The only way students are going to become interested in a career is to discover what they are passionate about; and in order strike passion, one must fully understand what each path entails, from top to bottom.

When I went through school, “inspiration” was reading a page of a textbook and taking a quiz on the information the following week.

It was hard for me to find my passion in a textbook.

However, that is no longer the case, at least at Poplarville Lower Elementary School.

Yesterday, I took a trip to the campus to visit the school’s vegetable garden, created by kindergarten to third grade students.

My initial thought was that they were simply given a garden hoe to dig a hole and a hose to water the plants. But what I saw gave me confidence in today’s education system.

These kids weren’t just there to water the plants, they made the garden beds, filled them with soil, planted the seeds, plucked the weeds, germinated the beds and kept the plants alive with a little help from the teachers and the agricultural science program at Poplarville High School.

After the kids successfully grow the vegetables and have a taste of their hard work, they will complete the full experience as a gardener by selling their crop at the Poplarville Farmers Market.

These kids appeared to enjoy tending the garden; they all had smiles on their faces, eager to get out to the garden beds to see how their vegetables were doing.

Passion filled their eyes and I could see a couple of future gardeners in the group of 2nd graders I had the opportunity to speak with.

They even taught me a few things, like how to tend a banana pepper plant and the right time to harvest them.