cheers to the youth.

MGMT: The Youth, they sing:

The youth is starting to change

Are you starting to change?

Are you?

Together

I can’t help but think – indeed.

The youth are starting to change and we are starting to change in response; we are changing together. Our responsiveness is something they need. They need us to change. They need something very different from nearly everything we have been giving them. They need us to give them rules, to follow through, to discipline them, and to provide them with guidance and mentors. Their actions, habits, behaviors, it is all showing us that we need to provide something different for them. We need to change for them, together change needs to happen.

We need to start teaching them how to be children: how to imagine, create, explore, and work well with others, how to share, build a fort, and make a mess (and then also clean that mess up). And after all of that, at the appropriate time, we need to teach them how to be adults: how to be independent, responsive, and diligent, how to manage their finances and take care of their family, friends, and community. Regardless of their age, they need to be responsible and respectful. Most importantly, they need someone to teach them how to do all of this.

Where we have become more responsive to these needs is in our decision to create and sustain farm to school programs. Farm to school: a three-pronged approach to building connections between farms and schools. 1) school gardens, 2) nutritional education and 3) assisting schools in their efforts to purchase food from nearby farmers. School gardening lessons and units take students out of their desks and classrooms and provide them with an opportunity for hands-on experiential learning. Students learn how to plant, nurture, harvest, and sell their produce. Then, students learn about a complete life cycle when they prepare their garden for the winter and return their scraps to the compost. Time outside of the traditional classroom gives students the time they need to build a relationship with the world around them. As they spend time in the dirt and monitoring the growth of their plants they begin to learn how other things grow and change over time. They learn that spending time outside can be a great time to explore (and in turn, as they mature into adulthood they grow with an intricate knowledge of the outside world and “outside” is no longer a dangerous place for their own children to explore.)

When children learn about how food grows, within them a sense of curiosity is aroused. They are more likely to try new fruits and vegetables; the same fruits and vegetables they have cultivated over the previous weeks and months, and with that we can begin to teach them how to appreciate what is on their plate when they sit down to eat a meal. In the kitchen, when preparing a feast for themselves and others, they will learn how to work well with others. At the table, their interest is piqued when they notice a purple carrot on their plate, the same one they dug up from the ground moments earlier. In these moments we have the opportunity to teach children about what eating well looks like. How what we eat will give our bodies the nutrients to live healthy lives or will force our bodies into survival mode. Meal time is also where we have the opportunity to teach students lifelong lessons about table manners, the value of sharing a meal with others, and etiquette.

Further, when schools are able to foster relationships with the farming community that surrounds them, it gives children the opportunity to learn about farming and about a way of life. Here they will learn how others in their community live and contribute to the world around them through their work. With local food purchases schools have the opportunity to teach students about how they, as consumers, can have a positive impact on their community or can purchase outside of their community thereby actively choosing a stranger over a neighbor. Local procurement gives students a first-hand look at the give-and-take involved in community building and the awesome responsibility of being a part of something bigger than themselves.

If the youth succeeds in changing us, rather, if we can respond appropriately and adequately to their needs, then maybe, just maybe we can figure out how to help them not only survive in this world but how to thrive and become productive, responsible, independent, and respectful members of their communities. So yes, the youth is starting to change and we are starting to change together. And rightfully so,

Cheers to the future.

To the youth.

What is Farm to School?

Farm to school is a three-pronged approach, it includes: school gardening, nutrition education, and local food purchases for school cafeterias. It is an effort ultimately to help students actively think about what they eat, where it comes from, how it’s grown and makes its way to their plate, and what foods will help their bodies thrive. Farm to school programs or organizations are created to fit the needs of their communities. Some communities or schools have strong gardening initiatives but only purchase food from nearby farmers once or twice a year. Others have strong local procurement efforts but struggle to engage teachers in maintaining and sustaining school gardens and a strong nutritional education component. Regardless of the strength and weaknesses of each effort, they are all important and serving a need in their communities.

Pieces of me : a real introduction

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have an amazingly supportive family who would probably jump through hoops of fire for each other. They are wonderful. Now, 3/5 of us live in Minnesota, 1/5 of us in India and myself, I live in West Virginia.

I attended undergraduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. For 4 ½ years, I studied to become a secondary social studies teacher. Midway through my last semester in pursuit of a teaching degree I decided the program was not for me; I felt it did not challenge me in the way I wanted to be challenged. I changed my major to History and added another, Women’s Studies.

After graduation, I moved to Boston; Brookline to be precise. And with that I started a 5 year adventure in New England. I decided midway through this journey that my liberal arts education needed some balance. I wanted to learn more about finance, management, economics, and business. I enrolled and later graduated with a Masters of Business Administration in 2011. I ended my studies with a practicum focused on the business of Farm to School: how farmers can increase their market diversity and demand by selling to nearby schools and the potential for sales growth for farmers in this area.

My next step was to practice management. During school, I worked at a high-volume yet local bakery and cafe and after graduation, I decided to interview for the Assistant Manager position. I was offered the position and gratefully accepted and thus began another year and yet another adventure.

This adventure was rudely interrupted in October 2011, when I was struck by the trailer of a semi in the middle of my bicycle ride home from work. Let me just say, I owe my life to a large team of trauma responders. Five surgeries later, I was well on my way to recovery and had learned quite a bit about myself, my family and friends, and that really, one of the most important things in life is how we respond to it.

After two months of intense recovery, I was itching to get back to work; I was slowly able to do this. For eight months, I practiced and learned a lot about what managing really feels like. And while my coworkers were amazing and I was working hard, I was unfulfilled. I wanted to use what I studied in pursuit of my MBA and figure out all the nitty-gritty details of Farm to school.

In mid-August 2012, a friend from my MBA sent me a call for Farm to School workers. The hitch was that the open positions were in West Virginia. There were seven open positions, each set to serve a single county.

I had been to West Virginia once and during that first visit, over the course of a few days, I fell in love.

So I applied, and Labor Day weekend I drove 12 hours south for two interviews in two very different counties. Both counties were interested; one county's supervisor extended me an official offer within 18 hours of my interview; just as I put my car into park in front of my apartment in Massachusetts, after driving through the night and morning; I had slept at a rest stop a few hours from Boston.

I accepted.

And with that call, I gave notice and began to gather up my things in Boston/Cambridge.

Eleven days later, after I finished packing my material possessions into a box and my car, I started driving toward Alderson, WV to stay with the same friend who had forwarded me the original job posting. I arrived twelve hours before my first day. Since then, it has been full speed ahead. I have been purchasing everything from seeds, dirt, and books, writing lesson plans and teaching them on a weekly basis, relearning Content Standards and Objectives and the bureaucracy of public education, all in the name of teaching children about food, nutrition, and what it is like to live well. 

So here I go, full speed ahead into the Wild and Wonderful, West Virginia.