Who Knew Broccoli Didn't Grow on Trees? School Garden Education in Colorado

Often as we teach kids where their food comes from, even 11th graders sometimes think broccoli grows on trees because they're not exposed to growing food.  Join us as we explore School Garden Education in the Denver, Colorado area with SustainED Farms' Matt Supronowicz and Maya McDowell. 

Transcript

Transcript CO F2S

00:00:07 Michelle

Welcome to the Farm to School podcast, where you and your stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper, when we learn how to grow and eat delicious, nutritious local foods in schools across the country..

00:00:18 Rick

and the world, we're your host, I’m Rick Sherman.

00:00:21 Michelle

Hey and I'm Michelle Markesteyn and we're so excited. We have two amazing, wonderful guests with us today from an organization called SustainEd Farms in Denver, Co, and they work with about 30 schools and the largest district in Colorado to bring gardening, nutrition, sustainability and food justice programs.

00:00:40 Rick

Welcome to the program. We have Matt Suprunowicz and Maya McDowell.

00:00:46 Maya McDowell

Thanks so much for having us.

00:00:49 Rick

If you could tell us. SustainedED farms. I got your website on there and we'll have all that links to your website and what you do in our show notes. Tell us about your journey. How you started in this field and how did that come about?  And also what while you're thinking about that wanted to kind of prompt you on the website, Matt's Origin story was on there, wouldn't it be cool if there was an organization that provided locally grown food, good and experiential education focused on sustainability and helped maintain and support school gardens. On top of that, what if the food went to families that really needed it?

00:01:31 Matt Suprunowicz

Yeah, I mean, I can start.  So I am the cofounder of sustainED farms and we founded in 2018. I think some of my work around school gardens started well before that and really my Co-founder, we were the teacher of Americorps members in Oklahoma, actually.  And we had an advisory class that had 11th grade… wasn't any curriculum or anything to do with that 40 minutes. So we were kind of making enough as you went along, and I wrote a grant for $300 to build some garden beds because they said, you know, this would be for my 11th graders to do. So we got the grant from my foundation and we built those garden beds and we had a local nursery donate like 4 trees and broccoli.  The only thing we grew the first year I remember students looking at that broccoli and saying I really thought broccoli grew on trees? These were 11th grade students because each little broccoli looks like a tree.  We're shocked to see how it was growing and I had a moment of realization at that time that like, yes, it's so funny and cute that a student says something like that, but that when we, the students that were in my class lived in North Tulsa and their access to a grocery store shopping was done at Dollar General. What proteins they have with largely canned food? And so when I thought about that after going home that night, I kept thinking like there's a reason why some people know how blocked grows, not just corn. They have access to a farm, but they may not. Have access to see it in a produce a lot of grocery store and you know fast food. I ended up moving to Colorado.  And I became really passionate about this idea of like what is gardening in school look like and how do we integrate that into adolescence. I was working on a school that actually had a one acre farm that it ended up being a more affluent area. And I was seeing students really engaged with homework and grow amazing and awesome produce that went to the cafeteria. But there was such a surplus that all that food that was extra ended up going right back into the compost file and so pounds and pounds of produce was going right back into the compost pile. And I got to this point where then I was like, you know..  Want to move back to Denver? And think about even what does this look like in a more urban setting? And I recognize that a lot of folks in agriculture are really focused on growing food and getting it to people that they have the teacher knowledge or the educational skills to be able to engage a class.  In January, I had classrooms of 35 students plus, depending on whether it's before after October, count and so I, you know, can someone have the skills to actually engage those students? And I got frustrated and I said we need an organization that does all of these things, that builds capacity for teachers in schools so that we maintain garden spaces but they are that have staff that comes in and knows how to work with diverse groups of students and large groups of students, and that really is making sure that the produce that's growing in school gardens and farms and getting back into the hands of the kids and families in schools that need it the most. But I don't know. Maya Joined In the past three years and have done such an influential part, I'm wondering what your origin and how does this interface stick out in your career?

