 Hello, I'm Michael Mora, superintendent of the Amherst Public Schools and welcome to the latest episode of Window Into Arps. I'm so pleased today to be joined by Leela Tonnell and Jennifer Reese and today's episode we'll be talking about the gardening program. So welcome to both of you and thank you for being here. Thanks, Mike. Thank you. Yeah, and just starting let us know a little bit about your connection to the district and how you got involved in things in Amherst and the public schools and perhaps how you got involved in the gardening program. You want to start? Go for it. So I started in the district four years ago now as science coordinator and I have had multiple educational roles in my professional life. They've all been centered on science education. Gardens came into my life kind of in an ad-hoc way where there was garden space and not really a designated overseer of that space. Science and gardens kind of go together in a lot of people's minds and the district asked if I would sort of loop that into what I was working on and thinking about. So that's how the school garden program came into my life and in Amherst I'm also, so I live in Amherst also and I've got two kids who go to school in the Amherst Public Schools. So I kind of come at science and garden learning from a couple of directions. Thank you. And I was a teacher full-time before I was a farmer. I taught K through 12 music. I have a master's in teaching and left that job to start farming full-time at Amherst. I farmed working on vegetable production farms in Amherst for three years full-time and really wanted to be doing education again and wanted to be doing outdoor experiential learning and so made myself as available as I possibly could to folks in Amherst that were doing garden work, sort of implanted myself on the garden committee, which is where I met Jen and have been really, really lucky to from there begin this garden program with Jen and for the last three years that's what we've been doing. Yeah. Thank you. And so this is my 18th year in the district and I started as an elementary teacher. What feels unique to me is that this garden program has been so focused and successful in sustaining itself. So I've seen other versions of this that were individually, individuals took pride in but it wasn't systemic and it wasn't, didn't have the success, the widespread success in my opinion that this garden program has and also the focus on a long-range vision for it. So could either you or both of you help me and help the viewers understand of how this particular garden program was developed, particularly with those things in mind? Yeah, well sustainability is like every year when we sit down to create our annual goals, sustainability is in there. So a lot of, you're right, a lot of garden programs operate with soft funding, soft money and so we do rely on district funds and also grant funds to help ourselves. Stay afloat. We, so we plan mindfully about finances. Also, we really believe strongly like when we first started to create the garden program in a formalized way. We knew that we just wanted to start small and make it really awesome because if it was an excellent quality educational product and educational experience, we just felt like support and buy-in would follow. So we decided our first year to start with our kindergartners and reach out to make sure we scooped up all the kindergartners so that it wasn't just like a, you know, if you happen to end up in one class or another or one school or another, we really believe that it has value, garden-based education has value for all the kids. And kindergarten, one grade level felt doable and then we also wanted to make sure for teachers it felt doable. So we thought a lot about how can we create an on-ramp that is welcoming. I sent a survey around to all staff saying we've got this garden space. What do you need in order to make the most use of it? And teachers responded overwhelmingly. We need curriculum and we need knowledgeable expert to help lead the lessons. That was right around the same time when Lila like magically showed up at this garden meeting. I don't actually know how you knew that meeting was scheduled, but poof, like she was there, it was really great. And I was like, well, we have our expert who could lead these lessons and that way when we reached out to teachers, all we said, you know, all we need from you is 30 minutes and to say yes and just show up with your kids and we'll be able to take you from there. So I think those are some facets of what have helped us be sustainable. Yeah, absolutely. And along the way, we've also developed some really exciting, cool community partnerships that I think have helped us continue to grow this program and are really exciting and yeah, in a really exciting way with a lot of momentum. Yeah, could you speak to some of the partnerships? Yeah, referencing? Yeah. So I think the one that I think is really coming to play now in a really exciting way for our program is we've developed a partnership with UMass Stockbridge School in their Sustainable Food and Farming program and every year for the past two years we've had two to three interns that are working with the garden program year-round from UMass who are just invaluable resources for us and really enthusiastic, really passionate, interested in farm education and garden education primarily in their career and professional goals. So these students are helping us do tons of garden maintenance and they're working on helping us develop curriculum and they're making themselves available to lead field trips and be there for tasting days in the cafeteria and it's been really fantastic to have this wealth of really engaged college students who are here helping us. And I'll add like with our UMass garden interns. We have so we use our gardens as educational space for our elementary students, but we're really excited about the idea of, you know, how can we increase the educational value of those spaces. So bringing interns in they do provide so many helpful services isn't the right word, but so many helpful inputs from them. But there's value added for them and for the program as well because now our garden spaces are being used in a different educational manner of how do you how does Leela model garden-based learning and certainly outdoor learning is a whole different set of strategies and approaches and giving kids lots of practice. So we like to look at it in that manner where we have we're offering a different level of educational ways to plug in with the undergraduates. Yeah, and we also have like collaborative work and talks with the UMass nutrition department and with There's another one the architecture studio. Oh, yeah, the