Garden Club: Reflections from Lead Educator Katie on the Year

From the left, Green Teens Nasro, Jasmin, Courtney, and Luul at the Westgate Farmer’s Market

It’s been nearly a year since the Green Teens- Luul, Nasro, Courtney, & Jasmin - started working at Highland Youth Garden. They began in June as Summer Green Teens, graduating in mid-August to Assistant Educator positions. In their new positions, each of them worked together to develop STEM-based curriculum for our After-School Garden Club program, rising to the challenge of not only working with elementary school children, but engaging them in the work of gardening.

This is the first year we’ve used a model where multiple levels of intentional learning and training were happening at once: The Green Teens were learning about how to run/manage an after-school program and work with elementary students, and the elementary students were learning and engaging in STEM-Based Garden/food work. Instead of the Lead Gardener, Charlie, and I communicating and hammering out a Garden Club plan, we suddenly had 4 lovely young ladies who were eager to learn and help run the program.

What an amazing year it was. The students learned so much, the teens learned so much, and WE learned so much, too. You can check out what the teens said about their year running Garden Club here.

As the Lead Educator here at Highland, here are some of my major take-aways & pieces of advice from the year:

Pick the right people to lead

The 4 teens who worked as Green Teen Educators were amazing throughout the entire year, no surprises there. They stayed attentive, engaged, and thoughtful, even during the longest days. They presented at OEFFA with charisma and charm and totally woo-ed the audience, many of whom who stopped by after the presentation to tell us how very impressed they were with the ladies. Teen girls get a bad reputation for being catty or drama-centered, but I never saw anything but authenticity from them. They worked together with a sense of team-work and partnership, playing off each other’s strengths and ideas.

Nasro & Jasmin show off their handouts from the annual ECCO conference

If you are considering using a model where there are multiple forms of training/learning going on (in our case, teens were learning how to develop STEM-based Garden curriculum and elementary students were learning about gardening & connecting STEM topics), pick the right people to lead the youth programming. Our teens were engaged and excited to learn & try new things, and were receptive to feedback. Though the Green Teen/Garden Club combined program is in it’s infancy, it would have undoubtably looked very different had we hired young people who were resistant to learning new things, or sullen, or disengaged.

Give the Teens more Modeling & Guidance

Jasmin guides Garden Club student Lois while she chops radishes

I am, at heart, obsessed with informal learning. I was raised in progressive education and in college, I poured through texts of Ken Robinson, John Dewey, and Elliot Wigginton. However, I did not have formal training in teaching, which I believe led to a major mistake: I discussed what the program/curriculum should look like with teens, but didn’t do enough showing and modeling. I am told by folks who do have formal education in teaching that “telling but not showing” is a classic rookie move!

If I could talk to myself in August of last year, I’d tell myself to do more modeling before throwing several teenagers into the depths of running an after-school program. The mistake was made with good intentions: I wanted our teens to feel agency over the program, and learn somewhat through mistakes and hands-on experience. When it came to leading the program, though, I did a little too much “telling:” I explained what we should focus on in each Garden Club (gardening, STEM education, & hands-on work) but didn’t show them as many models of what that really looks like as I could have. For next year, I’d create some highly-visual planning tools (like a board layout, or a paper model that we use over and over again) rather than just working through the planning process by talking & recording it on a document. I’d walk them through the planning process very clearly the first few weeks, deciding for the most part the activities we’d do with students, and then after 4 Garden Clubs or so gradually give them the reins to plan activities.

I’d also create an opportunity for the teens to really practice informal education with each other. I forgot how tedious high school schoolwork can be, but was quickly reminded when we sat down to plan for Garden Club and the suggestions for learning activities were worksheets, flashcards, etc. That’s what they understood education to be, as that’s what had been modeled.

To prepare assistant educators for planning STEM activities that aren’t worksheets, we could do a mock activity together like planting radish seeds, then coming up with a list of the many ways planting a radish seed can be connected to STEM education. Teens could role-model with each other, practicing learning that feels more spontaneous instead of rigid. They could also volunteer at a couple local programs that focus on science/gardening (4H and COSI are a couple that come to mind) before or during the start of their After-School program. By working directly with students already established in a program before they meet “their” students, they might have gotten a better feel for what working with elementary school students is like.

