You may have noticed from the dismissal queue this afternoon, some exhausted yet spirited fifth graders, their teachers, and chaperones as they disembarked from a bus near the front circle. This hardy crew had just returned from the fifth grade’s annual three-day excursion to The Farm School–a working farm and non-profit organization out in Athol, Massachusetts. The farm sits on 130 acres of beautiful fields and woods, and this journey to them is a landmark lower school experience and a stepping stone to further adventures and development in middle school.

Time at The Farm School affords students the chance to bond with their classmates and teachers away from campus, and the opportunity to connect deeply to nature. The work and care of the farm is a central component of The Farm School’s visiting school program. Students (and their faculty chaperones) learn about and participate in many of the farm’s necessary activities, such as harvesting crops, collecting eggs, milking animals, and tending to the fields, orchards, garden, and forest. Participants also help prepare the food served at all of their meals. In the process, they learn about where their food comes from and how composting their food scraps will further enrich the soil on the farm. The students also learn about how the farm serves its surrounding communities by distributing produce to local organizations that help fight food insecurity.

Visiting The Farm School is just one of many ways that the students and faculty at Belmont Day School connect to the environment. Tucked beyond Archery Field, we have a thriving campus garden that is part of the curriculum of various grades. The garden is maintained throughout the year by volunteer parents, faculty, and students under the leadership of Kathy Jo Solomon, art teacher and sustainability coordinator. Having a school garden motivates students to become stewards of the earth. Our garden provides some of the produce that the children and adults at school consume in their lunches. This allows students to understand where their food originates from and to take an active part in planting and tending to these vegetables, such as potatoes, tomatoes, and squash. And in the summer, when classes are not in session, any surplus of food that is harvested from the garden is donated to local food pantries, such as Food Link in Arlington. As the year unfolds, you will hear about how the second grade partners closely with Gaining Ground, a nonprofit organic farm in Concord that grows vegetables and fruits, and similarly provides this food to nearby meal programs and food pantries in need.

Our school’s commitment to sustainability and our responsibility to learn from and evolve that commitment continue with other daily practices. Our campus events utilize compostable plates, cups, and covers, napkins, and flatware whenever there is a need for disposable items. Every classroom has recycling and compost bins, and bins are also located in central spots around the campus, such as in Coolidge Hall, the faculty room, and office areas. Belmont Day partners with Black Earth Compost, a local company that takes all food waste from meals and snacks off-site and converts it into organic soil matter. The school has a single-stream school-wide recycling program, and our middle school students collect recyclables from all spaces throughout the school.

Last year, we added a textile recycling bin to our greening efforts. The large white bin, located next to the Barn, is provided in partnership with Bay State Textiles and accepts clothing, footwear, linens, and even used stuffed animals to prevent these items from ending up in a landfill. Internally, a faculty member created a Buy Nothing BDS program, which is an online group where faculty and staff can donate unwanted objects to other colleagues to be reused or repurposed and to prevent items from ending up in a landfill.

While learning is happening every day within our classroom walls, the experiences created beyond them at The Farm School, in our garden, at Gaining Ground, and elsewhere further our lessons to be good and active stewards of the Earth. I suspect that after our fifth graders get some rest over the long weekend, they will return with tales of intimate interactions with Mother Nature and a vision of how they will play a part in Belmont Day’s commitment to sustainability.

Have a great weekend, everyone!