Imagine this: You are a full-time 5th and 6th grade Science and Math teacher in a rural school in Vermont.  You are committed to teaching your students about climate resilience. You have been selected for a Climate Resiliency Fellowship. This year-long program, offered through Shelburne Farms and Vermont State University brings you together with colleagues from around the northeast who are similarly passionate about climate change education. Within this community of educators, you will learn and grow together and create individual projects designed to teach “climate change with hope and justice, while tending to individual and collective well-being.”

You have a total of 9 hours and 30 minutes of instructional time each week with your students for both math and science. 80% of that time must be spent teaching math, which leaves you 2 hours per week to teach science. This is a total of 24 hours of science-focused teaching time for the entire school year, during which you need to cover the following topics:

• Ecology

• Weather & the Water Cycle

• Earth's Changing Climate

• Space

How will you rise to this challenge? What resources do you have available to help you? How can your Food Connects Coach support you?

This was the beginning of our conversation this fall between FTS coach Sheila Humphreys and Dummerston School teacher Lindsey Glabach-Royce. In our role as Farm to School coaches, we help to build the capacity of talented educators like Lindsey to reach their professional goals related to Food, Farm, and Nutrition education.

Lindsey believes that, “The way to save our world is for kids to be connected to the land. This is a 2-way relationship. We need to respect the land and take care of it. My intention is to connect students to the land and the history of the land.”

Faculty members of the fall session of the fellowship program included Abenaki artist, writer, and educator Judy Dow. Judy demonstrated using 3D topo maps to teach students about their local landscape. Inspired by this approach, Lindsey plans to seek out maps of the local area from colleges and engineering labs. 

Lindsey is also planning a land acknowledgment project with her students. Through Judy Dow, Lindsey connected with local resident Patricia Sweet Austin, a Vermonter of Abenaki and European ancestry who is a western Abenaki language learner and author of Wliniwaskw Wliahki: Good Spirit Good Earth. Lindsey hopes to collaborate with Patricia on a land acknowledgment project at the school.

Lindsey has been able to connect with local farmers as well, to explore what they are doing to address climate change. With Sheila’s help, Lindsey made contact with Wild Carrot Farm and Walker Farm, and plans are in process for students to do some hands-on learning with local farmers related to their climate science unit.

We will be checking in with Lindsey throughout the year to see how her project is progressing and how we can continue to help increase her capacity to reach her professional goals.