Growing School Gardens Summit Part 3

Join Rick "on assignment" as he travels to the Growing School Gardens Summit, in San Diego California.  Rick interviews a Dozen people with amazing stories.  This is part THREE of a four-part series.

Transcript

Growing School Gardens Summit PT 3.mp4

Transcript

00:00:06 Michelle

Welcome to the farm to school podcast where you will hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we grow, cook and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools.

00:00:16 Rick

We're your hosts, as always, Rick Sherman.

00:00:18 Michelle

And Michelle Markesteyn, we are farm to school coordinators coming to you from the state of Oregon.

00:00:24 Rick

So Michelle.

00:00:25 Michelle

Yes, Rick.

00:00:27 Michelle

This is number three of four special episodes, right?

00:00:30 Rick

It is, it is. We're back at with you with three more exciting guests to share from the growing school garden summit in San Diego, CA actually. Well, the plane we landed in San Diego. But it was actually in La Jolla and we were there at a place where they… There was a golf course and they had the US Open, you know, golf championship 

00:00:54 Michelle

Do you play golf?  Like I should know this about you. 

00:01:03 Rick

badly. I mean, I I have played before and I played badly and I'm I'm not good or anything like that.  I was more into baseball as a kid, but it's fun, you know, to, you know, but.

00:01:05

Yeah.  OK all right. Yeah, yeah, I got some clubs.

00:01:09 Rick

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:10 Michelle

We, my son and I do a we whack walnuts in the backyard with golf clubs

00:01:16 Rick

Oh, that's fun.

00:01:18 Michelle

Yeah, on our little farm.

00:01:19 Rick

We should do this after we're done recording. OK, let's go.

00:01:22 Michelle

Let's go. So, at this conference there were over 500 school garden leaders from around the country.

00:01:30 Rick

500 -Yes, That was the word I get. I didn't physically count them all, but it was a big room of people. Yeah. It was a wonderful place to go. If you ever have the chance to go to one of these, I guarantee you will come out of it so inspired.

00:01:38 Michelle

Sounds really exciting.

00:01:50 Rick

By all the work that everybody does is. It's just it gives you goosebumps. It's just so cool. Yeah.

00:01:55 Michelle

How would you even find out about it?

00:01:57 Rick

Just if you Google growing school Garden summit, that's a good place as any and they will have it every two years. OK, I guess. And so and in in different places across the country, last time it was in Denver, I guess. 

00:02:11 Michelle

Well, let's, I'd love to hear some stories. Let's get going.

00:02:13 Rick

All right, let's get started. Let's hear it. Here we go.

00:02:20 Rick

So I'm here at the growing school garden summit yet again, and I have another wonderful guest with me. I have Regi Jones with me and Regi. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you located at what do you do?

00:02:33 Regi Jones

Yeah. So thanks for the question. Like Rick said, my name is Regi and I live in Santa Cruz, CA.

00:02:40 Regi Jones

And I work with Life Lab there.

00:02:43 Rick

Life Lab. what do you do when you when you do your stuff at life lab?

00:02:47 Regi Jones

Yeah. So at Life Lab, I'm the national curriculum and training specialist. So that's a really big title. That essentially means that I spend about half my time writing curriculum and developing new ideas and parsing them out. And I spend the other half of my time training educators, whether it be with on site workshops or offsite workshops. And I do things like this where I have incredible opportunities to network through a national facing conference like this one or through other nations.

00:03:16 Rick

So do you actually get out in the field and teach with the kids too? Or you're just more brought in some sometimes. 

00:03:21 Regi Jones

Sometimes, sometimes, yeah. Here. Recently, in order to prepare for the summit, my coworker Whitney and I went out into the field and worked with a group of 4th grade students on a lesson that we had been developing for some time.

00:03:36 Rick

OK. What's the one thing that excites you about your job, and there's probably many things, but just one that comes to your mind right now?

