Greetings from the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Green Youth Farm!
The Chicago Botanic Garden has been asked to share some of its experiences and lessons in youth gardening programs with other organizations starting similar programs, and the community gardening staff are happy and honored to do that. This brochure contains a short history of the Garden’s community gardening programs, lessons from the curriculum and other resources, and a high level description of how the farms run on a day to day basis.
The Garden’s model for youth garden programming, Green Youth Farm, opens a door to discovery for young people, while providing access to affordable fresh produce for families and communities. Through engaging, authentic work and training, the Green Youth Farm offers a platform to educate young people about the natural world as they build skills that prepare them to enter the workforce. While managing and maintaining a garden, young people learn about sustainable agriculture practices, healthy food preparation and eating habits, teamwork, responsibility, community service, entrepreneurship and careers in the green industries. The Green Youth Farm conducts activities through a youth development framework that links youth with caring adults who engage them in skill-building activities to develop their personal, social, academic, and vocational abilities.
The Green Youth Farm grew out of the Chicago School Garden Initiative that ran from 1997 to 2005. This initiative taught the Chicago Botanic Garden two important lessons that still guide its community gardening programs. First, children and youth get more excited about gardens they can eat from—all time favorite garden themes were salsa, pizza, and “three sisters” gardens (traditional native American corn, squash, and beans). Second, garden programs for young people in Illinois should include intensive summer programming, because it is during the summer months that plants grow best and young people most need work.
Out of these lessons, the original Green Youth Farm was born in 2003 on a one acre site in northeast Lake County that continues to serve about 22 high school students each year from North Chicago and Waukegan. The second Green Youth Farm grew up in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood in 2005 and serves 20 high school students per year from the Manley Career Academy and other schools. This summer will mark the third season for the Garden’s first Junior Green Youth Farm, serving sixth through eighth graders at the McCorkle Elementary School in the Bronzeville/Grand Boulevard community. McCorkle is a feeder school for Dyett High School, where a fourth Green Youth Farm program will open this summer, letting Junior Green Youth kids graduate into the high school program.
Green Youth Farm builds on a great curriculum from The Food Project
The Green Youth Farm uses a curriculum published by The Food Project, a non-profit organization that runs a sustainable urban agriculture program for teens on a 31-acre farm in rural Massachusetts and on several urban lots in Boston. On their website, www.thefoodproject.org, you can order the curriculum described below and download free manuals with guidance on how to run a summer agriculture program.
The Green Youth Farm uses the Food Project’s French Fries and the Food System for weekly workshops on sustainable agriculture, food systems, and nutrition. This experience-based curriculum guides students through hands-on activities to learn about crucial aspects of sustainable agriculture including soil types and uses, composting, beneficial and harmful insects, and problems with pesticides. Students learn how to sell produce at a local farmers’ market and other sales points through workshops, fieldtrips, role playing exercises, and sales experience at their own farmers’ market stand. Lessons on food distribution systems culminate in the “Final Food System Debate,” in which teams debate conventional food systems versus local, sustainable food systems. The Garden has also supplemented the curriculum with additional lessons on diversity and the meaning of the term “organic.”
Work readiness preparation and team building are guided by the Food Project’s Growing Together curriculum, which informed the Green Youth Farm’s straight talk process and standards and violations charts (see Appendix G). Straight talk sessions help students build a reflective, mature attitude towards work while the violation chart highlights the consequences of unprofessional behavior. Students sit in a circle, and each is encouraged to listen quietly as staff identify positive achievements and areas that need improvement. Although students may initially be uncomfortable with this direct form of critique, they are soon eager for these progress reports and learn to take both praise and constructive criticism calmly and with an open mind. Straight talk and the violations chart work together to support healthy relationships between team members and to promote a positive and open work environment.
A day in the life of the Green Youth Farm
Each farm has a year-round coordinator, a seasonal growing assistant, and two paid interns, giving an approximate instructor to student ratio of 1:5. Experience has shown that this ratio creates a supportive setting that makes learning fun, conveys skills that can really challenge these urban youth, and gives the students much-needed attention from adult mentors.
From mid-May to mid-June, high school students work about four hours per week after school preparing the farm, expanding to 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. over 12 weeks during the summer. The Junior program has been adapted so that younger students work four hours per day, four days a week, for six weeks.
A typical day begins with team building exercises, many of which are drawn from Growing Together. (In Appendix A, we have included a list of our favorite activities to help guide you through the curriculum.) Students are divided into work crews of five, of which one member is an experienced crew leader. Crew leaders, selected from students returning from last year, report to the farm manager and have significant responsibility for the smooth running and coordination of crew activities.
After the team building exercise, everyone heads out to the garden where, through hands-on activities, students learn basic farming techniques such as planting, weeding, controlling pests, and harvesting. The Garden only hires instructors who believe in student-centered learning and have good gardening sense: the students learn lessons like how to balance a wheelbarrow, or lift without straining, from the instructor’s example or, even better, from last year’s returning students.
Students bring their own lunches that they eat together, except on community lunch days when they prepare a lunch from the garden to share. At 12:30 there is usually a closing exercise for team building, and then they begin to close down the garden. The crew leaders leave last, at about 1:30, after running through their checklists to verify that everything has been shut down properly and the tools safely stored.
