I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ritalik. I'm Becky Hiddad. And this is Al Pelletz, a podcast featuring tips for ad teachers.
We are your agricultural education resource across the web sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day. Hello and welcome to Al Pelletz tips for ad teachers. This is Brian, Becky and Mike and we are here by the Al Pelletz and once again, we have gathered a King Arthur's roundtable of experts in I was not going to use Harry Potter because some people were giving me a hard time about some apparently new Respecticles that I have that some people say that I look like Harry Potter now, but that's okay Hard folks right there is why this is an audio only podcast and you don't make it look at us But we are excited to hear you. We are excited to have a couple of friends with us here Jade Davidson and Jason Peake welcome to Al Pelletz.
Hey, thanks so much Brian. Thanks for having us Yeah, it's good to be here. Thank you. Well, she said that a little bit of trepidation She's like it's good to be like a hostage situation like blink twice if you need help Internet is gonna cut out again.
It usually doesn't do this in the morning, so I'm concerned Because of all the green room action we had before we got the record button. She should be nervous. She should be very nervous Be afraid But Jay, why don't you get us kicked off introduce yourselves to all of this he would please? Yeah, well, thank you It's really great to be here as Dr.
Myers said my name is Jade I'm a recent graduate of the University of Georgia I did my master's and my PhD there for the past three and a half years and I actually just moved to Oregon So what you didn't hear is that we had an ice storm and pretty much all of Oregon is frozen over right now So and I think today we're gonna be talking about school gardens and specifically how school gardens were utilized in elementary Agricultural education classrooms and for Jeff topic that's pretty near and dear to my heart fantastic And I say you brought with you a outstanding cohort here partner in Jason Peake Jason welcome to Al Pelletz once tell them about yourself Yeah, thanks so much for having me and good to see you again. My name is Jason Peake I'm actually a can native of Kentucky grew up there on a diversified farm Was an ag teacher in Florida for about four years and then out to Texas for a PhD and I've been working at the University of Georgia in teacher preparation agricultural education for the past 20 years and Jade kind of came to me kind of a different background She has nutrition and dietetics background, but very very knowledgeable in an area where I was very very weak So I heavily recruited her to help me with the elementary ag ed program in Georgia as it was just getting started and Yeah, we've been working together now for about four years on it's been great No, for those who would maybe unfamiliar tell us a little bit about an elementary ag ed program That does not exist in states that I have been involved with that yet Yeah, I'm glad to and you know informally there have been a lot of elementary ag ed programs They've just been really simplified and non-formal and so a lot of times It's just an elementary teacher who has a school garden and that's pretty common a lot of states have that But it lacks structure it lacks state standards recognition by the state Department of Education and then with ag in the classroom We saw it become a little bit more formal in Georgia that's facilitated through the Georgia Farm Bureau But in different states ag in the classroom can be implemented in different ways So what Georgia did in 2017 that was kind of different is And it actually came through our legislation and it was a Senate bill oddly It did not come from the House but it came through the Senate and they passed a resolution to create an elementary Agricultural education formal program that would be facilitated through the Georgia Department of Education And so with that came all the other other things that come along like the development of state standards recognition of full-time elementary ag ed teachers So not just a fifth grade teachers who has a raised bed, but actually elementary ag ed teachers who are the full-time That's that's what they do. They're the full-time ag teacher at the elementary school that pilot program ran for three years recently It was converted to a permanent program. We have about 40 elementary ag ed teachers in the state and we have our standards up We're up and running Jada and I've been delivering professional development to those teachers for the last three years So it's it's up and running we're still very very early in this but it's it's growing and I did actually want to jump in real quick Dr.
Peake gave that perfect segue for our culture in the classroom The reason I moved to Oregon was to actually become the executive director of Oregon Agriculture in the classroom foundation Dr. Peake mentioned a little bit of the difference and to be honest I'm not quite familiar with it myself because each state really does do it so differently But here Oregon I'm in the classroom operates as a nonprofit So primarily I do a lot of fundraising for the program and then we also have a program coordinator manager who helps disseminate Basically what we did in Georgia also we came out here and statement of not being familiar with that in other states But I think often we think about this as saying Oh, well, we know what high school I program looks like or middle school I program looks like and we for we say Well, it doesn't look like this in the elementary, but we're not there are many students and there's so many ways that I get comes in Elementary, so thanks for sharing that. Yeah, and Becky. I don't know that anybody really knows what elementary ag ed should look like We're trying to figure that out That's a lot of the research that Jake not are working on out trying to determine that exactly So, you know, I think about that we're probably not gonna put a meat slab in a second grade situation Processing animals, but you know raised bed school gardens farm to table farm to school type of programming things to make a lot of sense We have a few schools in Georgia that have chickens and rabbits We have actually a couple of elementary schools have goats and cattle, and I'm not sure that that's a good idea We're still trying to figure out how that can be safely implemented Almost and I'm not sure that I'm conceptualizing this correctly, but I think of K through 5 as the consumer side of agriculture With a heavier focus on health nutrition where your food comes from you know We've had different buzz terms over the years like ag literacy and ag awareness And I think that K5 is really good on the for the healthy eating and where your food comes from especially plant-based Middle school is more exploratory starting to look at the careers and high school is more on the production side of agriculture Now, that's just Jason Peake's take on it, but it looks to me It's gonna evolve something like that I think that's certainly helpful to at least give us a study point Dr.
