Cultivating Curiosity- Digging into real stories of how farm to school is changing classrooms—and communities—from the ground up. A conversation with Jade Davidson

Join us as we sit down with Jade Davidson, Executive Director of Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom. Jade leads a small but mighty nonprofit dedicated to helping students understand where their food comes from and how Oregon’s diverse natural resources shape our lives.

Transcript

Cultivating Curiosity- Digging into real stories of how farm to school is changing classrooms—and communities—from the ground up. A conversation with Jade Davidson

Join us as we sit down with Jade Davidson, Executive Director of Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom. Jade leads a small but mighty nonprofit dedicated to helping students understand where their food comes from and how Oregon’s diverse natural resources shape our lives.

Transcript

00:00:05 Rick

Welcome to the farm to school podcast where you will hear stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods in schools across the country and the world, we're your hosts - I'm Rick Sherman.

00:00:20 Michelle

Hey, and I'm Michelle Markesteyn, and we are here with Jade Davison. Hi, Jade.  I met Jade most recently over the last year as she.. thank you for joining us in Oregon, but is now the Executive director of Oregon AG in the classroom.

00:00:35 Jade Davidson

That's right. I've been here for almost 14 months.

00:00:39 Michelle

So you've been through all the rainy season, rainy season, rainy season, dry season, rainy season.

00:00:46 Jade Davidson

Yes, but this winter I will say it's been surprisingly dry. And I really miss the sun, so I'm really trying to take it in.

00:00:54 Rick

So this is really cool We just, we had recently a national AG in the classroom program with Randy Seagraves a couple months ago. And so this is really good. We have a local connection now. So Jade does it locally. Every state has an AG in the classroom program.

00:01:11 Jade Davidson

Yeah, that's a good. So when I like to explain it to people, I usually say first that there's a national agriculture in the classroom and there's only one Oregon.  So, Minnesota doesn't have Oregon Ag in the classroom, but they have Minnesota AG in the classroom.

00:01:28 Rick

This is so confusing.

00:01:29 Michelle

I think you can follow along. You can hit this.

00:01:31 Jade Davidson

So yeah, so each state does have its own agricultural agriculture in the classroom program, we're all set up a little bit differently. But in Oregon, we operate as a non profit.

00:01:42 Michelle

And what do you do?

00:01:44 Jade Davidson

As the executive director, I do a lot of things, although in general I think that I see what I do as our mission, which is to make sure that we're helping students learn more about Oregon agriculture, the environment, natural resources. But I would say that my job specifically is much more nuanced. So as the director, I'm, you know usually fundraising, seeing and overseeing programs, and also most recently, Michelle, you and I were working on strategic planning.

00:02:14 Michelle

We love a good plan.

00:02:16 Jade Davidson

Yeah. Yeah. I'm really like, a checklist “To Do” List gal so, that's been really exciting, too.  You know, I think a lot of people think of organize classroom and they think of, well, we are what our mission is. But really, the staff is the mission and I just make sure that we all stay on the rails.

00:02:37 Michelle

So you mentioned. What types of programming do you do?

00:02:40 Jade Davidson

Sure. Gosh. Well, I'll just start with this morning.  So in the spring and I will also say that. And I think this is probably very similar across many agencies programs. But all of our work is very cyclical. So in the winter and the spring, we're really focusing on the literacy project and this is an annual project that we do and have done for. I can't.. I think this is the 18th year, but you know my second year, so every spring we have the annual spring literacy project and every year we pick a new book related to agriculture. This year we're featuring the book indoor farm. Actually this year we're featuring the book outdoor Farm Indoor farm by Lindsey Metcalf. And the book is probably no surprise comparing outdoor farm technologies to indoor farm technology. We also develop an activity to go with it and then we go around to different classrooms all together to read the book and to do the activity. Takes about 45 minutes and we do that every. So we've been piloting it this year and really testing it out, making sure that the project and the instructions are cohesive and that it's age appropriate. So last year in the 2024 school year, we reached almost 20,000 students, which was our yeah, which was our biggest year yet, so, that was about 912. So this year we placed an order for about 900 books, so we hope to do that many again. So then that's just one program, though we do so many other things in the spring. We also have a calendar contest. We get entries from students all over the state. Last year we had about 1500 different calendar entries and each one has to feature Oregon agriculture. Also, unsurprisingly, we don't accept things like, you know, logos like Tillamook ice cream for example, but we generally look for entries that feature different Oregon commodities. So dairy.. 

