Tools Are Not Toys: Creating the First Student Designed School Garden Tool and Branding

What happens when youth look at the school garden and only see cheap pink plastic shovels, flimsy tools, and vegetable characters that don’t represent their world? In this episode of the Farm to School Podcast, Rick and Michelle dig into how stereotypes have shaped kids’ experiences in the school garden and how a new generation of youth-driven design is flipping the script. From rethinking tools on how Michelle dedicated a good ten years of her life to create the “Rootopia” characters, over 44 fruits and veggies that reflect real emotions, cultural awareness, and botanical accuracy, we explore how gardens can become places of belonging, creativity, and social-emotional growth.

Transcript

Tools Are Not Toys: Creating the First Student‑Designed School Garden Tool and Branding

Transcript

 What happens when youth look at the school garden and only see cheap pink plastic shovels, flimsy tools, and vegetable characters that don’t represent their world? In this episode of the Farm to School Podcast, Rick and Michelle dig into how stereotypes have shaped kids’ experiences in the school garden and how a new generation of youth-driven design is flipping the script. From rethinking tools on how Michelle dedicated a good ten years of her life to create the “Rootopia” characters, over 44 fruits and veggies that reflect real emotions, cultural awareness, and botanical accuracy, we explore how gardens can become places of belonging, creativity, and social-emotional growth.

00:00:06 Rick

Welcome to the Farm to School Podcast, where we learn to grow, cook and eat delicious, nutritious local food in schools. I’m Rick Sherman

00:00:21 Michelle

This is Michelle Markesteyn

00:00:22 Rick

OK. And here we are so, Michelle…

00:00:24 Michelle

yes, Rick?

00:00:27 Rick

I heard a story on how school gardens were only for a little older ladies and young girls. What do you think about that?

00:00:43 Michelle

We have been talking about something I actually heard probably say in the school garden, maybe…

00:00:52 Rick

When was this?

00:00:55 Michelle

Probably 15 years ago, so probably, I don't know how to subtract 15 from 25, would that be hmm.

00:01:07 Rick

Ten?  I thought it was a trick question. 

00:01:10 Michelle

So probably in 2000, 2009 or 2010. Yeah, I was in school garden volunteer for a long time, even before I had kids and different things and gardening with kids. And I just heard this like.. Teen boys like gardens for little girls and old ladies.

00:01:30 Rick

When I student taught in school and I thought at the junior high level was great because junior high kids, they hadn't figured it out, you know, to be cool. But when I was in high schools, doing like I was in physical ED teacher and they were too cool to run? So I was like, no, the girls are looking over my here, you know.

00:01:57 Michelle

So the girls were too cool to run?

00:02:00 Rick

No, no, no. The boys were too cool to run.  they had to be too cool, but in general the Jr High kids were like show me. Show me where to go and I will be there. I don't care what. They, like they just weren't like fun all the time. They're all about fun until they got the “cool” gene. I think in high school. So I get that. When you have a teenager that was like, You know, we can we can do like that, I guess, right?

00:02:26 Michelle

A cool gene for the garden.

00:02:27 Rick

I can I do say I can relate because my teaching experience, it was like a lot more the longer he went, the more kids to lose, some more easy to try things.

00:02:43 Michelle

There you go.  And so imagine your tweens that you were coaching. What were things you did coaching that really engaged?

00:02:50 Rick

It had to be a game I had to make it fun. I wouldn't just say we're going to learn about insects in the garden. We're going to say, oh, we're going to have a contest to see who could find the most. And then one that gets it. It's going to get a really cool thing. You know a quarter in my pocket. I don't know, something. And then they would, you know, if you may have anything in the game, they liked it. So they had to be tricky. I guess that's just off the top of my head.

00:03:19 Michelle

Well, a lot has changed in the last 15 years, but you know, back in 2010 ISH, I started looking at, like gardening things for youth. And you know, the technical term is content analysis and marketing thematic units. Due to qualitative analysis of like different marketing messages.

00:03:42 Rick

My eyes are glazing over.