00:03:46 Regi Jones

Yeah. It's so hard to choose one. And if I had to say, I think right now the thing that excites me the most is just the opportunity for networking and the landscape of seeing so many people who are both new to the field and seeing a great amount of people who are experienced in the field and who are eager to share that information and that knowledge and that really excites me because it gives this way for new connections to be forged, and new conversations to be had and just new ways of doing combined with the also really great ways things have already been done and been going.

00:04:27 Rick

Can you give me some examples of some of those things?

00:04:30 Regi Jones

Yeah. So here at the summer, there's been a lot of opportunities for one key opportunity really for people who are new to the field and people who are more experienced in the field to connect through the activities of play. So Saturday, yesterday afternoon, a lot of us went out and we just played games and we talked with each other and people had the opportunity to ask questions and get to know someone who may have more experience or get to know people also outside of the context of like, let's just talk about work, let's just connect about work. Let's connect on self so we can build relationship.  And then from there mentor mentee thing can happen like people can connect and again those new ideas can be heard by people who have been around for a while and the ideas that have been ruminating and have been here for a while can be imparted on newer folks and through play through like having fun and laugh and getting to know each other.

00:05:30 Rick

That just sounds so awesome. And just to see just to see a kid's face light up when you're in that setting and making a connection with the student too and all that, what else could you what can you tell me about yourself?

00:05:51 Regi Jones

And yeah, one other thing I can tell you about myself.

00:05:51 Rick

What you do?

00:05:55 Regi Jones

I have the opportunity to work with educators virtually through virtual trainings, and those educators are really committed to the process of really learning what it takes to be a garden educator. So they take part of a 16 week class called the Certification course 

00:06:17 Rick

Through Life Lab?

00:06:18 Regi Jones

Yeah through life lab. Yeah, OK. And that certification course really provides the opportunity for Community building, are the skills that are needed in today's landscape of garden education? What does it look like to manage 30 kids out in the garden? What does it look like to set up stations? What does it look like to teach multilingual learners? And so really being on the forefront of that and the edge of that and people being like here are all the great things that I do and I'm eager to learn more about what else I could be doing well.

00:06:46 Rick

That sounds like a super great resource because I know some people, when they think of a starting a school garden or something, they get a little daunting to think about all that. Oh, I have to do. You know, I have to not only get the garden planted and cultivate that, but then I have to. It's like herding cats, you know, with the with. So that's good is it? Should people feel very concerned about that or?

00:07:16 Regi Jones

I don't think concern is the right word. Actually, I think people should be eager or can be eager to like that concern can be read as fear, and I think it's more of an eagerness to learn. It's like ohh how do I, you know, stop the Gophers from eating all the lettuce or destroying the plants. And it's like well, here's like some garden design tips. Here are some things that you can look into and the cert course like allows people to do that in real time. Allows that like if someone is having a problem  in their school garden one week and they come to the certification course and they connect with someone who's out there maybe having the same problem who has dealt with that. They solve that problem right there. They just like connect at the beginning of the class every single day, every single time they come, there's always that time for people to connect and just catch up with each other. Like how's it been going for you this week because it's an it's an international thing, like people from all over. Take the certification course and they really enjoy that aspect of being able to troubleshoot and resolve and graph.

00:08:20 Rick

OK, well I will put a link in the show notes about life lag and the certification course and everything that we've talked about today. So thank you so much for stopping by and saying hi, nice to it was great to meet you!

00:08:32 Regi Jones

Yeah. Nice to meet you too, Rick. And thank you for all the great questions, OK.

00:08:42 Rick

So I'm here at the growing school garden summit and I have with me Danielle Russell from Chicago. Danielle, hello.

00:08:50 Rick

And so tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do?

