooking traffic-heavy Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Silver Lake, community activists have transformed a former school parking lot into vegetable, herb and flower filled garden at L.A.U.S.D’s…

This Saturday we had a lot of new people coming to the garden. I taught a class, Urban Beekeeping  101,  on all I learned from being a member of Backwards Beekeepers. A few folk from the Echo Park Time Bank showed up to it, and stayed for a garden produce salad from the bounty the…

It started with a dream, perseverance, attracting like minded folk, designing, raising funds, making a reality the replacing of asphalt by a garden, building, planting, watering, weeding, mulching, composting, loving, meeting more new friends, making music, enjoying the hard work, learning, discovering… and tonight the community got together and created the first salad with veggies…

Inspired by the success of the garden, parents have been getting together for the last couple of weeks to continue the school beautification. Designed by comics artist -and parent- Jordan Crane, the mural in progress at the kindergarten yard is looking awesome! Stay tuned for the final result…

The Enrich LA / Gilt City volunteer day on Sat 6/25 was a big success. Gilt raised $2000 for Micheltorena and the food by Chego was excellent. Lisa Novick from Theodore Payne Foundation  was at hand to teach the volunteers the benefits of native plant gardens (minimal water needs and food for native birds and insects)…

This Saturday, June 25th, Micheltorena garden will be participating in a “Gilt City” event.  Attendees will be experiencing a day of giving back to the community, great music, and good eats provided by the Pop-up Chego test-kitchen. Chego is the latest endeavor from chef Roy Choi, the brilliant man who brought you Kogi BBQ and…

The time came and the Micheltorena garden is ready for  the kids to harvest veggies, make a salad and learn all about eating fresh seasonal unprocessed foods. The picking was fun, the prepping as well, and all were very open to considering having fresh foods over processed, understood the reasons why and asked lots of…

      Today at Micheltorena, Leonardo continued the bee demonstration with the observation hive so that every class had a chance to learn about the nature of bees and the art of beekeeping. Leonardo talked about the structure of honeycomb (hexagonal cells), about the different types of bees that make up a colony (worker,…

The Micheltorena Garden had today a visit by Kirk Anderson of Backwards Beekeepers, a Los Angeles Urban Beekeeping group dedicated to natural organic beekeeping. Kirk brought an observation hive and some beekeeping gear and equipment. The kids were fascinated about being able to observe the bees at work an get real close to them without danger…

        Our milk carton repurposing project has really taken off. Teachers and students have been diligent in collecting and cleaning milk cartons, effectively diverting a significant amount of waste from landfill. Ms. Markarian and Ms. Lewis’ classes have been particularly enthusiastic, coming to the garden every Wednesday to transplant seedlings into their…

There are all kinds of positive benefits to installing gardens in our schools. To list some: -reconnect with the sources of our food -rekindle/initiate healthy eating habits -spend time outdoors while growing food -fight child obesity and other related health issues -learn agriculture themes like planting, soil building, composting -learn science, biology, math in an…

Over the past few weeks, a lot has been accomplished at the garden. Mr. Wurmfeld and I have given lessons on the anatomy of seeds to many classes, including Ms. Markarian’s kindergartners and Ms. Lewis’ 3rd and 4th graders. We’ve shown the students how to plant seeds, and explained to them how the embryo inside…

Today Ms. Markarian’s kindergartners showed off their garden book, full of drawings of their favorite things in the garden, including the worms in the vermicompost bin.  Students of all grade levels have learned to love playing with the worms: the first step towards appreciation of the vital role worms and other decomposers play in the…

With the support of LAUSD facilities, principals and teachers, parents and community members Enrich LA is moving ahead with the goal of replacing asphalt with gardens in school campuses. Our present and upcoming garden projects in LAUSD campuses total 31,500 sq.ft. including 20,000 sq.ft. of concrete removal! We believe in replacing asphalt with green spaces…

Miss Peres Peña’s class has been a big fan of the garden since it’s inception. The kids love visiting the compost and worm bins, and Miss Peña used the opportunity to teach them about composting, organic matter, decomposition; the kids follow week by week the process of green and brown leaves, kitchen castoffs and coffee…

All big smiles the kids started pouring, class after class, into the garden for fun outdoor learning and playing. Of course everybody wanted to water, but they also were very interested in learning about tree roots and soil erosion with Charlie, soil composition with Erik, tomato planting with Susan, and seed planting with Alex. The…