For many years my main focus as a Master Gardener was working to help start school gardens. There are teachers out there who really want to do this. Some have lots of gardening experience, some none and many in between. Every school I went to had different space, support,dreams and needs. I have enjoyed them all. Part of the fun was showing up with lots of seeds and information and figuring out what they needed fast. One school expected a football sized field of vegetables within a month. Sizing them down to a successful beginning was the challenge. Some have good support from the administration and some have none. Showing them how to tie gardening in with the school standards was always important. Many teachers assumed they had no time for gardening until we showed them how to include reading, thinking, math and science into gardening skills. This won them over. Teachers have very little time so you must be prepared with whatever they need and organized enough to 'sell' your ideas to them in an hour, hour & 1/2 max. I had a lot of experience working with kids and creating something from anything. All of the teachers I worked with said that all of the children became equal in the garden. They all worked hard, studied gardening skills without realizing they were planning, doing math, reading or science in order to get the seeds in the right place at the right time. The teachers said it cut down on discipline problems and the students learned to work together. Most of the time I was working with elementary schools. Growing foods they could eat seemed to be what hooked the children on gardening. There was a study about waht age to teach gardening that showed if a child learned to garden in the 2nd - 3rd grade, it would stick with them. I think the study was from UC Davis but I'm not sure. The garden was often responsible for bringing the community together. Some schools actually grow enough vegetables to have a sale once a week with a rotating schedule of parents from different grade levels being allowed to purchase first. This sale is run by the children who are now learning business skills. I had lots of support in seeds and written material. Not a lot from other MG's since it was very unpredictable when a teacher would call asking for assistance - Now. Teachers always wanted help after school meaning you were driving home in heavy traffic hours, few MG's wanted to volunteer then. Those few who were willing were wonderful. It wasn't a project to schedule regular monthly convenient time slots for. I always gave teachers plenty of handouts such as when to plant for warm season growing, cool season growing, how to attract beneficial's, birds, etc. I used to regularly attend AG in the Classroom conferences and I collected lots of ideas and information there. I encouraged teachers to attend these conferences and got many there. I even got teachers from snow climates to attend, build greenhouses and have successful gardens. I arranged for teachers to get their expenses paid as well as a substitute teacher while they attended the AG in the classroom conference.. Many if not most of the children carried their excitement home and started gardens at home. We can garden year round in CA. I always encouraged the teachers to promote the importance of adults who worked at any form of gardening. We always talked about the importance of growing things for food, air quality, quality of life and more. This could bring pride to more families as well as help when heavy work was needed. There are many such workers in CA. As a result, teachers told me they were seeing parents who had never come to the school before. In planning school gardens, I encouraged them to plant things with fast results first and plant things that could be fun for the children. Fun includes things like tunnels to crawl through or eat your way through, bean or pea teepees, pizza gardens, teapot gardens and sunflower houses with vege tables growing up the sunflowers. I encouraged them to plant pumpkins for the new kindergarten or first grade class coming in the fall. It works if the whole school "owns" the garden, not a group of adults. The kids must do the work with assistance and guidance from a teacher. There are reports of less crime and vandalism in inner city neighborhoods where the entire grade school has a garden. This does take a few years but it happens. For a new school, having the older children dig and build raised beds, and the chores trickle down keeps everyone involved. These a few of my ideas, hope they help you come up with more. Carolyn in Los Gatos CA