00:04:31 Michelle

Strawberry.

00:04:33 Jade Davidson

Strawberries. And you've probably mentioned this on the podcast before, but Oregon has over 220 different commodities.

00:04:40 Michelle

Amazing.

00:04:40 Jade Davidson

So I mean, you can imagine how many different pieces of artwork you would have to get in.

I have a copy of that calendar upstairs and my on in my office. But not only that, I always make sure I get a couple cases and I everyone always looks forward every year around our office. I hand them out to all my coworkers.

00:05:03 Michelle

Everyone loves them! They're so good. And so that's kind of a staple.

00:05:04 Rick

Yeah.

00:05:06 Michelle

Then what are some other staple programming you have?

00:05:08 Jade Davidson

Yeah. So those I would say are probably our two biggest programs and again, like I said, we do those every spring. But you know, Michelle, as you alluded to, we don't just do that. We like to provide… Rather, we like to focus on providing educators with resources. Because direct to student programming is great, but the bigger impact is really when we can get into classrooms and through teachers and then they can make, you know, their impact and reach on students. We offer educator workshops. We do usually content specific ones. We also do… We develop different lesson plans and kits, so effectively the Lesson plan with all the materials that you need would be a kit and teachers can request that through a lending library program. So a lot of educator resources, all for free. And then we also do a couple of other direct to student things. So we have our virtual field trips, which have been also wildly popular next to the Literacy project. The virtual field trips are second most popular use resources, so last year we had over 14,000 students tune in.  So we're inviting students to attend these field trips and they get to explore Oregon farms that are either in their backyard or across the state, but from the comfort of the classroom. And especially as we all probably know, just funding differences in it makes it a really accessible opportunity for all students and teachers to just be able to learn more about Oregon agriculture.

00:06:38 Rick

I'm writing all this stuff down because I'll include links to all the stuff in our show notes,  and now I did want to mention like you said, you provide it for free, but it's free for probably Oregon. And so other states might have to check out their local site right to get similar resources.

00:06:54 Jade Davidson

Yeah. And that's a good question to really bring it back to the beginning.  So all of our resources that we provide both for educators and students and I will actually also clarify and say almost all of our resources for educators are free to request, unless of course, you're from Washington. And bringing it back to Rick, your first question, because each state has their own agriculture in the classroom program. Then we would just refer them to their appropriate state. Washington educators, we would refer you to Washington agriculture.

00:07:27 Rick

As well as other states.

00:07:28 Jade Davidson

Correct.   So, like Kansas, for example, would reach out to Kansas agriculture.

00:07:31 Rick

OK. I got it. Yeah. So, Jade, how did you get Involved in this?  What made you think AG in the Classroom? How did you end up in the field you're at today? Where did you start out from?

00:07:47 Jade Davidson

Yeah.

I love telling the story because it involves the shortened version of my life story. So. So I grew up in Minnesota and I knew from a really young age that I wanted to do something with. I wouldn't say that I knew that I wanted to do something with agriculture at that point, but I loved being outside. I loved nutrition. And then once I got to college, you know, I quickly realized, like, oh, I probably can't survive off chocolate cake. So I should like maybe be a little better of a cook. But I was already a pretty good. So, you know, cooking really wasn't that challenging for me. And I found out that I really loved it. And so I started to explore through volunteer opportunities and I was also a server, like a waitress at a restaurant. I started to… Well, what would it look like if students could garden? Then also bring that into it. So kind of that garden nutrition education pathway and I would really have to credit some of my professors in college for just opening that interest 'cause I always go back to that and I'm just so thankful for that, so. When I was in school, I went to TCU in Fort Worth and I was a nutrition major.

