LFS:UBC Farm Audio Tour 2b LandedLearning
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The Intergenerational Landed Learning School Program brings students from Vancouver elementary schools out to the Children’s Learning Garden throughout the school year. The program began in 2002 when science education professor, Jolie Mayer-Smith, and home economics professor, Linda Peterat, brought a class of grade 7 girls from the Crofton House school to learn about the land from seven experienced gardeners who had spent their lives working the soil to grow food. These “Farm Friends” volunteers shared their experiences and knowledge of the land with the youth, guiding them to grow, tend, and harvest food crops. Landed Learning was designed to create both educational experiences and research to better understand the impact of food- and garden-based learning on Earth stewardship. Over the years Drs. Mayer-Smith and Peterat, and multiple graduate student researchers have explored a variety of research ranging from nutrition education to teachers’ practices in the garden.
My name is Stacy Friedman and I have been fortunate to been involved with Landed Learning since 2005. In 2003, I was a graduate student in the faculty of Education at UBC, and one of a group of UBC students from a variety of faculties who began constructing a beautiful cob garden wall, oven, and tool shed as an entrance to the Children’s Learning Garden. I watched the garden bloom and grow as I mixed sand, clay, and straw with my feet and molded it to become the walls of the cob structure. When I heard about opportunities to volunteer with children planting food in the adjacent gardens beds, I jumped at the chance. After my first visit, I was hooked. The program combined every component of a healthy community that I wanted to see in the world: intergenerational relationships, respect for elders and children, community-based learning, learning from the land as our teacher, joy and respect for life, stewardship of the Earth, developing a taste for healthy food, and eating together in community. After my first season as a volunteer in the program, I took over coordination responsibilities for our manager who was moving away.
In subsequent years, the program expanded to work with three classes, grades 4-7 who come out to the Farm on 10-12 occasions throughout each school year. Students from each class work in small collaborative groups of four children, and two “Farm Friend” volunteers (one elder, and one younger volunteer) in one of the small raised garden beds. The groups are guided by the seasons to explore themes such as life cycles, soil health, and water, while they harvest, save seeds, prepare soil, manage compost, plan spring gardens, start seedlings, direct seed, transplant, tend, trellis, thin, water, weed, harvest, cook, and eat their garden crops.
Over the years we have invited parents and families to the Farm for an annual Landed Learning Family Day, supported our participating schools to put in their own school gardens, inspired similar projects around Vancouver, British Columbia and beyond, published research on a variety of garden learning topics, started a summer camp called “Farm Wonders”, worked with home learning families, and run workshops for pre-service and in-service teachers to help them get growing in their classes. In 2009, students from one participating school nominated the Landed Learning Project, and BC Hydro selected us for their Community Champions Award! In 2010, we published a book of curriculum materials entitled “Get Growing!: Activities for Food and Garden Learning” which is available through the Landed Learning website. However, it is the reactions of the children to their experiences in the garden that bring the most satisfaction. When children tell us how much they love kale, how they are no longer afraid of bees, how they want to take plants home for their parents to taste and their families to grow, and how they never want to leave the UBC Farm, all of us who work together in Landed Learning know we are having an impact and fostering care for the land, food, and community.