00:08:53 Danielle Russell

So my name is Danielle and I am the green schoolyards program manager at an organization called Open Lands in Chicago, IL.  There I do a number of things. So we have about 90 school gardens and green school yards that we've constructed since about 2006. So with that, we do a lot of professional development for teachers. We have a mini grant program to try and support that contingency of schools.  And then with the green schoolyards program, we are taking up asphalt and installing green infrastructure. So permeable pavement, playgrounds, fields, native gardens and also edible gardens and them working with the community to see like what they envision for that kind of space.

00:09:42 Rick

So I think a lot of our listeners know by now what a school garden is. But you said a green schoolyard and is that what you were talking about getting rid of some of the asphalt and mitigating that? Tell me more about that process.

00:09:53 Danielle Russell

Yes, yes. So with climate change, especially in Chicago, we're going to get a lot of heavier rainfalls. So more intense rain events where people's basements are getting flooded, our waterways are being overwhelmed. We have a combined sewer system so that rainwater and that sewage draws in the same kind of channel. So when we have too much rainfall, it gets into people's basements and then it creates issues polluting our waterways. And So what we're trying to do is install more green infrastructure. So with our program, it's called space to grow. It is the Chicago Green arts program, and with that, we're trying to capture rain where it falls so that it doesn't overwhelm and skirt off into the sewer system or into our rivers and our story.  And so with that, at this point, each schoolyard that we have and we have about 30, four of these green schoolyards, they're capturing at least 150 gallons of storm water per rain event. And then that water is slowly filtered and then released so that it's helping to mitigate flooding in people's basements.

00:11:12 Rick

Wow. See, I had no idea, but that makes perfect sense, especially in urban areas where there's not much green space that you know that water has to go somewhere and it's going to create problems. Well, that's really good. How do you think you're making an impact? Like do you see? Is it like a drop in the bucket or is it little by little.

00:11:34 Danielle Russell

what a great question. That's a great question. I would say that the hope is that green infrastructure is everywhere, so it doesn't have to be these large school yards where we're installing all these perforated pipes and all this gravel and everything. Trees are green infrastructure as well. Rain barrels are our green infrastructure. So we want to be a part of a green infrastructure ecosystem that is helping to manage this water, but hopefully I think our goal, our dream is that green schoolyards and green parks are everywhere, but there is impact. So just kind of like anecdotally, we haven't done any deep studies into this, but we've heard from neighbors around schools that their basements aren't flooding anymore. More from that green infrastructure standpoint in terms of having this new green space, we did have a study with Loyola University in Chicago where we found that these spaces are creating more opportunities for Community cohesion. So it's a place where more people are able to gather and also get along with each other, especially kids. We're seeing less bullying because there's more to do instead of just having like asphalt. They're having beauty around them. There's more to do, so there's less opportunity for fun to be had.

00:12:54 Rick

Yeah. Cool.  And you mentioned grants, you operate a grant too. Tell me more about that.

00:13:09 Danielle Russell

Yeah. So we have what we're calling our mini grant program right now. We're calling it the open lands Garden Growth grant. And so we have about 90 schools that are in our network. And so unfortunately, we only have two, two and a half staff people that we want to support all these gardens. And So what we have what we're doing right now is we're have we have an application where schools can apply for. Right now it's about $500.00 for supplies for their school garden. And then we'll also offer them Technical Support if they want support with like leading students in the garden or leading community members in the garden to help with that as well.

00:13:40 Rick

Great.  So are you behind the scenes or do you actually get out in the schools and get to to mix it up with the kids and stuff you do?

00:13:57 Danielle Russell

Both. Yeah. So I mean, we would love to be at the schools more often, but we also do a lot of professional development for teachers. So right now, our kind of main target audience is teachers.

00:14:15 Rick

Well, thank you so much Danielle, for stopping by and saying hi, I'll put a link to what you talked about and your grants and notes.. and thanks- any parting shots on your way out? Any words of wisdom?

00:14:28 Danielle Russell

Wow, that's a great question. I think just to keep an open mind about how young people can connect to nature and that it doesn't have to just be the garden, but it can be environmental justice, it can be nature play. It can be herbalism. And then also thinking about how their parents can connect in those ways as well, so that everyone has a place in the garden that's not just pulling weeds or transplanting things.

