The Green Connection and School Engagement

For students to attend school regularly there needs to be a set of factors, both organisational and personal, that will facilitate a student’s successful participation in modern schooling. The student’s personal motivation and circumstances, particularly in low SEI contexts, often remain personal and private. New research from the Harvard and Stanford Universities (Dewey et al.,2025) reminded us that the effects of the COVID lockdowns still impact on students worldwide, and high-income districts recovered more quickly that low-income districts. We saw that the socio-economic and racial disparity impacted more heavily on maths, and widespread absenteeism slowed recovery in low socioeconomic districts. While Australia’s results are not as bad as those of the United States because of their school closures, the absenteeism is still an issue.

Serendipity and Green Engagement
Some years ago, our school community undertook a move to develop what we call the “Green Connection” that was intended to show our students that all of our food originates in the green world, and fruit and vegetables have a life before they appear on the shelves of IGA, Woolworths and Coles. Secondly, we took our first steps towards a primary school version of “Nature Therapy” and some of our students who found the four walls of the classrooms restrictive discovered the green world of freedom.

Six Examples of “Green Connection”
1. In Western Australia most of the older homes had a loquat tree (said “low-cat”) planted in the yard, and local children in the previous generations grew-up helping themselves to these overladen trees. The school gardener planted two loquat trees in the school yard, and the immigrant students did not know what the fruit was. Mr Rosher, the school gardener, started picking the fruit and placing on the tables scattered through the play areas, and soon the adventurous students decided to cut out the middle-man, and surreptitious tree climbing and branch shaking became a popular pastime. The lovely, shiny seeds that were discarded germinated and the gardener was able to give adventurous parents loquat seedlings. Johnny Appleseed?

2. The citrus orchard was very successful, and we found that some of out students did not know how to peel an orange. With this in mind, we planted a lot of mandarin trees because the fruit is smaller, sweeter and easier to peel. Every child had the option of fruit at recess time, even if nothing had been packed at home. Parents loved the lemons and these were placed on a table near the front gate and parents would take one when going past.

3. Surprisingly, the bananas have grown really well in this temperate climate and our students had never seen a hand of bananas. One of our teachers loved the ripening bananas, and it was a great advert for school-grown fruit.

4. The mulberry trees were originally planted to that the students could study silkworms in science, however, one consistent school-refuser (“T”) discovered mulberry fruit, while hiding from searching staff. This changed his life, and the colour of his hands and mouth. Using this as an incentive T was given meaningful tasks working in the school’s raised veggie garden beds. His attendance soared and disrespectful language that he had previously used disappeared. See case 1 (below).

5. Mulching food waste. The classrooms and gardener solved two problems at once when we decided to put plastic buckets into classrooms during lunchtime so that students could put their biodegradable food waste into the backets to be buried by the fruit trees. This proved to be successful and earthworms were seen among the decomposing biodegradable food waste. A second plus for this was that the weekly rubbish collection diminished in volume, and became less of a health hazard.

6. Student and staff - Nature Therapy. The growing fruit trees provide a focus for teachers and students, and it is not uncommon to see classes wandering among the trees and responding to their teachers’ questions. When the fruit is ripe (particularly the mandarins) morning tea is consumed around the laden mandarin trees.

Case 1: (T). Our student “T” was a student whom we recognised was going to be difficult to engage in school-based, classroom learning. His appearance, family background and lack of familial support put him into the vulnerable category. One of the biggest disincentives that prevented him from entering the classroom was that he was almost always late for the start of lessons, and he hated being exposed. Consequently, T would come into the school grounds and usually hide in the garden, so he could say that he attended school. The school gardener would talk to him, and get him to help with little jobs, and from that the school developed a plan to engage him in things where he felt safe, mixed with some formal education. 

What was encouraging was T’s personal growth, and ability to relate positively with others.

Case 2: (B), Was a school refuser and when he did attend school he was usually obstructive. Again, like student T he was more comfortable in the informal “Garden Club” that the school created. While B pointed out that he was nervous about coming to school he experienced a practical joy of learning about plants, and watching them through the growing cycle.

Case 3 (S). Interestingly, S said that he loved being outside, and did not enjoy the more controlled classroom environment. This case was important because S who often found it difficult to get along with other students felt that he could help students join the garden club. His favourite plant was broccoli, and he was happy “after planting the stuff”.

Developing a Sense of Place
Our school is developing a growing sense of engagement with the “Green Connection” and our small successes are showing what we can develop further. The concept of a sense of place is important in the development of every child, and our school is appropriately placed to positively impact on this aspect of students’ personal development. Emma Brindal (2023, p. 452) in some neat Australian research the project explored the practices of “sit spot, solo wander, journalling, gathering, story-sharing and nature names” with a group of children. Brindal’s study concluded: “The study finds that when integrated together, the nature connection practices foster embodied and generative place encounters; enable relationships with place and the more-than-human to emerge; cultivate learning with place and (re)story place relations.”

This is “work in progress” and we need to develop a sense of place that will be well remembered by students for its feelings of safety, learning experiences, respectful relationships, and a natural environment.

References
Brindal, E. (2023). Learning with place: Exploring nature connection
practices on the Earth Kids programme. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 39, 452–466. doi: 10.1017/aee.2023.5

Dewey, D.C., Fahle, E., Kane, T.J., Reardon, S.F., & Staiger, D.O. (2025). Pivoting from pandemic recovery to long term district reform: A district-level analysis. Education Scorecard. https://educationrecoveryscorecard.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pivoting-from-Pandemic-Recovery-to-Long-Term-Reform-A-District-Level-Analysis.pdf