Bushwick School Kids Reclaim ‘Rat Kingdom’
Mrs. Mahgoub’s kindergartners learn about urban ecology while getting their hands dirty at the Umoja Garden. — Photos by Jessica Aguirre
On a recent Wednesday morning, 14 kindergartners were squeezed into themselves, fingers laboriously clasped over their knees and ankles. They were pretending to be seeds. “Ok, now grow up to the sun!” cried out their teacher, Geimy Colon, and 14 dutiful pairs of arms waggled upward.
The kindergartners, a class from a local public school, were at the innovative Umoja Learning Garden in Bushwick, an urban ecology project funded by the City Parks Foundation that gives children a chance to experience science outside of the classroom.
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Umoja is an educational facility for children in four local public schools — two in Bed-Stuy and two in Bushwick — but it is also used by social service agencies as a learning space and by local residents as a place to grow food. There is currently a waiting list for a plot, but everyone is welcome to come in and spend time in the garden if the gate is open.
The curriculum for the day revolved primarily around butterflies and the evolution of caterpillars; which scholastically entailed lectures on chrysalis, and practically involved crawling around pretending to crunch on leaves and simulating pollination with tennis balls.
The children were impishly exuberant, jostling with each other and observably delighted. The release of butterflies at the end of the lesson elicited a few terrified shrieks, followed by a general round of applause.
“They’ve become very inquisitive” beams teacher Jennifer Mahgoub, referring to her class. “And it flows from science to other subjects.”
Mahgoub, one of the pioneering teachers in the learning garden, said she hopes that the program becomes widely available.
“It broadens their mind,” she said of the children, “and they begin to see things not just for what they are, but they begin to question things.”
The Umoja Learning Garden juts out conspicuously on a long busy corner between Broadway and Putnam, and is nestled between the overhanging J train subway track and an imposing brick apartment building. The land, which was once colloquially referred to as Rat Kingdom, was reclaimed a few years ago by the foundation and inaugurated last May.
“It’s important for us that all our community groups are local and within close proximity so that people can walk to the garden easily and help revitalize their community,” said Colon, who grew up in Bushwick and helped start a garden when she was in high school in Williamsburg.
