Overview:
How a Timnath Elementary student turned a testing prompt into a community garden project meant to help classmates eat healthier.
A question on a CMAS exam inspired one Timnath Elementary School student to start a project that has since grown into a garden at her school.
Rhayna Higgins, a fifth grader at Timnath Elementary, said the idea came to her while taking Colorado’s CMAS standardized test for third- through fifth-grade students. During the exam, she began thinking about how many students were still hungry after lunch and not getting enough nutritious foods.
“Even though the lunch ladies were doing their best,” Higgins said, “it’s still not fair for kids to be hungry.”
She started thinking about how she could help students have access to healthier foods. The answer, she decided, was a school garden.
“One of the CMAS questions was about starting a school garden,” Higgins said. “I thought, ‘Hey, that’s actually kind of a good idea.”
Higgins has always enjoyed helping others and gardening. She learned many gardening skills at her church’s community garden, where fruits and vegetables are grown.
After discussing the idea at home, Higgins’ mother, Mercedes Pitoniak, who works at the school as an English language acquisition teacher, encouraged her to present it to Principal Jody Drager and Assistant Principal Elaine Rankin.
Higgins created a slideshow presentation and met with several staff members before receiving approval for the project. Although she said she was nervous at first, support from school administrators and the PTO helped bring the idea to life.
The Hidden Stem, a neighborhood garden shop next to Timnath Elementary, played an important role in the garden’s construction. The PTO board members connected Higgins with Lindsey Miller, the owner of The Hidden Stem, who provided plants and gardening supplies for the project.
Miller said she immediately wanted to help after hearing about the project.
“They reached out to me and said, ‘We have a student; she’s doing this, would you be interested?” Miller said. “I was like, ‘Absolutely. I would love to be involved.’”
When Higgins presented the idea to Miller, she arrived with a prepared speech, a blueprint, and a list of fruits and vegetables students hoped to see grow in the garden.
“You don’t meet kids very often like that,” Miller said. “She’s very well-spoken, and you could tell she had practiced her little speech and had it all ready to go.”
The garden was placed on the south end of the building outside of the cafeteria, allowing students easy access during recess and after school.
Higgins said Miller helped her create an ideal plan while learning basic gardening techniques. Higgins also researched on her own for the garden and surveyed classmates about their favorite fruits and vegetables to better understand what students wanted to grow.
With Miller’s help, the choices were narrowed to strawberries, lettuce and snap peas. Together, they built the garden beds and worked to maintain healthy plant growth. Miller stated that Higgins remained open-minded throughout the planning process, even when some ideas needed to change.
“It’s not my garden, it’s our garden,” Miller recalls Higgins saying throughout the process.
While students had hoped to grow crops like tomatoes and cucumbers, Miller explained that they would not be ready before summer break. Instead, they selected crops that students could harvest sooner.
“I basically showed her how to break the roots up and how to do the hole and what kind of supplements we’re adding in there,” Miller said. “Then I was like, ‘All right, here’s my two examples. Now get after it.’”
Although Higgins led much of the startup process, she hopes the garden becomes a community-wide effort. One goal for the next school year is to create a gardening club for students at Timnath Elementary.
“Being able to take home food … and feel full in a good way,” Higgins said, “is important.”
The project has quickly become a topic of conversation throughout the school. Higgins said students often stop her in the hallway or during recess to ask what she is doing.
“Well, I’m starting a school garden,” she tells them.
Their reactions, she said, are of excitement.
Higgins hopes the project can inspire nearby schools to create similar gardens. Although she will graduate from Timnath Elementary this year and attend Peakview Academy at Conrad Ball, she plans to continue helping maintain the garden throughout the summer and into next school year.
“The fact that she knows she’s not going to be there and still wanted to do it for her peers is really cool,” said Andrea Fetzer, Higgins’ fifth grade teacher.
Her hope is to see the first successful harvest of strawberries, lettuce and snap peas grown beside the school playground. If the first season goes well, Higgins said the garden could continue expanding.
“We might get one or two more bins and then plant more stuff,” Higgins said. “When the garden grows, maybe students could even take food home.”
Higgins said her favorite part of the project has been “seeing how happy it made kids.”
She also hopes students view it not as her garden but as a shared space for the community.
“She’s kind of sparked a really cool thing over there that nobody realized had the potential to grow,” Miller said. “I think it could become something future students continue building on.”
Not every community has a student like Higgins, but her efforts show how one idea, even one sparked by a question on a state test, can grow into something much bigger.
