Health & Fitness
April Showers Bring ... Teaching Garden to Detroit Merit Charter Academy
Students will learn to cook and live healthy while using the garden bounty they grow.
Students at Detroit Merit Charter Academy (DMCA) will have the chance to eat what they sow this summer thanks to a Teaching Garden sponsored by Health Alliance Plan (HAP) and the American Heart Association (AHA). Planting the garden took place recently, at Merit’s “Planting Seeds for Mind, Body and Spirit” event.
Merit is just the 2nd school in Michigan to be awarded an AHA Teaching Garden grant. The Teaching Garden program combines nutrition education with garden based learning. It is a real-life laboratory where students learn how to plan seed, nurture growing plants, harvest produce and understand the value of good eating habits.
In addition, HAP will bring Merit students it’s Ready, Set Cook! program this summer. Through this 6-session, hands-on cooking and lifestyle program, Merit students will learn healthy cooking and eating habits as well as food preparation skills. In addition, the afterschool program will incorporate foods harvested from the teaching garden in many of the recipes the childen will prepare.
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DeAndre Lipscomb, vice president of HAP’s Community Outreach department, spoke at the festival opening. He described the garden as not just a tool for teaching curriculum but also as an “avenue to sustain the community.”
The school received a plaque and commemorative planting pot from Kathy Kauffmann, the executive director and vice president of AHA-Southeast Michigan, and Suzanne Cowles, a member of the Board of Directors for AHA-Southeast Michigan.
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Approximately 200 students, parents, and faculty attended the festival to spread soil and plant the first batch of seedlings that will be used in the garden. Representatives from HAP and other organizations promoting healthy living were also there to lend a hand.
Merit Principal, Sandra Martin said when she heard the school earned the grant she was “beyond excited.”
“The Teaching Garden will provide us with endless opportunities,” she said. “When we got it I thought to myself ‘Hallelujah."
Martin said the students will be responsible for maintaining the gardens year-round, and will use the crops in soups, salads, salsas and other foods served at the school.
