KAILUA-KONA — Before the official school day begins at Kahakai Elementary School in Kailua-Kona, class is already in session for a small group of students.
Keiki are painting, raking leaves, planting seeds, harvesting food and weeding small patches of dirt in their garden under the watchful eye of Leah Winkler.
But Winkler isn’t a teacher. She’s a mother and volunteer.
“It’s really about creating a safe place for kids to come before class to build the school community and do plant-based learning so they can learn about the plants that we can grow,” she said. “And they’re learning about the plant cycles and starting that dialogue with each other. I think it’s kind of important for them to learn those kinds of things.”
Winkler’s off-the-curriculum gardening class meets at 7 a.m. each day in the school’s garden at the center of campus.
On Thursday morning, Winkler and the students were digging through the garden’s soil to plant beet seeds. Winkler showed students how to make holes in the dirt for the seeds, using their fingers in the shape of a “magic shaka.”
Beets are just one of the many types of food Winkler’s students learn to plant and grow. Fruits and vegetables such as bananas and tomatoes, as well as different types of herbs, are all on the menu.
When the food is harvested, the students weigh the fruits and vegetables and log the harvest in the garden’s journal.
Some of the food is eaten by the students, and some of it is sold to raise funds for the garden. Today is the school’s next “market day,” during which Winkler and the students will sell their crops and plant starts before school at the front of campus to teachers, parents and guardians.
A few of the crops are used to teach healthy eating and healthy habits to the keiki. And there’s also a compost bin for learning about soil and how to have a healthy garden.
Sprinklers being turned on in the garden’s beds signal to the students their time with Winkler is pau — for the moment — and it’s time for their other classes to begin.
And even installing the sprinkler system was a teaching moment for the students.
“Last summer, we added the irrigation,” Winkler said. “The kids helped us engineer and design it and put it in the beds and then we put all the sprinkler heads and stuff on there. So that’s made a huge difference in harvesting.”
Winkler’s a mother to two students at Kahakai Elementary — her daughter, Nai‘a Nakasone, is in fourth grade and her son, Nalu Nakasone, is in first grade. Last year, her daughter attended a before-school program that had Winkler and Nalu at the school an hour before classes were set to begin.
Winkler didn’t want to leave Nalu at school with nothing to do, so she stayed and began going back into the garden with him.
“I started coming back here with him and then slowly kids started seeing us back here,” Winkler said. “At first, there was like six kids, and then there was 15 kids, and now there’s about 20 kids every morning.”
Winkler said it’s mostly the same students who come to the garden every morning to help, and not every student in the garden is looking to work. She said some students just come by to socialize or read a book in a “safe space.”
“They choose to be here,” Winkler said. “The kids that are here every day, they don’t have to be here. They get really pumped to be back here.”
Winkler, who works as a bartender at Kona Brewing Co., conducts the gardening class on her own time. The plant starts the garden began with were purchased with her own money, as were some of the equipment and tools the students use.
Kahakai Elementary School vice principal Nia Lovell also supplied Winkler with a few hundred dollars for some of the equipment necessary to start the garden.
“I love doing it because I see how strong it makes these kids, and how it makes this really strong community within the school,” Winkler said. “And no matter if it’s tomorrow, or next week, or in a year, their work that they’ve done here will always be here. That energy and that mana that they’ve put into it, it stays in the garden.”
Since starting the program last school year, Winkler and the students also created several new gardens on the school’s south side.
One is a “zen garden” with plants such as succulents that require less water and attention. Another across the path has, among other plants, banana trees donated from Kona Brewing Co.’s Brew Pub.
Winkler hopes the gardening project will making Kahakai Elementary beautiful for years to come.
“These kids work hard every day back here. It’s incredible what they’ve been able to do,” Winkler said.
Email Elizabeth Pitts at epitts@westhawaiitoday.com.