architecture studio. So last year we had a class of seniors do their senior design thesis in collaboration with a group of kindergartners to do garden design and build. That was really awesome and it resulted in this beautiful end product that's used in the schools. Yeah, which is fantastic because it's we always like when our our work with the university and colleges is mutually beneficial and I think all the examples you gave you know, what I've heard from UMass students who have met is that they feel like they're gaining more than they're giving and we feel the same way. So yeah, it's kind of a nice nice symbiosis of you know, of collaboration. You spoke of tasting days. So we're taping this on October 31st on Halloween. My understanding is our tasting day tomorrow. It'll be after viewers are able to see it but maybe you could speak a little bit to that tasting day. Yeah, sure Well, we'll see how it all unfolds. It's sort of, you know, collaborating with food services has been awesome and we first started that last year. It is always really dynamic because there are so many bodies involved. The leadership throughout food services has been so awesome and supportive. There just needs to be lots of communication and moving parts and bringing the produce to the right place and then dispersing it and coming up with a recipe. So all I know is that we're making a harvest garden soup and it's menued for tomorrow and we are making it available to everyone so that, you know, it's important to us that all the kids help to grow the crops and we wanted them all to be able to taste the produce whether or not they were going to be partaking of school lunch. And this is our third such collaboration. So we had a tasting day in the spring with our green monster pizza and last fall we also did a soup event. So yeah, we'll see how it goes. We're gonna track how many kids partake and we know that as kids taste new foods, they do develop, you know, they can develop a liking for it. It might take a lot of tries, but getting them to taste it is a really important step and the data are really strong that when kids have been involved in growing the produce, they're much more likely to eat it as well. Yeah, which I think makes logical sense from the eyes of a child or an adult. I understand there's a little competitive nature of this event as well. Kim, don't understand between the schools and who eats more soup. Services out of that twist of tracking soup tasting to see whose student body is most daring in tasting the soup. Yeah, and we will announce the results. Okay, fantastic. So that'll be in the Friday newsletter. Perhaps not soon enough for this week, but in coming weeks. Great. And so you've spoken a bit about this already, and I think it's so clear even the way that both of you speak about it, but what motivates you to be so heavily involved in not just the garden, but the garden education components, because I think sometimes we think of gardens and they think of, and I've witnessed both of you work with our children, they think of the gardens as kind of the outcome, right? Which we've sort of talked about, like you can make a suit from this, which is really important, but what I've seen so much of is the focus on the education as the core component of the outcome is used, even that is sort of used educationally. So I'd love to hear a little more about what motivates you, particularly to have that angle of making sure all students are actively learning as they're performing the gardening tasks. Yeah. There are so many reasons why this work feels so important to me and to us. A few big ones that come to mind is cultivating young learners who feel really excited and comfortable being in outside spaces and feel a lot of ownership and stewardship of the environment and of the earth. That's been a big component in getting these kids really pumped to just have their hands in the soil. That's been a really amazing tool and to see the sort of light bulb moments when these kids are just thrilled to see worms. It feels like a really amazing on-ramp to then feeling more engaged and committed to protecting the environment. And it's also, I think, one of our driving forces is also creating opportunities for healthy living and lifestyles and exposure to new foods and again, that ownership piece of feeling being engaged in the growing process of these foods, which then makes these students feel more excited to taste it and try it and incorporate it into their daily lives. And there's a really wonderful experiential and project-based component of this learning as well, where it seems as if having this very experience-based learning that's happening outdoors where kids are really hands-on, is a great way to get all different types of learners into that space and feel actively engaged in a very accessible and equitable way, which touches on all of these different learning styles and learning needs and everyone can be enthusiastic. I mean, that's like so many of the good things. I love it, because I was like, oh, it's like that great grant fodder, because it's all the reasons. I mean, the benefits of garden-based learning are endless. So I'll just say like where, from my personal stance, I plug into this. I admit to coming into it, and I don't have any farming experience, and I have limited garden experience, but I've been learning a lot. But for me as an educator and as a person, I'm really concerned about the earth and the earth's health and to me, giving kids opportunities to connect with the natural world is essential. So in all layers of my work and elsewhere in my life, I'm always looking for ways that we can just connect people, whether they're older or younger, with being outside, because we know that once you know something, you can come to understand it. Once you understand it, you can come to value it. Once you value it, you'll protect it. And so that continuum is really important to me. So I think that it's that we're obligated to get our kids outdoors interacting with nature a lot more, as often as we can, and also I believe deeply in the value of joy and curiosity. And so, like there are so many like serendipitous moments out in the garden where on our dill crops we always have which is that butterfly that's just run out of my head. Oh, that's the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly. It's caterpillars love to feed on our dill crops. And so we always have a moment in the spring where the kids discover a caterpillar or they discover a worm or something like looks rotten and you just can't craft that in a classroom in the same way, the spontaneous nature of the surprises that come up and kids being able to plug into authentic curiosity and wonder is really awesome. Fantastic. Are