Peake because You know, certainly in Georgia you've spent some more time thinking about that than what may do some of us across the country have and so That's a good place to start with that Jade you you have some of your experience around Farm to school egg in the classroom and kind of led you into this project So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, well, I guess I'll also back up a little bit and say that I'm also not originally from Georgia I'm from Minnesota and it was in Minnesota that I started Dr. Dad is away, but I you're from Minnesota too, right? Yeah, okay.
Yeah As you've been talking here She mentioned the state and Becky says you've been from there and the reason is Becky is running from the law And she has to move and she has to go to all the different stages She's part of the witness protection program She's failing that because she's on this world-renowned podcast and everybody knows where she is now Brian Boston every other episode I'm gonna join you I've lived in a lot of states I'll list them off here because this is related to all of my experiences But I started working on a vegetable farm in Minnesota And I really kind of fell in love with the idea at the time I was already in college studying nutrition and I was really into the community nutrition community garden track And so I just wanted to get some experience and I actually went to school in Texas So you know every year I would fly home back and forth between Minnesota and Texas and in Texas I worked a lot with the food bank and community garden programs hydroponic farm a couple other things that led me to work in Alabama and I worked on a rule I worked on an organic vegetable farm in rural Alabama And there I did a lot with helping develop a farming health and nutrition track Which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore simply because of COVID. I'm sure that's not a surprise there But there I would work on the farm take all the produce home And then I would distribute it up to the community members And then I also worked with some older adults and elderly folks But one of my I guess pride and joys was helping develop a cooking class for kids And so there it was teaching them about you know Here's this produce that we literally got from the farm this morning and showing them how to transform it and I Remember a moment when a kid said I think we had been trying different vegetables for several weeks now And it was the winter so we had a whole bunch of just lettuce and things that we already tried to tell and I said Well, you know what you want to try next week I don't want to do the same thing But I wanted to you know once your feedback what you want and when the kids was like You know what mister I'm gonna try some Brussels sprouts and I was just so proud that they wanted to try something new because they said you know before you I never would have tried any of this but you know every week we make something and that's good So, you know, I want to I want to keep growing new things So that was really heartwarming and inspiring and then like Dr. Pique said he recruited me And so I've been doing a little bit less hands-on on the farm on the garden But more so as he's been talking about kind of on the backside in the research and moving into talking about talking with teachers about how to corporate that into their classroom And that's really what led me to I guess Oregon is because when I got to Dr. Pique I said hey I want to be the executive director of a nonprofit that she just gets about agriculture food and nutrition and I think that being the Ed of Oregon I'm in the classroom is about as close as you can get to that goal So I'm really excited to continue helping teachers incorporate those materials into their classroom and teaching about school gardens So with that Jay is a great set of exciting history that I really appreciate you sticking that with us So this particular thing we're gonna be talking about today is school guard integration among Georgia elementary I get teacher So what do you find it?
What's it's all about? Yeah, so we like Dr. Pique said elementary I get isn't really very defined And I'll be honest when I got to Georgia I didn't even really know exactly what agriculture education was because even though I lived in all these states that had a lot of Agriculture going on it wasn't something that was a part of my school experience and so when he said well And I you know define what that means. I was going on.
Okay. Well, I mean, I guess it's just agriculture education at the elementary level But it's you know, it's not we had to figure out well What does it really look like and of course K to five they learn a little bit differently than older kids So what we really looked at was as called the green tool which is a model to help teachers incorporate really think about how to Integrate very sustainably the school garden into the classroom and that model encourages people and teachers and individuals to think about four big aspects So resources and support this can look like administration or funding or professional development Physical space is the second component. So really thinking about, you know, how is the actual garden set up? Is it close to the classroom is it close to a water source?