00:08:53 Rick

Go frogs!

00:08:54 Jade Davidson

Yeah, go frogs!

00:08:54 Michelle

I was like, hey, TCU stands for Texas Christian.

00:08:55 Jade Davidson

That's right, yeah. University.  So now I'm getting off topic, but when I graduated I knew I feel like as any young person does, like you want to do something really important and you want to try and save the world. As my mom like to say, like, you know, you can't really save everyone. But I was like, well, I can just like, you know, do my To Do List right? I can save like my version of the world and I out of the blue, heard about this opportunity to work for an organization called Project Horseshoe Farm, which is a small nonprofit in rural Alabama. If you've heard of Greensboro, AL, it's about an hour South of Tuscaloosa, where the University of Alabama is. And it really is in the middle of nowhere. And my parents thought I at the time. When I was about to graduate, thought I was going to move home to Iowa to go to a grad program back in Iowa was going to move back closer to home to go to grad school in Iowa. I would only be 4 hours from home, which is Minnesota. Anyway, important point of clarification and so…

00:09:56 Rick

No problem.

00:09:59 Jade Davidson

I got this this job offer and I basically said, oh, actually I'm going to move further away. And my mom was kind of like, well, you know, I feel like you've always had these opportunities that you, like, have worked really hard for and saw it. And you should pursue that. So I moved to rural Alabama. I worked at Project Horseshoe. Like I said, a small nonprofit, but my role specifically was Farming Health Fellow. And it was a new role at the time and it didn't the role itself, parts of the duties, but the role itself didn't survive COVID because I graduated in 2019 and the program went through 2020 but that was a really exciting opportunity for me, because I got to work on a farm full time, but also helped develop Community nutrition programming. And I got to do a lot of different things, but probably my most fun and important take away was the kids cooking class that I helped develop. And so we taught them about a different, you know, produce item that we either had leftover at the farm or just that we were trying to show them growing in the garden. And, you know, one of my biggest moments of pride was when every week we featured a new vegetable for them to try.  And these kids, you know, they didn't try a lot of vegetables. And they said, well, you know, Miss Jade, we're not really sure what we want to try next week, but everything you've cooked for us so far has been so good. We trust you. You know you can pick it. And so that was really just, you know, makes your heart warm. And kind of from there I you know, I have this experience in nutrition, registered dietitian. I have this experience in agriculture and I really liked this element of nonprofit that I was working in, so I thought, OK, well, I'm going to shift, you know, I'm going to shift my dream a little bit because at the time I was 21 and, you know, so lucky like this was exactly what I wanted to do and I don't know how many 21 year olds get their dream job straight out.  And so I thought, well, I really want to be the executive director of a non profit that teaches kids about food, agriculture and nutrition. So I moved to Georgia and it's kind of felt like I was missing the agricultural education background. Didn't really have that, but I had garden education, nutrition, education, agriculture, hands on experience. So I went into a master's program at UGA University of Georgia, Athens, and my research advisor, Doctor Peek, was so wonderful. He was actually already working on some funding for a similar program. That really aligned with my dreams. And so you know, about halfway through my masters, he said You know, I got that. Would you ever consider being like pursuing your doctorate?  And I was like, I don't know, but sure.

00:12:36 Rick

So, your doctorate in..?

00:12:36 Jade Davidson

Agriculture. Education.

00:12:38 Rick

OK.

00:12:38 Jade Davidson

Yep. So my master's program was in agriculture education, and this was just basically to continue in the same department working on what I was already working on. So I, you know, fast tracked my master's finish that, and then I moved directly into my PhD program to research, farm to school programs in Georgia. 

00:12:58 Rick

What a great area for that. We have a lot of friends down there. You know. Georgia Organics.

00:13:04 Jade Davidson

Erin Croom!  I know Erin.  Yeah. So…

00:13:08 Michelle

Episode #172.