00:05:06 Maya McDowell

Yeah. So I'm the manager of operations and programs here at sustainable farms for a few years now. I've got background in health development and food justice, respectively, and so shifting my funds was really kind of the perfect opportunity for combining those two passions that I have. I've done a lot of work in policy as it regards to food and emergency food. So after dealing with thankfully a little bit of ?? because, you know, ?? so very high. Lighted face for joy and all the intervention, and he was just injustice. And he's just super credible. We work with schools. We tend to focus on schools that have 70% or higher bail pop students population. We focus on federal law schools.  In schools that approximate food deserts and so, just in 2024 we have about 4000 tons of food across all of our school sites, and so 1000 unique students and so tremendous impacts for for a small but mighty organization. Really happy to be here.

00:06:23 Michelle

That is so amazing. It's incredible. What kind of engagement you can do? And I'm so curious, you mentioned food justice. What does food justice mean to you?

00:06:33 Maya McDowell

Excellent question. So because we're in the midst of posting a pre justice enrichment for a middle school students. It's kind of like an elective, but they can opt into. I'm going to tell our middle school students when we start this class with them is just… It's very basic.  It's just that they can understanding that all people deserve access to healthy, culturally relevant food in their community. And so at its baseline, one of the things that would be easy to agree upon, but it actually takes a lot of policy and work and organizing to make that a reality for people.

00:07:12 Rick

Another kind of follow up question I had. You're in Colorado. We got that picture how Matt came from Oklahoma. We kind of have a connection to Colorado I lived in Colorado Springs for a few years. A long time ago this was 30 years ago.

What about you? Where did you live, Michele?

00:07:32 Michelle

Rick and I didn't know we both lived in Colorado until right before we lived outside of Leadville, upon Mount Albert was when I moved out of my parents home when I was 17. And went to the BLM to do trail crew up Mount Albert.

00:07:47 Rick

So we bring that up to you guys because we're familiar with Colorado.

00:07:50 Maya McDowell

OK.

00:07:53 Rick

Can you tell how is it different running a school garden operation in Colorado compared to maybe some other places in the country?

00:08:04 Maya McDowell

Sure, I can take this one. So you both mention well aware that Colorado does have a proud agricultural you know, every we grow everything from *****, just sugar beets and the things to teachers. And so is it change to punch a school to have a high school that was constantly offered reimbursements for local food purchasing. As again as we make more, Colorado has a really very landscape. And so we've got plans and munches and urban city centers. So for sustainable farms, we're hyper local to gender because the needs of gender schools are really different than, you know, what might be necessary of the national schools, or what might grow, adding the claims.  Denver has a pretty high percentage of food differs surprisingly, and so the students aren't able to connect to that agricultural legacy that I talked about because they've never seen smoothies growing or helped anything to grow. How likely are they to eat that food? You really find that both hands on experiences in school gardens can contribute to, like lifelong love of nature and willingness to try new foods and just be more of an active participant in your in your health, so that early intervention is really important.

00:09:32 Matt Suprunowicz

I was just going to say like, one of the things we're really proud of even in Denver is just celebrating the different Colorado produce that we have across the state. We've been partnering with Denver Public Schools through nutrition services and this year we were very integral to the Colorado Proud school where… and with a day where we just celebrate Colorado produce and so every item on a student's menu is growing in Colorado and based in that. And then we designed garden programming, specifically nutrition programming. Where students were able to kind of like combine and match and understand what are the produce that we grow in a garden that matches what exists in Colorado but also in your cafeteria. So it's super exciting work that's happening across the state with produce and school.

00:10:24 Rick

But yeah, I got to think your growing season is a lot shorter. When a lot of the countries do it so like right now as we speak, it's of course it's a winter, but it seems like a winter last forever at times, right?

00:10:40 Matt Suprunowicz

It sure does. 