Then of course the student experience So it's you know well and good to have the garden but if it goes unused or the janitor mose it down That's an issue So it needs to really be a part of that student experience and they're getting hands-on time in the garden And then the final component is the school community and that is kind of looking at how the garden is integrated with the external components so volunteers School nutrition Volunteer events dr. Pique to do you want to add on to that? No, I think you did a good job summarizing it there It's like just just to tell you guys how new this is and how tough it is in Georgia if we try to Identify the ag teachers. I can pretty easily do that by saying well They they teach agra school agriculture in a middle school or high school and they receive extended eggs in a year pay And so that pretty easily can identify about 550 teachers in the state of Georgia when it comes to elementary ag ed We have we have some schools implementing different models because the state did not define the model So it's really at the school level that the model was defined And so we have one art teacher in Atlanta who teaches ag for one period a day And so the question is is she an elementary ag ed teacher?
Well, I would currently I would say she sort it is but it's it's hard to find most it looks like the emerging model That's going to win the model that's most successful is an elementary school with a A lot of them have the what they call the exploratory wheel. That's what we call in Georgia where they go to art into music and to Maybe a computer science class or something like that Well ag becomes an exploratory wheel and there is a designated elementary ag ed teacher who only Who's not only job is to teach agriculture all day And so I see other states coming along with this right now You know arkansas, mrs. Cippy mazuri is into it actually dr. Deb berry there in uh florida is working on this as well And so we have other states that are coming along and I think all of us are are trying to see exactly what that's going to look like and how We're going to define it and it's not as easy as it seems That's great you're under talking with dev some of the challenges we got here in florida and it's exciting I think that one of the big thing is it's very flexible and one of the hard thing is very flexible So you got to figure out what you want to do to have a local champion So when you talked about the school gardens, how are they using them or why were these part of the school curriculum?
What was what's the what's the the wide all this so the y to the four components? Yeah, yeah, so this was actually a model and I skipped over some of the more important parts I guess I explained what it was that we implemented but I didn't exactly explain what we did So dr. Uh kate bert out of I believe it's teachers college in columbia had come up with this this model This was part of her dissertation research and they did now I couldn't tell you the exact methods But essentially they come up with they came up with these 19 components divided among four categories as being The most essential to having a well-integrated school garden and well-integrated means that it's sustainable over the long term Ideally the more of these components that you have the more integrated and sustainable your garden will be and it will be established as part of the school Culture and that's important because the more recognized that it is as a part of the school culture the more that you can impact children and really hone in on Why this is an important learning tool and topic tool and topic being the garden So what we did is we asked teachers, you know, which of these 19 components do we have? So we essentially took the tool and turned all of the components into questions and asked them Do you have this component and how confident are you that you believe that you know This is true of your garden and then we scored it tallied it This is of course following the article, you know how they scored and tallied things And then that broke down into a scale of if you felt between these two numbers, you know You had a low integrated garden if you felt between these numbers it was a moderately integrated garden and if you had all these components It was a highly integrated garden.
It was a fun research project I think my dissertation was primarily qualitative I think if I you know had more time to really focus on this I would have really wanted to go in and see okay So what do these moderately integrated versus highly integrated gardens look like in vice versa? And if I can follow up on that, I'll just make a comment something I've noticed with teachers And especially as we're bringing in teachers who are non They're not trained traditionally as ag ed teachers But but one thing I've noticed that's really um, I think important from jay's work And it emerged as we went through is there are a fair number of teachers ag teachers who want to carry the load on their shoulders It's like they want to be in charge of the school garden and be responsible and do all the things and raise the money and make it happen And um, you know, there's great satisfaction in that, you know, there's um, there's a lot of meaning to be derived From doing all that work, but one thing that jay's research highlights that I think is great is It's like look if you are the ag teacher and you put all the weight on your shoulders and then you leave that school Which you will do eventually um in some form or another you're going to leave eventually And you're carrying all the weight it just falls apart because there's no one there to continue it You know, no one can take on that much But what jay really saw there is a well integrated garden brings the entire school together You know, you've got support from a lot of places And and really the ag teachers role is to make is to facilitate a well integrated garden Not to carry the whole load on their shoulders so that when they leave down the road There's still a structure that carries it forward after their departure And I think that's a really important thing for teachers realizing maybe when I was a young teacher I didn't do that. I took great pride in carrying the load myself and that was that's something I would change if I went back in the classroom Oh, and I'll actually just uh add on to that dr. Myers you mentioned earlier a champion And that was exactly how it's praised in a lot of the research and just talking to teachers tool talking to teachers too And dr.