00:13:11 Michelle

We don't remember that. We have no idea, yeah.

00:13:17 Jade Davidson

Yes, so anyway, I heard that episode, but yeah, so a lot happened while I was in grad school. I was there for about 3 ½ years.  I was also really dedicated student so I did my Masters and PhD in 3 1/2 years which is really quick.

00:13:33 Michelle

Yeah, sorry it took me 9 1/2, so that's why I'm in shock. OK, keep going. This is interesting.

00:13:39 Jade Davidson

Yeah. And I learned a lot and I really loved just like as a side note, my dissertation focused on narrative inquiry because I love, you know, people's stories are important and their voices need to be heard. And so I think I really fell into that because I wanted to… I've always loved being learner and I think it's more important that you really acknowledge what you've taken from other people and reflect on. And so that really I think shown in my dissertation, but regardless, I studied farm to school in Georgia more specifically like, you know, what is it? Did it come to be telling the story of? It wasn't really recorded anywhere, and as someone who loves why, I was really fascinated by like, you know, what is the answer? Why did this come to be? And then about the time that I was getting ready to kind of finish and wrap up and start thinking about my final year. This position in Oregon wrapped up. Opened up rather and you know, I brought it to my professor and I said this position open up like it's what I want to do Oregon agriculture in the classroom, teaching kids about agriculture, not food and nutrition. It can be aligned, but you know agriculture, natural resources in the environment. And he said, well, of course you have to apply and I also talked to my fiancé at the time now husband. He was like. I'm not going to tell you to, you know, turn on your dream job, and I don't think either of us thought I was going to get it because I had been a professional student for my entire life. And, you know, he tells me now. He's proud of me, but he says, you know, no one gets the first job that the interview for stirred out of college. And then I got the job. So then we moved.

00:15:16 Rick

Congrats!

00:15:17 Jade Davidson

Then we moved to Oregon and that's how I came to be doing what I have been, you know, wanting to do since I was almost 12.

00:15:24 Rick

Nice, great story. That's awesome. And then, Michelle, you have so many connections with your, I mean that's how you started out there. Your dissertation was essentially on farm to school too, right before there was a term. And now we you've seen somebody else kind of do it kind of full circle.

00:15:43 Michelle

Well, that's what I was so excited about when I first met Jade. I was like, wait a second. This like, worked like.. what it was. We have a strategic plan because we love planning but around professionalism field and increasing people in the pipeline. And so when I was in grad school, OK, we're going back to 1999.

00:16:02 Rick

Back in the other century.

00:16:03 Michelle

00:16:04 Michelle

True, actually. But I mean, I was told, you know, by my advisors. Like. No, no, you can't do school gardening. Like school gardening wasn't a legitimate field of study. There's no theoretical framework. There's no like road map for studying it. And so, you know, Fast forward the one we ended up doing a lot of that theory development work, but I was just curious of like you were actually encouraged to do research in farm to school, I want to hear, like more about that. That is a huge change in a very short amount of time.

00:16:37 Jade Davidson

Yeah. So couple of things.

In agriculture education. There's not a lot of qualitative research being done and I've had two qualitative articles published in the Journal of Aged, so you know to me that kind of speaks similar to what you're saying, Michelle,  is that there's more acceptance in research now for just like how knowledge is produced and created and synthesized, but also you know the other side of that is, I had a really, really supportive research advisor and I simply don't think I could have done it without that support. And he was really big on, you know, students come into this department with their questions that they want answered and you're never going to, you know, going back to a point I made earlier, never going to save the world or solve all the problems with the dissertation, because that's not what it's supposed to do. It's simply like one question and my question was what is farm to school in Georgia? And it's much more than that. But that was essentially what I was answering. But I was just really encouraged to pursue that and I happened to come in at just like a really, I guess, serendipitous time where he was also looking at Farm to school as a tangent really quick, he was researching, you know how to get elementary kids started in Georgia and his kind of, you know, preliminary beliefs are to research work, maybe farm to school is this model. So then you know, he stumbles upon me and says, well, here's this girl who believes the same thing as me. And, you know, I guess I'm pretty smart. So he… Well, you know, use that brain and like, let's work together basically. So yeah, I guess that was a really roundabout way of answering your question, but basically I just feel like I had a really supportive advisor who was working on a similar problem and he said, you know, go for it. Like, let's see what we can find.