00:10:44 Maya McDowell

Yeah, yeah. Our growing season is short. And sometimes when I travel to other places, I'm immensely jealous. But we do what we can with a few months.

00:10:54 Michelle

Of because you're the Mile High city, right? Over 5000 ft elevation.

00:10:58 Maya McDowell

Yep.

00:11:00 Matt Suprunowicz

Looks a little bit different for like us. As you know, we have to maintain that garden site over the summer because students don't get access to it in the same way. You know, if we're only planting in April and May and we want those two months and then sometimes we get crossed in.  Even so, we like to think that we can do programming through November, but if we're not maintaining, say over the summer months, we really lose it in the fall because we're seeing so short. So it's it essentially work that we do is to make those school garden sites over the summer to make sure that they're actually living classrooms for when students return in August.

00:11:36 Rick

It says on the website that you maintain a life cycle of a school garden without adding additional pressure to school staff. I’m wondering what you mean by that and you mentioned sustainability and I wonder if that how sustainable is your operation like if you were to leave with the gardens continue to go?  What's your thought on that?

00:12:01 Matt Suprunowicz

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that we're really passionate about is when we partner with a school that we remain a partner with that school for as long as they want us. And so our idea is that when we, we are interrogated part of the school so that we are building capacity. And so I know this from my literal experience. I started a chicken coop at one of the most foods I was working with. And the summer teacher contract ends, but it's like, well, the chickens seem to be fed and so I have a teacher was going, you know, multiple times a week to make sure that our animals were alive on our little garden. And it was like, how is this sterile, right, that like I choose to do this myself so that my students have this unique learning opportunity?  And you know, I I wanted there to be an organization that could help build my capacity so that I could, you know, I was a literacy teacher.  So focus on what are my reading and writing curriculums and how am I intentionally tying the garden to that? But I wanted to be extended in the way that felt respectful to me and valued my time.  And so I think sustained farms is not about replacing anything. It's about adding something to a school and so many schools that we talk about, it's just the idea.  Like maintaining a school garden over the summer is so exhausting for them to try to solve it for us to be like, yeah, we got that. And then we're also going to make sure that our people, our staff, are trained just like teachers would. They know how to in class. For elementary program, we take a whole class out and we ask that the teacher is simply a participant with those students. And so when we run through our lessons, our staff truly takes the lead in this how to engage a whole classroom of people and so I think the idea about sustainability is a is a hard one and that is slightly different that we really want to make sure that we're build.  Do I think that many of the schools, if we were to say like yeah, we no longer can support you could take up those rains and build internal capacity? But, would never be our… We want to make sure that we are a real institution and we're really focusing on our Denver schools.

00:14:29 Michelle

Well, that was a really succinct example of building capacity. I’m wondering if you have some.

Examples. What does that mean to build capacity?

00:14:36 Matt Suprunowicz

Yeah. I mean, I think another example of that is at a middle schools, we have electives and so, you know, at Denver Green School, we have green students. If you don't want to take P/E as a fixed grader or to take music or art, you can literally take over and the same thing is like with some of our rich rims, depending on the schools, they're all up a little bit different. But the idea that like we can provide and lead an additional elective or enrichment that the school doesn't need to train a teacher on. And definitely the build within, but that gives us more opportunities for student leadership and for student autonomy to lead into the things that they're passionate about as they continue to increase.  And so, that's another example of like, yeah, we're doing that. I think the another one might be.  Right now, we harvest all of the food at the gardens and we use or we distribute some of that food to labeling food pantries and food. And so we're doing that harvesting and we're doing that like delivery system. So schools aren't worried about falling off the vine and not actually getting to people. Taking care of that and then we also have plans this season. We'll be planting the 10 most used in our crop. And so both specific crops, then we're going to be taking to those cafeterias and helping to get them right to school. So we're not asking the cafeteria staff to go out and harvest or to go pick up that we were actually taking that, and doing that ourselves.