Change some of the Nitty-Gritties:

Courtney works with Garden Club students to make a 2-D Felt model of the stages of germination

We learned during the first half of the school year that no-one, not one person, wanted to come out for Saturday programming. Advertising, flyers, posts on social media- none of it worked. For the second half of the school-year, we ditched Saturday programming, instead using Saturday to plan, and added a second Garden Club during the week. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made: our Garden Club attendance sky-rocketed, and we added more students to both Tuesday & Thursday.

In the 2020-2021 school year, we will continue with the model of planning on Saturdays (shortening the planning time a bit once teens are in a groove) and hosting Garden club on Tuesdays/Thursdays. We also agreed to end Garden Club at 5:45pm or 6pm instead of 5pm, as families who work needed enough time to get off work and come pick up students; the time extension comes with an added bonus: more time to do intentional activities and projects with students, as well as adding a “chore/clean-up” time at the end where elementary students help clean up. The educators frequently felt rushed during Garden Clubs, trying to manage transitions between activities, offer thoughtful responses to student questions, and lead the activities and tasks themselves.

We’ve played with the idea of requiring students to attend a certain number of Garden Clubs in order to continue- at least half, maybe. At the beginning of the year, we had a rush of students sign up, but then few actually attended because they wanted to switch programs, or a different after-school program came along that the parents liked more. Finding ways to ensure students are attending regularly allows for more student agency over the garden (“That’s MY garden!”), and gives room for multi-week projects.

I’d also give every teen a binder with information about Garden Club: students names & faces, who has/doesn’t have a photo release, focuses on programming, examples of activities, and the weekly plan. I’d be much clearer about expectations; for example, instead of saying “please remember to take photos during garden club!”, set an expectation that each Green Teen with a phone takes a minimum of 4 photos per Garden Club, or assign a “photo” person each week who goes around to stations and takes photos.

Focus on Relationships:

Relationships are SO important in teaching. Students (pretty much all people, for that matter) want to learn from and engage with people who they like, who respect them/they respect, and who they feel safe around.

In the upcoming year, I anticipate having a very heavy focus on relationship-building the first 4 Garden Clubs or so. Not just icebreakers, but working together as a team to accomplish tasks in the garden, and setting standards for how we treat each other in Garden Club. Teens who are assistant educators will be given flashcards of the elementary students’ faces and names, and will be expected to pass a test to ensure they know everyone’s name.

The Green Teens work with a school counselor in a Conflict Management training

Once some of those relationships are established, then ease into the more heavy, STEM-based learning. When doing rotating “stations” with the students, there was some resistance from Teens to stay with the same group during the whole Garden Club; instead they wanted to remain at a station (for example, they wanted to stay at the “carrot planting” station and have groups meet them instead of moving with the same group to multiple stations/activities). Wanting them to have agency over the program, I responded by letting them stay at stations. Next year, I’d like to experiment more with having teens stay with the same group of 4 or 5 elementary students for the whole Garden Club day (groups would switch every week, and be assigned randomly at the beginning). I think this method will allow students to develop stronger relationships with each other and with teens, and vice-versa. One of the frequently-mentioned favorite activities from the Teens was the day when we did a “Worm Poster” competition. Students worked in groups the entire Garden Club to learn about worms, explore them in their natural habitat, and create a poster for the rest of the group. Students had a blast, the teens said great things about it, too. Part of the success of that day, I believe, was that everyone remained in the same group and bonded more than they would have shuffling between leaders & activities.

More Reflection & Educational Opportunities for Teens

The team right after presenting at the OEFFA conference. From the left: Beth, Nasro, Jasmin, Courtney, Katie, and Luul.

Teens attended several education/environmental/farming conference, and even presented at OEFFA. Conferences are amazing, but they’re typically designed for folks who have several years of professional experience under their belt. I’d still offer and encourage opportunities to attend & present at conferences, as these experiences were invaluable, but I’d also expand their opportunities to watch others teach & lesson plan instead of just talking about teaching and lesson planning, as is often the case in conferences.

I’d also set the expectation of more consistent reflection. Reflection is so-very-important to the learning process. Almost all Garden Clubs, everyone sat down once all students were gone and reflected as a team on how the club went, what could have gone better, what went well, etc. Many times, everyone was pretty tuckered out at the end of the day: they had a full day of school, then went straight to Garden Club often without break. No one wanted to write, reflect, or talk: pretty much everyone was in the mood to go home and eat dinner with their families. Next year, I imagine changing the reflection a bit: teens write down responses to reflection questions in bullet-point fashion at the end of each club, and we discuss it all together first thing at our Saturday planning meeting when everyone has had the change to rest a bit.