Peake really just summarized this very well, but every garden needs a champion to get off the ground But after that it really needs a team to be sustainable in the long term I think that's a great message a great take home point for us and as we as we think about Ag teachers and pre-service teachers that are listening to this jade, what's this so what and what what can what can your work Share or provide to pre-service and our in service teachers that are listening to this? Yeah, I'm really glad you asked me that because my key point number three is the so what so I have it written down already I think one of the Easiest take home messages to really share is that it's really important to make a plan I talked about those four big domains earlier so resources physical space student experience in school community And I think if you're thinking about your garden plan asking yourself questions What resources do I have do I have a school administrator that can help me find funding or alternatively, you know Is there a funding source? So really making sure that you have your resources base covered and then it's centered down the line You know if I have a chance to plan the garden How can I plan that so it's most effective for my classroom if I live in Oregon or Alaska? For example, do I need a different type of garden?
Can it just be containers in my classroom? If you're talking about student experience, how can I make sure that the students are actually getting their hands in the dirt and really having that experience so they can make those connections And then finally, you know, how can I involve outside people if your garden is massive? For example, we talked to a teacher that said she had a huge plot maybe an acre or two in her school You know, does she have parent volunteers that can come in and help? So I think again to summarize the big takeaways to make a plan and make sure that you have resources People student experience and those outside people really helping your garden succeed So that if you have to take a leave of absence or you do leave it can continue to remain and continue to be a legacy for that school I think one of the things I appreciate so much just having previewed this a little bit and thinking about the school garden That the school garden I was teaching this is emphasis on sustained and integrated and sustainable And I think when you say make a plan, it's like well, we had a plan like we had to have a plan We were great like clearly we had like we had a plan but we didn't have a plan We had a lot of support but we didn't have a plan and I think I would encourage listeners to go back and actually take a look at The article because we talked about those 19 components when we talk about that green framework When we talk about kind of what does that plan actually involve?
There's a great roadmap here of things that think about things are processed to kind of identify do I actually have a plan? Yeah And I think if you're thinking about this as like a matrix almost those four component those four major domains of which I said There are 19 components, you know, maybe those go down one side and then across the top is that that actual timeline I did a school of garden training once kind of to supplement this research and just to help think about it differently and get to meet some teachers And one of the best activities we did is okay, what's your short-term goals? So zero to three months medium-term goals, you know, six to nine-ish months and long-term so after a year and to reach those goals What do you know and what do you need to know and who do you need to know? So I think really making sure that that timeline and the planning for those major domains comes into play on your plan so that it is logical and it's a functional plan too Well, I think to Jade one of the messages that I hear you saying is that it doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all And so make sure that you build your your program your school garden around the resources and the opportunities that you have and Don't be looking next door.
Don't look at the and the neighboring program to to gauge your your school garden because they have different needs and different resources at Aim. Yeah, exactly and also just add in that I wrote an article for the AgMag I think it's in the May to June issue that it's talked about form to school But the idea is the same is that it's I think it's eight key steps just starting your farm to school program and it's very general But it's also specific So it leaves room for you to kind of plan the garden in the way that makes the most sense for your school in your external community Yeah, and if I can add one thing to what Dr. Rotelik just said, you know, maybe this podcast will get to the ears of a new elementary ag ed teacher Who's not traditionally trained but ag ed is so so local I mean we talk about local program success and meeting the needs of your community and community based I wish so badly we could create a generic formula and say here just take this and apply it because that's that's what teachers ask for These young teachers that are new to elementary ag ed they're like, okay, tell me what my school farm should look like It's like that that that's quite a question, you know, that that takes a lot of learning your community and study And so I hate giving the answer well, it depends but what what dr. Rotelik said there's really important These should be community locally based programs that should meet the needs of that community and there is no one size fits all Well, that is a great way I think to wrap up a great conversation.
I appreciate This going through that that there's a lot of great work. We're looking here at elementary ag check out the stuff that's happening there with Dr. Peake and his crew there at the university of georgia on this definitely the leaders nationally on this area and Jay, thank you for your conversations are looking here around school gardens There's a lot of great stuff in here to really check this out and one of the things that really jumped out of me was this idea Overall for all like teachers is it takes a champion to get started but takes a team to be sustained And I think that's what we always want and I think that's the thing that we need to make sure we're looking at and you provide some great framework And I encourage folks to go check that out all of the other things here on social media So um jade Jason thank you so very much for being with us here today on al pellet to look forward to the continued conversation online Thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks so much.
Dr. Myers enjoyed it We hope you've enjoyed this episode of al pellets check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our guests Follow us on facebook twitter and instagram stay connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode For Mike and Becky. This is brian here by the al pellets saying thank you and we look forward to seeing you again on another episode of al pellets tips for egg teachers