 Nancy Burke is a past NEA Foundation grantee and has worked for the last 20 years as a special needs educator at Haverhill High School in Massachusetts. She's a leading proponent of farm-to-table school gardens and has created two gardens at her school, a learning garden and an outdoor science center and orchard. It was originally meant for our special needs students to have the opportunity to learn where their food comes from and for them to make healthy choices. Nancy is a paraprofessional educator and works with students with a wide range of disabilities. I work there with the kids and help them do everything from academic classroom work to float around with them to cooking class to art class to sewing class. Whatever they need me to do, I fill the void and help them. The other thing I do is if they're in a wheelchair, I teach them how to access every part of being able to get out into the world. In other words, use a chairlift, how to use an elevator, how to use and manipulate and get themselves around a building. So I teach them all that sort of stuff. That sounds like you're helping them try to be more independent. That's what I'm doing. I'm trying to foster 100% independence wherever they go later on in life because my story I always tell the kids is when you're 35 years old, I'm not going to be in your back pocket. So you have to do this yourself. You know, you got to learn how to do these things. In 2012, Nancy realized her kids needed to learn about food. At a farm to school workshop, she heard that most children didn't know where their food came from. She couldn't believe it. So when I went back to school on Monday, I made it a point to ask all the kids that I work with, which we have like 77 students give or take. And this is at lunchtime. I said, you know, where do potatoes come from? Where do potato chips come from? And where do carrots come from? And they all said, oh, Miss Nancy, you're crazy. Everything comes from market basket. And I said, no, really, how do you think market basket got it? And none of them knew. And I was blown away and I was shocked. And I said, oh my God, I've got to do something. So I started out small. I first went to the principal and asked if I could have an abandoned courtyard at the end of the hallway where our classroom was. And, you know, he said, sure, you can have it, do whatever you want. So I got this courtyard and I ended up having to get it cleaned out. It was disgusting. I got the junior ROTC kids to help out the football team to help out the wrestling team. And they cleaned, helped me clean out the entire courtyard. We filled two dumpsters full of trash and debris and grass. And it was just gross. And then after that, I started with one raised garden bed. And it was called the salsa garden, which is tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, and a few other herbs and spices. And it's a raised bed. So anyone who sits in a wheelchair or has a walker or even just regular typical students go out there and they help plant everything. They help water and care for everything. And then they also help with harvesting everything. The second year we did the stew garden, which is potatoes, carrots, and other herbs and spices we grew, and onions. Because those are all fall harvesting vegetables for us where we live. So you started with one garden, then you had a second garden. And now you have an orchard? I have 20 apple trees, 10 pear trees, 10 plum trees. And I have one cherry tree because I couldn't get any more. They were out of stock. And then the school built us an apartment now for us to teach them how to be independent at home. And it's half of the room is a classroom and the other half is an apartment. And we teach them how to cook. So they've learned how to make pasta salad, garden salad, blueberry muffins. You name it, anything that I could think of. Last summer we made our own homemade raspberry jam. When I see the kids digging for potatoes in the bags that we dump out the dirt and they're finding potatoes, or they're digging up the carrots, when they find them, they get so excited. They're like, oh my God, look what I found. And it's like the most amazing Kodak moments that you feel like they just found gold. The other thing is they just love being out there. I'm extremely grateful for everyone's help over the years that has come forward and has done a great thing.