00:15:00 Rick

Yeah, bringing the message home. Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm glad I asked you that parting shot. That was really good. Thank you so much, Danielle.

00:15:11 Danielle Russell

Thank you. That was fun.

00:15:13 Rick

So I'm here at the growing garden Summit still and I was able to snag a longtime friend of mine who I've known for years and years in passing at these at these conferences. And it's Erin Croom. And you're in Atlanta, GA, correct? And you're with small bites adventure club. So tell me about that.

00:15:27 Erin Croom

Hi, thanks for having me.

Small bites adventure Club.

00:15:34 Rick

What is that like? What is what? What do you do there?

00:15:37 Erin Croom

Yes, our mission at small bites Adventure Club is to help children eat and love fruits and veggies? And we do that by empowering teachers through our hands on kits that we ship out every month.

00:15:44 Rick

OK.

00:15:49 Erin Croom

Basically, put everything in a box to make hands on cooking easy for them so...

00:15:55 Rick

OK, How do you make it easy for him with those kids?

00:16:00 Erin Croom

So we know teachers are great at teaching, but we know teachers are really short on time. They're short on time you know? Having the resources to make great things happen sometimes so, we send out everything from like the step by step recipe instructions for different recipes. Every month stickers you got to have stickers. Every kid loves stickers. Yes, you can't have a program without stickers so little. I tried it. Stickers go in the packet, take home letters for their favorite…

00:16:23 Rick

I have stickers. There we go. Yeah.

00:16:33 Erin Croom

The kids favorite grown-ups and also sometimes we even send fresh ingredients straight to the school so that they can do the hands on cooking now.

00:16:41 Rick

You didn't always do this. You grew into and created this. So what did you do before? How did you get your start? Let's go in the Wayback Machine to ..

00:16:52 Erin Croom

The way back machine. So over 20 years ago, I read an article about this school garden program, Mosa Farm program over the summer where kids would go out and learn about where their food came from. And I thought this is amazing. Yeah. And I heard about folks in Vermont that we're starting to get started. So I went. I grew up in Mississippi. Went to school in Vermont, did Graduate School there. It was very scary because it was very cold and I didn't know anything about Vermont and so that they were really doing some of the first work around the farm to school. So I was able to study that, do my research. I wrote my masters thesis on farm to school. And so when I moved back South to Georgia, I started a farm to school program with many, many partners within the state and we grew it, you know, over many, many years. So I used to work with George Organics, which is a wonderful nonprofit and is still doing amazing work.

00:17:54 Rick

Now, were you at Georgia Organics? Is that where you did the golden radish? And I remember that I've just always been jealous of that and we needed to do a like a golden pear or something in Oregon. But yeah, OK, how? Tell me about that.

00:18:07 Erin Croom

Yeah, the golden radish! So we started the farm to school program at two schools and quickly realized that we were going to need a different type of system to scale the program and to, you know, how are we going to bring farm to school to, you know, that over 100 districts? I think it's 190 districts, and what we found is that school nutrition directors were brilliant. They had great ideas, but what we really needed to do was recognize the work they were doing. We needed to highlight the Champions and provide some kind of a, you know, a matrix for what is farm to school. So how helping to define it, it's school garden, it's local procurement. It's teaching about food in the classroom. So once we kind of provided that framework. And rewarded very publicly the great work that was being done, it really meant so much to school district leaders and champions to be recognized in a way that was very public. You know, we would have the awards at the Capitol, we would have you know the all the Superintendent of education and Agriculture come out and I think it was, it was really meaningful in a great way to grow the work and grow the Champions that we're leading in.