00:16:13 Rick

What are some of those off the top of your head? 10 most used crops.

00:16:17 Matt Suprunowicz

So like three of them are to different varieties of tomatoes and they get used quite a bit. Snack Peppers are another one different now in varieties. So honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon are varieties that get used quite a bit. What else?

00:16:33 Maya McDowell

Our students love snap peas, snackable items, and we're going to be doing those in the school garden in the cafeteria.

00:16:44 Michelle

So you're with the district, the Office of Sustainability and Individual Schools. How is your work funded?

00:16:52 Matt Suprunowicz

Yeah. So I think we're really, really proud of our partnership with office sustainability, which is a district you know, department. And they found about 50% of our programming, which we're really proud of that work. And then I'm not in someone that ****, super important. So for title one schools, because the district contributes about 50%. We then fundraise through grants and through other methods to make sure that a title one school does not necessarily have paid any extra out of a discretionary budget or a base level services. You know they want to add tons and tons of stuff. You know, they might do some independent fundraising to get on that and if it's cool using a title in school, who sometimes partner with the PTA or our neighborhood organization to make sure that there's some money coming to help supplement that. But we're really proud of the work in the investment that Congress paid right now, by 2028 we're trying to do a lot of different things, but one of them is making sure that 100 gardens are activated across 200 schools. And that they're going 100 times of food. That gets back to our community, but that the students at those schools have access to regular gardens to stay healthy. Venezuela's nutrition, education. And so that's kind of like what we're working on with them to kind of really work to achieve these goals. But I know that we're quite lucky. Not every school Gardening organization has district support in this way and have to go more to go.  We were getting started. So we went and made sure that the schools could secure some portion of the budget.  But yeah, that's kind of how things are right now.

00:18:41 Michelle

So. So that's you just mentioned the intersection of policy is that their Wellness policy is that their district like which policy within the district, are those goals situated?

00:18:51 Matt Suprunowicz

It's their climate action plan.

00:18:52 Maya McDowell

OK. And I will say that the general public Schools Climate Action Plan was a student led effort and so that is really exciting. A group of high school students came together and said we want to see change and so, put together a plan action plan that focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and consolidating natural resources.  Students are able to connect a plan and so school guidance is just one sort of element of that. And the district has been able to support our work as we help them to uphold that student action plan. It's a really kind of symbiotic relationship there.

00:19:34 Michelle

It's incredible. And as you're going along and trying different things and seeing what fits, have you come up with some recipes of success? Like how many staff per how many schools, how many? I'm just wondering.

00:19:50 Matt Suprunowicz

Yeah. I think one of my core recipes for success is just like a rejection of something canned. Like everything looks a little bit different every school looks a little different. It's a little bit different in what works for different communities, even across Denver, it's just slightly different and so I think for me it's always a like you know, we have to agree this, like you know, stored factory model of like turning things out or creating space from a planning standpoint, but also implementation standpoint to be able to differentiate to the needs. I think one of the other things that's like super important for us is small groups. And so when we have a classroom, we come out, you know, sometimes we are… It could be 5th grade down in kindergarten and so when we think about that word differentiation, it's also like differentiation for our staff to learn that skill, to be able to take a base lesson because we change our lesson every season. So to take a lesson and be able to differentiate to the developmental needs of an early childhood student all the way up to a fifth grade or… that that's different than we can still learn some beast level things, which is the way that we deliver that might be shifting or changing and when the classroom comes out, we usually divide into two groups. We have two staff people there for a class and then we switch so smell of groups of about 15 allow for our staff to really make quick connections with kids and be able to deal with their content, and engaging way. And then it keeps it really for kids when they're going to multiple as well.

00:21:26 Rick

OK. And thank you for all that. And you've painted a really good picture of what you do. How you've done it, how you how you got here now, I guess the the last thing we have to say on our on our exit here is what do you see for the future:  So where are you going to now? You're going to stay Pat or you going to expand what?