there any other specific stories that you'd like to share of their funny things or? So many. Yeah. One that was on my mind today has happened just yesterday in a lesson. We were planting garlic with first graders yesterday. And so we, you know, prepped the bed, we separated the individual clothes out of the garlic head, the garlic bulb, and we were also gathering leaves from around the ground to be leaf mulch to mulch in the garlic after we finished planting it. And so the kids at the last 20 minutes been building this like giant awesome pile of leaves that we're going to use to mulch the leaves and you know, we planted our garlic really carefully. They spaced them out beautifully and then as we were going to lift up the leaves to move in the mulch pile it more turned into just giant spontaneous leaf pile jumping which is also so fantastic and like it just, you know, turn around and look at the teacher and she's just hysterically laughing and the kids are just like throwing leaves and it was great. It just seemed like such a joy moment. Yeah. And the leaves ended up on top of the garlic. Yeah, I think for me one moment that really sticks out to me is so a time when I, you know, I think about kids who don't maybe feel like they fit in at school or who aren't sure of like their value or aren't sure of their family's value. And so I was working with first grader last year, working with, meaning we were by a garden bed together and we were harvesting some lettuce and he turned to me and he was like, my dad is really good at harvesting lettuce and so he could show me the techniques that his dad used to harvest lettuce and then began this really wonderful story of the role that you know, the lettuce plays and his family are different produce and the recipes that they brought into their family and it was a nice moment where he was celebrating family and culture and I got to be in the learner role and listen to this kiddo who was having a really great shining moment that might not otherwise have been in his day. Thank you. Thanks for hearing both of those. So thinking about both this year, but then the future, what are some things that you're thinking about in terms of, you know, goals for this year as well as kind of vision for goals in the future? Yeah. A little further down. Well, we like to start our goals each year with really discreet, you know, like two goals per year so that we can achieve them and this year our goal was to bring in all of our second grade learners. So we started with K three years ago. We followed our K to first last year and those kids are now second graders. So we've been able to follow them for three years while bringing on the two classes of kids behind them. So as we look forward we're trying to figure out are there ways that we can continue to follow this cohort who've just really grown into strong garden leadership roles at their school. We also have some really exciting farm-to-school work going on in the district right now and so the ways for the school gardens to plug into that are many and figuring out some specific goals and action plans around what can our school gardens become and how can they play a really important role in connecting our community to the cafeteria to you know other other key components of that. So those are some things that come to mind. I think our big picture five to ten year dream scenario is that we have opportunities for year-round garden learning for all of Amherst Elementary School students and maybe beyond. I think we have been focusing most in elementary school in our capacity working together. But there are other exciting opportunities in which garden-based and farm-based learning are being integrated in other places in the district and it would be so fantastic to get to really like Jen said follow our original cohort of kindergartners all the way up through sixth grade and make this something that is you know a part of their school experience. Fantastic. If someone watching would and we're hoping this is the case as someone's watching and they say oh I want to contribute or I want to find out more about the school gardens or I actually can help with something or can donate something whether it's expertise time or literal tangible things. How might they get in touch with you to initiate that conversation. Thanks for asking that. So the best way would be to email me which is our e-s-e-j at arps.org and we're open to questions. We're open to offers. We're open to ideas. It takes a village and we've benefited so much from you know individuals in the community who have reached out and say oh hey you know I love to garden and I have some extra time can I help with this or in our summer times of course school gardens are tough because we need to grow really robust crops in summertime is primo growing time we've had volunteers that have helped us care for the gardens throughout the summer so we are so thankful for all the support we've received and very open to again question support etc. So folks should feel free to reach out. Yeah, I'll say that on our district social media pages I believe like the three or four most liked and shared posts have all been incredible images that both of you have captured from the gardens. There's so much enthusiasm excuse me from students as well as from families about the work they're doing and I think particularly as we you know all of us collectively are living in a world where screens are sort of ubiquitous. I feel like we're we're swimming in an ocean of screens at so many times. I really appreciate your work and I also appreciate the community support of that that's just to really value different kind of work and it's not that we shouldn't have technology in the schools this is not that's not my point but that we have that healthy balance of yes screens can be helpful and technology can be helpful and having that deeper connection to the natural outside world can also be helpful and these aren't in conflict actually they're in concert with one another so really thank both of you for all the work you've done and continue to do for our children and our staff and our community it's really exciting to be kind of a get to watch it over time and see how it's developed so you know I really want to just share my appreciation and gratitude to both of you for your work. Thank you Thank you. We're super lucky to do the work and super lucky to do it here in particular. Thanks. Thank you very much And thank you for viewing this latest episode of when to enter ARPS We'll be coming back in the next couple weeks with an episode about English language learners in our schools and Again, thanks for your continued support of our district Thank you. That was great. Yeah, did it feel?