It’s always the same when adults come to schools to speak to kids, whether it’s the president of the United States talking to the camera or Pueblo farmer Shane Millberger telling Kepner Middle School students about the watermelons he grew for their lunch.

They do their best to stay quiet but eventually begin to fidget, whisper and giggle.

The west-side school hosted a Colorado Proud meal for community leaders and the media to show how a simple garden can improve attitudes, nutrition and community connections.

The “stay in school, eat your vegetables” message is as old as dirt. And it’s in the dirt that these students are beginning to absorb the lesson. An auditorium full of 12- and 13-year-olds is a tough crowd, but get them outside to the school garden and, just like the plants, they come alive.

“Would you like a tomato, miss?” says Omar Velazquez, 12, cupping both hands full of tiny sun-warmed tomatoes.

Standing among leafy green cornstalks, Kepner principal Frank Gonzales points to an expanse of hard-packed dirt covered with spiky brown grass. “See that. That’s what this was like,” he says.

Until last spring, the Kepner Garden Club had no members. The school had no garden. But with the help of generous donations and rain, tomatoes, onions, watermelons, tomatillos and herbs now flourish in 3,000 square feet of cultivated earth.

“It was the worst soil I’d ever seen,” says Eric Kornacki, who collaborated with LiveWell Westwood to help Gonzales and teachers Tamar Rosenberg and Pamela Rojas take the garden from idea to harvest.

“I took a lot of heavy equipment and manual labor. We had to till it twice with a rototiller and once by hand, just to dig out all the rocks,” says Kornacki of the more than 100 volunteers who helped the student club reclaim the 8,000-square-foot plot.

“The ground was so hard, we had to turn the dirt around,” says Velazquez, a seventh-grader who brings his experience on a farm in Mexico.

Kornacki and Gonzales see the garden as a way to turn lives around.

Kepner sits in the middle of a “food desert,” an area with limited access to healthy food. The neighborhood around Federal Boulevard and Kentucky Avenue has convenience and liquor stores, small food markets, fastfood outlets and pedal-powered ice cream vendors, but no full-service grocery stores.

“Food injustice is maybe one of the most hidden injustices that plague these communities. Fast food and junk food is just there, without the understanding that these companies are targeting you and profiting here, and that system is keeping people trapped in a cycle of poverty and poor health,” says Kornacki, whose Denver-based nonprofit, Revision International, works on a local level toward global sustainability.

He tells the garden-club kids that the work is about more than just labor. “You’re going to be pulling weeds, but you’re not here to pull weeds. You are here to address an injustice, learning to be change-makers for your community,’ ” Kornacki says. “If they can grow food and feed themselves and their community, they can fight that injustice.”

From garden to lunchroom

While the students offered cherry tomatoes outside, chef Christopher DeJohn and a team of lunch ladies toiled in the school kitchen, preparing the Colorado-grown watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, tomatoes, peaches and strawberries for the special lunch. The Kepner students weren’t at all surprised to see fresh fruit on their plates. If they want dessert, they have to buy it, so most reach for the sweet — and healthful — option.

DeJohn, a former nutrition professor, says that’s a smart approach to making foods healthier. “People think it’s all about no fat, no salt, but it’s about cooking food well — using fresh ingredients, cooked properly, with fresh herbs — and making it look good.”

Dressed in his chef whites and the requisite hat, DeJohn, who now runs the Centerplate catering operations at Invesco Field at Mile High, carved some of the fruits into roses. “The kids were captured, they loved seeing that; then it was really about ‘Can I have that strawberry?’ “

Extending the garden metaphor, DeJohn says, “I think it planted a seed. The people tilling the land, that’s who this is benefiting. Essentially, we’re providing better nutrition to the kids, so they will be healthier, and their children will be healthier.”

From garden to classroom

Tamar Rosenberg, a special-education teacher who supervises the garden club, knows the value of alternatives to the classroom. “You can see them vibrating at their desks,” she says. “Some of the students who most need consistency in their lives have stayed with the garden. One of my kids’ grandmother told me this was the only school buy-in he’d ever had.”

Beyond simple horticultural skills, the students have learned how to measure the plots and mark out straight lines in the garden, and how to make eye contact and count money at their Saturday morning farmers market, which runs at the school through Sept. 26.

In her art classes, Pamela Rojas asks students to share what they like about their school garden. One girl says she works in the garden so she doesn’t have to go home after school. Janessi Hall, 11, would like to see more of “the growing foods served in the lunchroom — they actually taste better,” the sixth-grader says.

Rojas says she has already seen a change around the neighborhood, too. “Our shed has been graffitied or tagged several times, but the garden has not been touched. We are seeing a community being built,” she says.

Turning to her class, she poses a question: “Can you imagine being under fruit trees out there, painting pears? It can happen.”

Completing the circle

Every day, Denver Public Schools feeds lunch to 39,500 children, about half the enrolled population, and the numbers are rising, says DPS food and nutrition head Leo Lesh.

Lesh naturally bristles when people dis school lunches. “We haven’t had a fryer in 15 years,” he says, taking a seat at one of the Kepner lunchroom tables. “We might have fries, but they’re baked; we have chicken, but it’s oven-roasted. A lot of things kids want to eat are on the menu, like pizza, but with low-fat cheese, whole-wheat crust and turkey pepperoni. It does kids a disservice to put something on the menu that they’re not going to eat.”

Over the past 10 years, schools have taken academic nutrition research and turned it into tangible, good food that kids will eat, says Denver dietitian Mary Lee Chin, whose children attended Denver public schools and who has spent her career working on child-nutrition issues. “There has been a dramatic shift — for the first time different factions are finally coming together to improve what kids eat,” she says.

Lesh says DPS is working to close the farm-to-fork circle, not only in the cafeteria but in the classroom, as well. Two programs funded by a $1.3 million grant from the Colorado Health Foundation — “School Nutrition Plus” and “SuperFoods” — work in tandem to coordinate the lunchroom message with curriculum, promoting nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables, developing lesson plans and encouraging parent education and involvement.

“School nutrition directors haven’t just jumped on board recently because the activists have said, ‘Enough with the canned peas,’ ” says Chin, who is helping promote the Colorado School Nutrition Association’s annual meeting, Oct. 9-10 in Colorado Springs. “There’s plenty of room at this table for everybody.”

Kristen Browning-Blas: 303-954-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com

Six tips toward a healthier diet and lifestyle

1. Watch your portion size. “People in this country overeat,” says chef Christopher DeJohn of Centerplate catering. “Manufacturers put out giant plates that people think they have to fill. We don’t need to eat that much.”

2. Try not to eat anything pre-prepared. “Buy fresh food. Don’t buy margarine, buy butter. Just use less, or mix it with olive oil,” says DeJohn.

3. Look at dessert differently. “Sugar is a big issue. Look at the components of dessert: What do you use? Don’t use chemicals like artifical sweeteners. Try agave syrup instead,” says DeJohn.

4. Think about presentation, make the food attractive. “We eat with our eyes,” says Anne Wilson, who runs the Denver Public Schools Super Foods program.

5. Focus on what you can enjoy, rather than what you are giving up.“Instead of telling kids ‘you are missing calcium and fiber,’ instead, we say ‘why don’t you have a bowl of whole grain cereal with milk?’ ” says dietitian Mary Lee Chin.

6. A good diet is just one element in a healthy lifestyle. “It’s not just all about food. You can eat healthy every day but if you sit and watch TV, that’s not good for you, either,” says DPS food and nutrition director Leo Lesh. “We have to connect physical activity and nurtition.” Kristen Browning-Blas