00:19:26 Rick

I know when I was a food service director for years and years, I always had an award ceremony every year and I brought the Superintendent and the school board to hand out the awards. They were just dollar store frames. But to see the look on the people when they got like you serve the best pizza in town or you're the rookie of the year..  and you know, I'd wear a tux and things and make it a big deal. And that was so fun. And so we've been trying to get that the ball rolling again in Oregon and maybe this next by any, we're going to do it. And you're an inspiration for that. So yeah, that's good. Oh, well, geez, back at you. 

00:19:57 Erin Croom

Oh, thank you. Well, you're an inspiration for me. You're doing the great work every day in and out...

00:20:04 Rick

Well, stop. OK, So you left George Organics. What was the precipitous if it was, or what is the what was the “why” did you go and start the Small Bites Adventure Club?  What was the need? 

00:20:24 Erin Croom

So, well, the transition was, I stepped down from Georgia Organics just to do more consulting work. My kids were really little and it was a really special time. So, but I continued to do, you know, consultant work and the Kellogg Foundation had actually found a strategic plan that we had written for farm to early care. So I got really fascinated with farm to early care and like the importance of working with children, zero to five and that critical and special and unique time when kids are really open to trying new things and also the teachers are so into cooking and gardening and it really resonates with them as well and that that they're charged to us, the Kellogg Foundation was how can we create formed our like farm to early care programming that is equitable and scalable. And so I got really fascinated how do you scale high quality programs. And so I started, you know, thinking about the growth of like HelloFresh, you know meal kit programs and I had a friend that had a really like local food based meal kit program.  And I just got really fascinated with how can we put farm to school in a box? Because when I would go out to schools, particularly childcare programs, people would say to Teachers would you know, I love all this great work you're doing, but what am I supposed to do on Monday morning? How am I supposed to translate this to a four year old? You know, this curriculum is awesome, but it's been sitting on the shelf and I love that conference that you did last year, you know the people that we sent, you know they don't work here anymore. So we needed something turnkey, something with that. That was easy. Something was really simple. That any teacher could do. So that's kind of how we got started is like, how easy can we make? High quality farm to school for any teacher.

00:22:11 Rick

Wow. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. Yeah, because I mean, this whole reason we're doing this podcast because I think we do such a good job in the schools, the cafeteria, the classroom, but the community and stuff like, there's so many people that just don't know about. Like when I bump into somebody and they say, what do you do for a living? I go. I'm a farm to school analyst, coordinator and they'll say what is Farm to school? And then I'm. I talk about school gardens. And then there’s gardens at schools, there's they just don't know, you know, so it… That's a good perspective to put on things so…

00:23:00 Erin Croom

Yeah, and putting the joy back into it. You know, I think a lot of times, you know, we get caught up in, like, what are the procurement regulations and you know, and it's like, I think, you know, teachers always lead with joy and they, you know, kids love the curiosity and the, you know, getting their hands, you know, making new things and dirty, you know, tasting. And it's a messy thing. So, you know, whatever we can do to help facilitate that process for teachers is what we’re excited about.

00:23:21 Rick

Yeah, you bet.  Well, well, great. Well, Erin, thank you so much for stopping by and saying hello to us and I look forward to seeing you again!

00:23:42 Erin Croom

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

00:23:43 Rick

Sir. All right, bye.

00:23:52 Rick

Hey everybody. We'd like to thank all of our guests for being a part of our show and thank you.

00:23:56 Rick

For listening today. Wow, what a gift to hear folks share their stories. Farm to school was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, with production support from Leanne Lochner from the Oregon State University.  This podcast was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:24:16 Rick

The content and ideas on the farm to school podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education, and the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are Equal Employment providers and employers.

00:24:37 Michelle

Want to learn more about Farm to School? Connect with us. You can check out other episodes, show notes, and send us your ideas for other episodes at Farm to schoolpodcast.org. That's all one word farm to schoolpodcast.org.

00:24:54 Rick

We would love to hear from you too, so stop by the website. Just mention to say hello or give us an idea for a future podcast. Thanks everyone. Bye.

00:25:02 Michelle

Thanks everyone for listening.