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Ridgeway, Jessica D.

Natural Resources

2007

MS

In Vermont we have the unique opportunity to infuse Sustainability Education with sustainable agriculture. Vermont is primarily a rural, agricultural state, providing ample opportunity to connect students to their local communities, local economies and local environment, through school gardens and relationships with local farms and farmers. Vermont is also a place with great potential for moving towards sustainable agricultural systems due to the social and civic networks already in place. These networks are the basis of many movements intertwined with and in support of sustainable agricultural systems including: the local foods movement, slow foods, farm to school, permaculture networks, organic and diversified farming, and school and community gardens. These movements take many forms and names and work towards some common goals, making agriculture and human production and consumption more sustainable. Some of these movements work towards education and what better way to begin a paradigm shift than by educating the young? Using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, I employed ethnographic methods such as focus groups, participant observation of school events and semistructured interviews of community members including teachers, parents and farmers. In collaboration with members of the Cambridge community I have assessed Cambridge's Sustainability Education curricular needs. Based on the community defined problem of a lack of and need for Sustainability Education curricula and a school garden we created Seeds of Sustainability (SoS), a curriculum and school garden that connects students to local farmers and community members, strengthening community bonds, fostering a sense of place and a stewardship ethic among participants, in an effort to improve the community's ecological literacy. As a result of the implementation of the SoS curriculum students demonstrated improved understanding and skills for testing and improving soil health in the Seeds of Sustainability garden. They learned site assessment and garden mapping techniques that were successfully employed in the design of ten student garden beds planted by the fifth and sixth grades in June 2007. Lastly, the evaluation and analysis of this project has resulted in recommendations for refinement of the curriculum to improve the program for future use.