00:18:34 Michelle

Yep, mentors and others really matter in in all fields, and in particularly ours. And so research is like one component of the entire farm to school ecosystem.  So from your perspective, Jade, how does research fit into informing and forwarding the movement?

00:18:53 Jade Davidson

Yeah, that's a great question.  That was a question that my committee also really encouraged me to think about.

00:19:00 Michelle

Oh good. I could have been on your committee.

00:19:01 Jade Davidson

Yeah, actually you really could have.

00:19:06 Michelle

How does research inform or forward the farm to school movement?

00:19:11 Jade Davidson

So I guess like simply, my committee always encouraged me to think about the fact that and this is kind of something I hold an opinion on too. But what we do in research exists in this imaginary bubble. It's really important. But it is so outside of what the mundane individual is doing and not to simplify what we're all doing as individuals, but research just exists in a place. dot is pretty much in our minds. And so they always just encouraged us, encouraged me really to think about, OK, you've done all this work, you know you're trying to tell the story of what farm to school is, you know, particularly in Georgia. But what does that mean for the educators that you're trying to reach? I guess I should go back and clarify too that specifically, I was looking at trying to basically, antagonize capitalism in the formal sense versus lowercase farm to school in the general practices that anyone might be doing but is not necessarily doing it because it's a formalized program. And I was just basically trying to say if there is a tension between these two ideologies, what does that mean for farm to school? Again, specifically in Georgia, because that's where I was located. But really, at the end of the day, I had to think about what the end result of that argument would mean for educators. Because I was only looking at that one bubble of farm to school farm to schools, you know, education and it's classrooms and it's the farmers. I was specifically just focusing on education component. So I think all that to say that research helps advance, it puts out new ways to think about same problems it puts out, you know, new knowledge to reconsider existing phenomena that people are interacting with.

00:21:09 Michelle

And what conclusions did you draw from this narrative approach?

00:21:13 Jade Davidson

Man, this is where I might have to sit back first.

00:21:15 Michelle

And we don't need to even go in that direction.

00:21:21 Jade Davidson

Well, I can answer that really quick.

00:21:23 Michelle

OK, 'cause, we can do it differently and maybe you ask it later.

00:21:28 Michelle

Cuz it's interesting, OK, so she said what her committee said, and they were saying. I'm just trying, this is something we've something we've never talked about, which is why I wanted to kind of linger on it for a second because we don't really ever do research. The role of research. I just. I just think it's really interesting. Saying research exists in a bubble.

00:21:58 Rick

Is that yours?

00:22:01 Michelle

Know it looks like things like. Yeah, he's laughing 'cause I pretty much produce very something very similar. It's interesting, they say research exists in a bubble… that's definitely one way. And in Oregon, we've really pushed ourselves, you know, we've heard of, like, youth led research, but Oregon's so unique that we have been doing like community led research and like the evaluation and research projects we do are largely designed to improve inform policy.

00:22:33 Rick

That's the thing.

00:22:36 Michelle

And so focused on, you know, nonprofits, our community partners, our testing lots of different things in different areas and they need help with evaluation of those, but then also, you know, research to the the legislature to come up with policy concepts and then we test those and then we do things for marketing companies. We're a little intentional about the role of evaluation and research in in forwarding the movement within Oregon, yeah. And it's really messy.

00:23:08 Jade Davidson

Yeah,  I feel like what you're describing is more action aligned research and project based, whereas I feel like in my dissertation I focus really on qualitative which is not to say that qualitative social sciences can't help put practical solutions out there, but the only reason I felt like I said that I felt like I was antagonizing capitalism to school versus lower case farm to school, that was just kind of a made-up argument in my head for the sake of argument purposes, that wasn't necessarily something that anyone else put out there.