00:03:53 Michelle

They're rolling in the back of his head now.. this is really interesting actually, because if you look at that and things that sold the most, like they are their super girly super pink. They are they were super infantilized, they were largely pink and odd shades of green, and never botanically accurate, which really bothered me And the other big thing I really noticed is, you know, being in the garden with youth, but then also looking, you know, you really start looking at the. “Air quotes” tools for kids.  They tend to be miniaturized versions of adult tools. Just picture the shovel picture the trowel, picture the wake and they do not at all take into account how you interact with the Earth and they may break after three uses or something to their cheap, lasting rather poor materials.

00:04:50 Rick

Yeah, poor quality.

00:04:52 Michelle

It really strikes me as like reinforcing this theme of like youth don't have a meaningful role to play in our society. Like we think of all the way like even like your generation and others like I hear.  Didn't used to work in the strawberry fields?

00:05:08 Rick

I did. I did. I started in 3rd grade.

I made $24.00 my first summer! Are they just like they can't work in the garden or what's the solution for them?

00:05:22 Michelle

Well, one solution we came up with is actually we did a couple of different things and one was just start from the beginning of rebranding. Ohh, that's a good thing. I always use the Royal “we” because a lot of…

00:05:33 Rick

Who's “we” when we say we?

00:05:38 Michelle

Sometimes it's me. An amazing colleague Joel Chismar, her son Kai Owen, when he was 13, I met him and he is a youth illustrator. You know he does his things. And so he started drawing fruits and vegetables and then I was at the school Garden Club where we are located. We and the teacher and a bunch of parents. Now we're in more ways. The ways have expanded and we…

00:06:08 Rick

So “we” you this time not the Royal we?

00:06:15 Michelle

I was trained on how to do focus groups because I love data and so the you did focus groups on all the different vegetables and foods that Kai was drawing and then gave him direct feedback. And so we started like rebranding, redrafting, produce items. So as Kyle was drawing these and we're getting feedback from the middle school youth, we started really looking at more of a review. This goes into data stuff, but like looking at taxonomies of different eyes, mouth and nose across different races and ethnicities, and they're doing like more of a cross disciplinary literature review, unlike racial perceptions. So our brains are extraordinary at reading so much information from place. And so, you know, looking at psychology and other marketing and communications and even like trying to learn what I could from neuroscience, like pouring that all into these fruits and vegetable characters.

00:07:20 Rick

OK, so characters for fruits and vegetables as well, and what the connection came in here. So, you're making faces. I think you said that, actually. But I was probably still glossing over.

00:07:30 Michelle

Very possible 

00:07:31 Rick

Probably.

00:07:34 Michelle

About right now, Michelle spent 10 years of her life, we, with other people developing a whole new set of characters called Utopia Characters, 44 fruits and vegetable characters that are, you know, ethnic nondescript, they are, they cover a wide variety of, you know. plant parts and as opposed to all other marketing in this category, not all of them have a smiley happy face. Not everything is OK. People are not always OK and we have a is perfect for this age group of tweens because that is when they're experiencing A wider range of emotions. And so that one of the reasons we spoke to him and then we did a whole bunch of things. We applied these characters and pilots to Evergreen extension content like recipes and gardening content. And then I've been layering in more social emotional learning. So for emotional regulation and other kinds of things.

00:08:38 Rick

So a lot of thought with this, it wasn't just like, let's draw some goofy faces on the veggies, it has to be really thoughtful about, you know, expression if you know like you said, non-descript ethnicity, so wouldn't like look like a certain person or anything but yeah.

00:08:58 Michelle

Well, usually this is a really great example of what we're talking about. It like this is that I also had a lot of rounds of iterative rounds of review and one of them was the Oregon State Universities indigenous Peoples Work group. And so they reviewed them. And this is a great they were looking at the Cauliflower one and I can put pictures of this on our website if you want to see, but at the time when I had they said we are we creating the perception elders or silly or goofy and I thought oh, I didn't see that. I didn't see that but somebody else did. It was like it once they said it, I was like, oh, I could see how that cauliflower.  It's goofy because it's tongue was sticking out, so we updated the illustration to be respectful and stately. And you know, the reality is, is there's so many small Illustrative gestures. You can change that can make an enormous difference in how students perceive each character. So besides the taxonomy of the faces, you know my final review was around botanical accuracy, and I know my plants and you know, just so much of the imagery in gardening messages I mentioned earlier Infantile and inaccurate. And it drives me crazy. So anyway, I was very specific about leaf structure, attachment, donation margins, all those dorky botanical things that I love. And yeah, then we have this, like, whole family of Utopia character.

