Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 8, Number 6, 1 June 1991 — Aiea garden teaches kids lessons in life [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Aiea garden teaches kids lessons in life

lt's an unlikely location for a garden, sandwiched between two freeways and in the shadow of Aloha Stadium, but it works. Little hands planted, tended and are reaping the rewards of their toil in a garden project just begun this year at Aiea Elementary School. Yet their rewards are mueh more than just vegetables. For many children attending the school, the garden represents an important lesson in selfesteem, and cooperation. They ean point proudly to their work and say, "We did this and I helped." Teaching the students these lessons daily with a firm but caring example is garden master, taro farmer and counselor rolled up into one, Frank Kawehi Ryder. Hired by the school as a counselor to reach out to fourth and fifth-grade students with learning and behavior problems, Ryder eame up with the idea of a hands-on project to teach the children by doing and by watching. The garden quickly drew the interest of other fourth- and fifth-grade students and eventually it was expanded to allow the whole school to participate.

Many of Aiea Elementary's children are Hawaiian and live in singie-parent families in nearby housing projects. The garden project gives them the opportunity to be responsible for planning, creating, managing and recording, tending, harvesting and distributing the fruits of their labors. It also gives Ryder the opportunity to befriend the boys and work with them individually. What's more, the garden provides a focus for learning and self-expression in other classes as well. They leam science in studying how plants grow, history and culture from how ancient Hawaiians planted by moon cycles. Writing about their garden is a regular language arts lesson. They leam mathematics from figuring out how many plants ean be planted in a row, how quickly they will mature, how mueh they could be sold for at . market. At harvest time the students weigh, package and sell their produce to teachers and parents. Funds raised go for student field trips. Two projects Ryder is getting underway this summer include development of an eeonomie garden. Students will plant crops such as string beans and sweet potatoes and harvest them for sale to a loeal supermarket. He's also begun a demonstration taro patch (the students joined in with glee to form the walls and paek the muddy soil with their feet). Students will get to plant and study different kinds of taro that Ryder is donating from his own windward O'ahu farm. Mueh of the seeds and plants,supplies and equipment for the garden were obtained by Ryder through donations from the University of Hawai'i and other sources. Ryder also has put together a master plan to be implemented whenever funds ean be found, to teach children about raising farm animals, native Hawaiian plants in a nursery,

incorporating Hawaiian studies using the garden as a living laboratory. He is eager to develop the plan as a model that other schools ean use to make education more creative for their students. A long-

range goal is to build a traditional Hawaiian halau near the school's existing outdoor hula mound/stage that ean be used by fourth-grade Hawaiian studies classes and other grades.

Ryder shows (l-r) Kaimi Nabeshima, Richard Fonoti and loakimi Seumanutafa how to cut cabbage.

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Ryder with fourth graders Kaimi Nabeshima, Enricky Dela Cruz and Otto Veligitone, preparing their harvest of cucumbers and soybeans.

The "Na Kamali'i 'Ohana" students at Aiea Elementary School.

DOE kupuna kako'o Luka Kauhola talked to students about Hawaiian herbs and let them sample "blackbird tea."