Most days include farm work, with the time spent on farm chores adjusted based on the following variations on a day’s theme:
· once a week workshops from the French Fries and Food System curriculum or other materials written by Garden staff;
· once a week community lunches where alternating crews prepare and serve lunch for the rest of the team;
· once a week straight talk sessions;
· U-Pick days when the farm is open to community residents to pick fresh produce for a fee;
· selling days at farmers’ markets or other sales outlets;
· making runs to local food pantries to donate excess produce;
· art days every other week when a local artist guides the students on an art project, for example, creating mosaics on large plant containers;
· four field trips per season; and
· a variety of visitor activities that take place over the season such as tours given to other youth programs, donor visits, and a once per season community open house.
Experiences with the French Fries and the Food System curriculum
Beginning staff are asked to read, from French Fries and the Food System, the “Introduction” and “How to Use This Book” as well as the individual workshop lessons described below. From Growing Together they read all of parts I and II (“Meaningful Work” and “Shared Standards”) and part III, “Interactive Learning” up to the first activity on page 86.
Collectively and individually, once a week workshops cover the life cycle of plants, types of soil and composting, harmful and helpful insects, problems with pesticides, local and regional food systems, food quality and safety, and jobs and entrepreneurship in agri-business and other areas of the burgeoning green sector.
Seeds to Zucchini (p. 25-26)
This workshop teaches students about stages in the life of a plant and the botanical definitions of “fruit” and “vegetable.” Students are given plants in various stages of growth, from seed to fruition, and are asked to organize them by development stages. A discussion follows in which staff split open seeds so that students can puzzle over seed structure and try to figure out where the seeds grow (where, for example, does a lettuce produce its seeds?).
Farmer’s Market (pp. 125-137)
The Green Youth Farm has developed its own farmers’ market training, which draws on field trips (where students interview farmers at a large market); role playing that includes market planning and setup, sales technique, and accounting; group analysis and critique of the role playing exercises; and one-on-one interactions between each student and an instructor at the farmers’ market. Many of the materials used by Garden staff for these exercises are included in Appendix F. Garden staff are also familiar with the three farmers’ market training lessons in French Fries and the Food System and regard them as a very helpful starting point.
Rocks to People (pp. 21-24)
In this workshop, students learn about the processes that create the soil, and why farmers use a management plan to preserve the quality of their soil. Students work in groups to figure out best practices for different situations, proposing strategies like rotation, cover crops, and compost or fertilizer.
Pesticide Banquet (pp. 116-118)
Participants play a game to learn about pesticide residues in foods to understand the potential health risks of inappropriate or unnecessary use of pesticides.
“Family Compost Feud” (pp. 30-35)
Participants explore the impact of composting on the food system by learning how to create a backyard compost heap. Regulations on composting will vary by locality, so contact your city our town early to get handouts on backyard composting.
Insect Exploration (pp. 36-37)
Students learn the difference between helpful and harmful insects by going out to the garden or a nearby park to hunt and identify insects. Garden staff have found this workshop a natural point of departure for a discussion of related current events such as the Colony Collapse Disorder in bee colonies.
Trace the French Fry (pp. 44-46)
This challenging workshop brings together many visual and tactile elements to help students trace their french fries from the farm to a local fast food restaurant. Learning aids include fresh potatoes and french fries, a map of the food system, and a diagram showing where energy is consumed in the various stages of food growing, processing, and distribution. All of these elements come together again in the next exercise, the Final Food System Debate.
Final Food System Debate (pp. 56-58)
A favorite of the students, this workshop has come to be called the “Great” Food System Debate because it brings together all of the students from North Chicago and North Lawndale—all on North Lawndale’s little quarter acre. Building on the “Trace the French Fry” workshop, students use what they have learned about food systems to make arguments debating the pros and cons of two different food systems, conventional and local.
Experiences with the Growing Together curriculum
While French Fries and the Food System is used primarily for weekly workshops on agricultural and food system topics, the work readiness and team building exercises in Growing Together are a regular feature of life on the farm.
Appendix A lists and summarize the Garden staff’s most frequently used activities from Growing Together under the headings of “Icebreakers and getting to know new people,” “Energizers,” “Team building,” and “Forms of communication and multi-culturalism.” In addition, three workshop days feature materials from Growing Together.
Straight Talk (pp. 43-45)
In a workshop, staff introduce the students to Green Youth Farm’s rules and standards and guide them through their first experience of straight talk.
Yarn Toss (p. 173)
This fun activity helps students visualize their dependence on one another and is part of a lesson plan on diversity designed by Garden staff (see Appendix B).
Public Speaking (pp. 193-198)
In this workshop, supported by a number of exercises and a handout in Growing Together, staff help students prepare to speak at community open houses, guided tours of the farm, and Legislator Days held at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Additional workshop plans and activities developed by Green Youth Farm staff
Diversity (Appendix B)
This workshop uses the students’ growing understanding of how diversity in plant crops enriches a farm to think about how they can benefit from the diversity in their own Green Youth Farm community. The workshop ends with the “Yarn Toss,” an exercise in Growing Together that helps them visualize the interrelationships in their little farm community.
What does “organic” mean? (Appendix C)
The students have heard that the term “organic food,” but in this workshop they are challenged to sort through the many associations of the phrase, first by sharing what it means to them. Students also learn to distinguish between organic growing methods and organic certification.
Food Safety (Appendix D)
Green Youth Farm staff have adapted the food handling guidelines from Sodexo, a company that manages the café and catering at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The students each receive a copy of the guidelines which they read and discuss together in one of the workshops.
Amazing Race (Appendix E)
Incorporating several different farm-themed games, this set of fun activities helps bond two groups of young people together when participants from North Lawndale travel for the first time to the larger North Chicago/Waukegan site to help with maintenance and harvesting.