Learning You Can Eat: Resources for Teachers
Urban Tilth believes the starting point for designing school garden programs should be: “How can we empower students to sustainably produce significant amounts of healthy, organic food for their families and their community?” We believe this primary focus on food production will ultimately lead to school garden programs which will more deeply impact students and our community.
Once a food production and distribution system is in place at a school and once students are hooked in and motivated by the opportunity to tangibly (and deliciously) improve their community, there are many ways to connect the real-world food production project with academic learning. For Vygotsky fans, school-based food production systems (such as a student-managed market garden and CSA) could be seen as the perfect social construction in which to create deep learning experiences for students. This focus on real-world action projects first and standards later is also informed by research from the service-learning field, the experiential education field, Howard Gardener, Ted Sizer, Richard Louv, as well as millenia-old human traditions such as apprenticeships and cross-generational learning. Learning doesn’t get more real than growing healthy food and providing it to your community.
This page contains resources—articles, weblinks, examples, etc. useful for creating rich learning environments in conjunction with food production and distribution systems at schools.
(Check back soon for links, articles, etc.)