00:10:27 Rick

So what did you do with that family? Is characters or do you integrate them into from the school?

00:10:32 Michelle

That's a great question. I was like, now what Do I just click on the contact list. There's a couple things is you know one. I just wanted to test their application and so put them in a book. We did a Rootopia Radish book, just about gardening kitchen table. It's a whole field notes addition series that we're coming up with of classroom activities, word puzzles, things that really encourage exploring with the multiple senses. So we piloted that in a lot of different settings. So, you know, like one do kids like it? Yes, 2. Is it useful to educators? Yes. And we did camps. We did after school programming, summer programming or age. I kind of mentioned that snapped programming and even 1 educator in a county in multiple places used it for parenting classes.

00:11:30 Rick

And it went out pretty much I know we went to hundreds of schools in Oregon. I'm trying to remember.

00:11:39 Michelle

The first one was 6000, yeah.

00:11:42 Michelle

And then the other thing besides you know, in this podcast, we're talking more about like, what's the bleeding edge of the school and school garden work. As we talked more and more about social emotional learning in the garden. So that's what we included some activities really to kind of nudge, rest and digest, you know, really kind of nudge participants. Nervous system towards more of a relaxed state. Because kids are pretty anxious these days, and the educational setting can be anxious and garden can be a great place to just be calmer and learn better.

00:12:16 Rick

OK. So Michelle, so you have all these characters now. Everyone loves them, right?

00:12:20 Michelle

Actually, not everyone, and I tend to say if I need someone who was an older generation, I would put myself in that category and says I don't know. My thought is like, well, good, because they're not for you. But I will say twins love them. So youth are savvy consumers of visuals and verbal marketing, and the more work that we do in school gardens and farms and schools, we need to be more savvy and niche focused. So the Utopia characters are one way that people can reach between audience.

00:12:57 Rick

OK, well I can honestly say you throw something out there and you you've heard that tale… you've heard the saying that you can't please everybody, right? You can please some of the people some of the time not all the people, all the time. The only thing that I found universally is accepted everywhere is what we do is farm to school because everyone is on board. But some things hit a chord with people and others, others don't.

00:13:32 Michelle

Well, is actually more sophisticated than that.

00:13:34 Rick

Detail OK.

00:13:36 Michelle

But I'm gonna say it again. Is that a lot of times we adults make things we like and then for us, we're us even though we think we're making them for youth and it is totally different to work with youth and design, something that I don't necessarily resonate with. I love the process behind it, but it's not something I would have created or I would have had created for myself. And that's the point is that these cartoon Rootopia characters are for youth by youth, and that's how they resonate.

00:14:09 Rick

So, Michelle, where can one go where can we go to find more about them?

00:14:14 Michelle

The royal we?the.

00:14:15 Rick

yes.

00:14:15 Michelle

The Royal we can always go to Rootopia.com, which actually takes you to Oregon State University's website and just get in touch with me. I'd love to connect with you. And as we figure out and grow, how to apply it to different things.

00:14:20 Rick

Thanks. OK, I just really… I've been asking about this but I was… Michelle was showing me these every step of the way for the last couple of years and I was able to make suggestions myself. So I was able to see them and I just want to say thank you and have a wonderful and I think they're cute and stuff, you know. And. And so I think they're really good and I can't wait to see what becomes what comes next for the for the, for the world. So I really want to thank you for that. Well, thank you.

00:15:02 Michelle

Thanks, Sir. I appreciate that.

00:15:06 Rick

And thanks everybody for listening today. Thanks so much, Michelle for being our my guest and I'll be your guest because we didn't have anybody today -surprise! Farm to  school was written directed...

00:15:19 Michelle

Actually, we're OK. Go ahead. No, that's good. Yeah, keep going.

00:15:24 Rick

Farm to school was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, with production support from Lynn Locher of Oregon State University.

00:15:32 Michelle

The broadcast was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture and the content and ideas with farm school podcasts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State university or the United States Department of Agriculture, USDA and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:15:50 Rick

Do you want to learn more about farm to school? Check out other episodes, show notes, contact information and much more by searching for the school podcast. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. And we'd love to hear and connect with you more about Rootopia characters. Bye, guys. Thank you. Bye.