Final report for ONC21-097
Project Information
Sustainability insecurities of our food system include: aging farmers, affordable access to healthy food, environmental damage, and affordable land acquisition for beginner farmers. Using a systems approach, schools can provide a logical venue to address these by partnering with small farmers and educating future farmers and consumers. Doing so will provide short and long term farm profits, stewardship of natural resources, and community resilience and quality of life.
One problem our grant addressed is the lack of proven teacher/farmer resources for creating quality farm and school programs and partnerships. Our first goal was to provide a well developed curriculum that includes the necessary elements of professional teaching that schools and farmers can rely on for grade appropriate programing in the NCR, namely educational standards. The educational standards we chose are Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS) as they are regionally, vs a single state, accepted across the 12 state north central region. SARE grant funding allowed us to take a newly, teacher/farmer, authored manuscript and review, edit, and test the contents before publishing. This was accomplished through a peer farmer review team and professional academic reviews for content, organization, and adding NGSS to all appropriate lessons. This curriculum includes a diverse collection of farmers across the NCR as role models and provides engaging activities for grades 3-12 for learning about regenerative farming and sustainability practices.
Secondly we address the lack of resources available to foster successful farm and school partnerships by sharing our own proof of concept farm and school program at Good Shepherd Montessori School, in South Bend, IN. We accomplished this by creating a 21 video online conference that includes local farmers, agriculture professionals and academics sharing their farm and school stories, practices and landscape tours. See this conference at https://www.gsms.org/food-farming-and-sustainability/. This conference serves as a professional development workshop for teachers and farmers interested in partnerships for youth education.
The majority of grant participants(over 50%) who were pre and post surveyed with regards to our curriculum exposure, including interns, teachers and students, showed an increase in understanding about the role of carbon and nitrogen cycling in regenerative farming systems.
This project is important and innovative because it fosters partnerships that are mutually beneficial while advancing farming education and exposure as a core curriculum in schools. Using a farmer developed curriculum, centered on sustainable practices, adds quality to any educational setting by fostering a practical and hands-on teaching approach for all subjects while exposing students to farming as a respected and important career choice.
- Establish NRCS and review team partnership and meeting schedule
- Review farm curriculum with established team
- Hire farm intern(s) for research, marketing, video editing, and workshop needs
- Produce videos of 6 farm enterprises highlighting sustainable farming practices from states in the NCR and use videos for curriculum enhancement for grades 3-12.
- Hire STEM education expert to apply Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS) and evaluation rubrics to curriculum units
- Conduct curriculum reviews by academic experts
- Edit and Proof curriculum for publication
- Collect and evaluate pre/post survey data
- Prepare SARE reports
Cooperators
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- - Technical Advisor (Educator)
- - Technical Advisor (Educator)
- (Educator)
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- - Technical Advisor
- - Technical Advisor (Educator)
Research
The sequence of events that worked for me for building curriculum units/chapter reviews by our review teams, by chapter, included:
1 -individual reviews on own time
2 group discussion
3 rewrites
4 Next generation Science Standards and teacher rubrics added by an academic professional
5 editing grammar; back to #1
6 Academic review on final drafts
7. Printing curriculum manuscript for classroom trials
8. Trials using curriculum lessons
9 Final edits
This curriculum review process was much more time consuming than originally expected and forecasted. The original curriculum document that was being evaluated needed numerous rewrites and required large chunks of time by the author(PI) slowing down the review process and creating other setbacks because of changes in reviewers availability, some leaving the project. Working with academics and farmers can be tricky as they both have very specific busy seasons and it requires patience and perseverance. In the end the finished manuscript; Food, Farming and Sustainability; a curriculum for home, school and farm is a publishable entity that will serve the NCR and beyond as a creditable curriculum resource for educators and will hopefully facilitate more of this programing for the future of food security.
In addition to the manuscript we created 6 short educational videos to enhance thematic education around regenerative agriculture themes. Our original goal was to get 8-10 small farmers from as many NCR states as possible to participate. This was a tough part of the project. Interns spent many hours trying to track down a diverse pool of interested farmers and also the follow through by farmers. Once we got a commitment by a farmer we sent them a list of still shots and video clips to provide us, using a phone camera, on and about their farm. We estimated the total time commitment per farmer to be under 3 hours and offered them $300 - $500 for their time. Several farmers started the project but never finished. I found this surprising as the pay per hour was very generous and free marketing is always a plus in small farming operations. Getting six farmer videos to completion was quite a job but each turned out great and did a god job of representing a regenerative theme. The videos are great for curriculum enhancement, bringing the farm into the classroom for schools. The completed videos will be public on YouTube. If I had it to do over I think providing the photographer would have increased our success rate.
The conference funding in this grant, and an additional SARE grant, funded a 21 video online conference series for farmers and teachers interested in starting a farm and school program. This conference provides a great resource that includes agriculture professionals, farmers and teachers who share their challenges and successes in farm and school programming and is readily available to the public for a ten dollar fee. We wanted to have a nominal fee to track the use of the conference and to do some follow-up surveys to report changes in attitude and practices. This video conference is available at https://www.gsms.org/food-farming-and-sustainability/.
Our focus is education.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Completed products include:
- An original curriculum manuscript for teaching grade appropriate farm and school lessons to 3rd -12th grade students has been improved through farmer and academic proofing, editing and the addition of Next Generation Science Standards. This manuscript will be evaluated for publication and distributed at farm and school conferences across the NCR.
- We have completed six small farmer videos spotlighting regenerative agriculture practices in the NCR. The 6 month extension gave us more time to work on this area of the grant. We still have one video being completed to add as soon as possible.
- Some grant funds were redistributed to cover additional costs for changing the in person conference/workshop into an online, 21 video conference on Food, Farming and Sustainability that can be found at https://www.gsms.org/food-farming-and-sustainability/.
Curriculum trials have been ongoing at Good Shepherd Montessori School for grades 4 - 8th since the beginning of this grant. Theri Niemier and Grace Kyle, farm programming student guides, have both been involved in outreach in the classroom and through educational videos as part of an online conference; Farm and School Education for the Future of Food Security available at https://www.gsms.org/farming-the-city/ .
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
Using a systems approach, schools can provide a logical venue to address food resilience and sustainability topics. By partnering with small farmers and educating future farmers and consumers through relevant easy to follow cross curriculum education, with science standards, we can shape the future generations of consumers and expose students to farming as a rewarding career. Doing so can provide short and long term farm profits, stewardship of natural resources, and community resilience and quality of life. Good curriculum will encourage and support teachers in this movement.
All spotlight farmers, have done an excellent job in portraying their farm businesses and their niches in regenerative production. All have expressed the need for farming exposure for youth and have said things like, "this is great", "how exciting" and " we need more of this". Even the farmers that didn't follow through on the project originally committed because they had a strong desire to be part of the solution - creating more farmers and securing the future of food security.
Though this project has taken many hours more then the originally expected time commitment I am so excited, and thankful, for the finished product that will be accomplished and made available to the NRCS and beyond. My next thought is to create a video series, maybe blog style, that follows the yearly cycle and gives live performances of the lessons.