00:21:48 Matt Suprunowicz

I mean, our focus is on Denver and there are right now there are 207 schools in Denver Public Schools, serves about 90,000 students. So right now, we have 40 gardens and we're serving 9000 students. We want to be able to work within GPS to grow. You know we are planning then goes through 2028 and we think we'll get to about 65 schools by 2028 or so give or take. And then we just want to make sure that every single kiddo in Denver have the ability, the connection to education, but also to those garden spaces so that they can become a leader. And so I think you throughout Denver and we still have a ton of work to do within the system of Denver to make sure that our denverites are ready to lead for our future.

00:22:41 Michelle

800 school gardens in Oregon that are a patchwork of different ways that they're managed and different things. I was like, how would you approach.. Like, how would you recommend an A state level? We would sustain our amazing Network of school gardens.

00:23:00 Maya McDowell

That's a great question. And I think that one thing that I've learned over the sustainED farms and doing this work is that we can't do all things. And so I think the first step is kind of finding out who are doing this work. You know, there are a lot of great organizations in Denver that might be more focused on community gardens and making more focused on food distribution. And what we do really well is the direct student education piece and so only know what different school gardens are looking for in a partnership and really kind of tailoring your approach and making sure that you're not trying to bite off more than you can chew and you're not reinventing the wheel and really being collaborative with other with other organizations and partners that are.

00:23:48 Matt Suprunowicz

Doing similar patchwork is... Like I like that lots of people are doing different things. I think when I look at what state policy or local policy is and thinking about funding a lot, but I think that making space for smaller organizations that are trying to do things, we started with two schools and operating budget of like $50,000 or like... I mean, it's really, really small. We couldn't tackle a lot of., you know there's caps and limits, especially because you know the state wants to make sure that money is getting to people that have proven themselves. I think that creating space to take risks and chances on people.  I mean, we are going to the size that we have because a lot of people took chances on us and show vision. And so I like very different levels of funding and creating space for innovation to connect and tie the patchwork, I guess.

00:24:46 Rick

And we certainly do in Oregon. You know, she did that as an open-ended question to to be thought provoking, but we certainly have a bunch of nonprofits here that do similar work that you're doing in Portland, down in Rogue Valley.  All over the place. I’d mentioned them, but I'd leave a bunch out. So I would just say if you are in whatever neck of the country or the world you are at to get on your computer and Google, you could go to the National Farmers School network and see what from the school looks like in your state, and they will list a lot of the nonprofits that do that kind of work. And so you could get involved too, right, Michelle?

00:25:30 Michelle

Your State Farm to school network as well.

00:25:34 Matt Suprunowicz

No, I think SGSO  is a great resource as well. Both my and I are very connected on there and we love to support and hear about what other people are doing and helping whatever it is we can. So we're widely passionate about this work and we want to make sure that every one has the school garden that get to access.

00:25:51 Rick

Thanks for that and I'll leave note links to that in the show notes. But SGSO is school garden support organization. Yeah. One of our one of our besties up here.

00:26:00 Michelle

And it's so amazing to hear your passion. You so much for sharing that.

00:26:06 Maya McDowell

Thank you for including creating the space for amplifying.

00:26:09 Michelle

And we'd like to thank everyone else for listening.

00:26:12 Michelle

Farm to School was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn with help from Leann Locker of Oregon State University, and was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:26:23 Rick

The content and ideas of the 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 AG and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:26:41 Michelle

Do you want to name more about Farm to school? Check out our other episodes, show notes and find our contact information and so much more. Search Farm to school podcast, OSU.

00:26:51 Rick

Yeah, we'd love to hear from you.  Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned and say hello, and please give us an idea for a future podcast.

00:27:00 Michelle

Matt, thank you, Maya.

00:27:01 Rick

Thanks, Mark, Maya and thank you everybody for listening. Happy growing.

00:27:05 Matt Suprunowicz

Thank you again.