00:23:43 Michelle

This sounds really smart.

00:23:45 Rick

I have two pH D's online with me here who are saying these two dollar words like qualitative, and my head's just spinning here. Can you guys dumb it down for me a little bit?

00:23:56 Jade Davidson

So yeah, I just want to say to like, yes, research absolutely has a time and a place and a space to be practical and solution space. Because I mean, if you look at just even marketing and what's on our shelves, that's research, but… And I don't want to be like in my research because I'm not.. I really don't think I'm a conceited person, so I'm not trying to make it about me. But if you haven't been in a PhD program..  You learn how to say in my work. Right, I sat in a lot of you know qualitative classes and of course we all felt like work in our research is the most important thing in the world, and so I just feel like in that process, in grad school, in research, you spend so much time in your head coming up with these problems and I'm not going to say education problems are unimportant, but in comparison to saving a life, for example, it's very different research. And so in that way is what I mean, that sometimes I felt like I spent a lot of grad school and a lot of research is like stuck up in this imaginary Stuck up literally, as in like a verb not like I am stuck up but like I just felt like I spent a lot of time stuck up in this, you know, proverbial bubble of…

00:25:12 Rick

Thank you for clarifying.

00:25:16 Jade Davidson

What am I even trying to do? But what initially, you know how does research help inform just the public, like that's the answer, right? What am I trying to? Well, I'm trying to help make farm to school feel more approachable for educators, doable. More tangible.

00:25:33 Michelle

Is there anything from the narrative inquiry to leave us with that we want to think about?

00:25:38 Jade Davidson

Sure. So something I wrote down before this meeting that I think is important is in narrative inquiry. A lot of ways, there's a narrative. There's a lot of ways to tell a story, and I won't pretend to remember everything for my research because it's been a couple of years, but something that I did kind of underline and highlight at least just a point that I wanted to make is the specific approach. A narrative inquiry that I took was looking at it. So in narrative inquiry, there's a couple of different theories, but one of them is that you can either say what was told to you so representing what the participants are telling you, or you can do a retelling and I specifically chose to utilize my participants words pretty much verbatim because I thought it was important. To emphasize what was told to me and not pretend like it was my story to re-tell. And so in both articles one and two of my dissertation, I focused on really telling the told I used exactly what the participant said. But I you know, blended the different interviews together so that it felt like you were on a podcast show, for example. You know, like people were chiming in and saying, oh, this is who I am and this is what I believe, etcetera. So. Yeah, I think that would be my take away is that in the narrative inquiry approach that I used, I wanted to emphasize what was told to me because that's kind of one of my, I guess, like internal missions that you should really hear what people are telling you and not try to reframe it or reshape it into your purpose. 

00:27:17 Rick

Thank you so much.

00:27:18 Michelle

I'm going to think about that for quite some time. Thank you.

00:27:20 Rick

Yeah, there's a lot to lot to ponder and chew on there.

00:27:23 Michelle

And we'd like to thank all of you so much for listening today. Farm to school is written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn with help from LeAnn Locher from Oregon State University, and was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:27:37 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, the United States Department of Agriculture, or Oregon AG in the classroom. The USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:27:57 Michelle

Do you know more about farm to school? Of course you do. So check out our other episodes, our show notes, and there's even contact information for us. Literally, if you click on contact, we will look at it and get back to you. 

00:28:11 Rick

Thank you so much for stopping by and stop by that website Michelle just mentioned to say hello and please give us an idea for a future podcast. We'd love to hear from you, and we'll see you next time.

00:28:22 Michelle

Yeah, and you'll get all Jade's links to her articles and AG in the classroom and everything. OK. Thank you for coming to talk to us.

00:28:28 Rick

Thanks Jade!

00:28:29 Jade Davidson

Thank you for having me.