Farm to School Takes on Fungi

Educators from 9 schools across Windham County gathered at Wild Carrot Farm in early May to learn about mushroom cultivation from farmer Jesse Kayan and recently retired 3rd-grade teacher from Oak Grove Deb Pierotti. Not only is mushroom cultivation relatively simple once you have the right materials, but the connections to learning standards come easy, as demonstrated by past students’ work Deb brought to share. 

Mushrooms can look otherworldly and inspire awe. Their unique properties spark curiosity. One example is the Barometer Earthstar fungus, a few of which Deb brought to share. This mushroom opens or closes depending on its moisture level. Deb’s passion demonstrated that engaging lessons are those that not only captivate the student but the instructor as well. 

Learning scientific observation skills, writing and composition, and history through the lens of fungi helps make the content stick as well! Tara Davis, a parent at Oak Grove School, brought her son’s Mushroom Journal from when he was in Deb’s third-grade class, sharing that it had not only been a highlight of his year but his entire time at Oak Grove. 

Jesse helped make it easy to bring the workshop back to participants' schools. Along with Caitlin Burlett, Jesse’s wife and farming partner, they prepped logs, a wax station, and had pre-purchased spores to inoculate the logs. 

Each participant got to try out two different cultivation techniques: a “totem” method used slices of logs with shiitake spore sandwiched between them, and a “plug” method, where many holes are drilled into a log and filled with oyster spore. 

The main lesson learned was that it’s all about location. Armed with their two inoculated logs and some lesson ideas, Jesse tasked the participants to find a cool, dark, damp forest spot for their logs and to wait patiently for the mushrooms to emerge. In the meantime, we’re excited to see what new lessons and units grow out of this workshop! 

Resource Roundup—6 Tools to Help Teachers

Since the pandemic closed schools in March, teachers nationwide are shifting their practice and adapting instruction to fit virtual and physically distanced settings. Food Connects maintains a running list of professional development opportunities in our monthly newsletter (scroll to the bottom!) but we also wanted to highlight some other tools that have made their way into classrooms this year. Read on to check out six new tools to help teachers adapt to COVID-19. 

Teaching Outside 101 (Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center - BEEC)

Drawing upon over 20 years of experience, BEEC put together a 15-page guide to getting your classroom outside. The first half of this guide covers the nitty-gritty logistics of outdoor education—from establishing natural boundaries in your new outdoor classroom, to supply lists for teachers and students. The second half of the guide covers idea starters for outdoor lessons in each academic subject.  

What we appreciate about this resource is that it is not overwhelming and covers just enough to get you thinking about how to improve your practice and routines with outdoor education. Each topic gets you thinking about a particular aspect of teaching outdoors (ie: travel to the forest) and offers a few idea starters (challenge them to walk like a ____ dog/cat/deer/mouse/etc.) without ever being exhaustive. 

Cooking with Students (Food Connects)

In response to requests from our member schools, Food Connects created a 2-page guideline on how to safely cook with students during COVID-19. The guidelines touch upon the following topics: Students in the Garden, Cooking in the Classroom, Eating in the Classroom, Cooking Outside, and Utensil Sanitation. Our intention is to empower teachers and administrators to make safe decisions for their school while keeping cooking and hands-on nutrition education a part of student learning. Once you feel confident about bringing cooking back into your classroom, the next two resources will help identify recipes to try. 

Indigenous Harvest of the Month (NH Farm to School and Indigenous NH Collaborative Collective) 

Released earlier this year, this collection of resources from NH Farm to School and Indigenous NH Collaborative Collective focuses on the traditional crops of the Abenaki tribe. Some of these may already be a familiar sight in your school garden or around campus—others, a new learning opportunity for your students. We love the resource’s background on each harvest, the inclusion of nutritional information, as well as the crop’s historical context.

Farm to School programming is rooted in the land, yet too often the history and stories of those who have lived here (wherever “here” may be) for millennia are overlooked. By teaching their history and elevating their work, we remind students of a Native American culture that is still thriving today. 

Celebrating our Roots: Multicultural Recipe Book (Burlington School District - BSD) 

Created by BSD teachers in partnership with the University of Vermont, this recipe book highlights dishes from around the world, representing the home countries of many BSD families. Like the Indigenous Harvest of the Month materials, the book pairs each recipe with facts about the dish, an explanation of its cultural significance, and suggested learning activities. 

Classroom Compost Buckets (WSWMD)

Windham Solid Waste Management District has classroom compost buckets available. As schools relocate lunch to the classroom, teachers and facilities staff are rethinking how waste is collected. Send an email to John at WSWMD (recyclewswmd@icloud.com) to get one for your classroom as well as other resources such as signage for your waste sorting station. 

Sails for Schools (Wild Carrot Farm)

Jesse from Wild Carrot Farm donated sails (from sailboats) to schools to use as shelters this fall. They’re all spoken for the time being but the next time he’s able to get more—likely sometime in the spring—Food Connects will help distribute them. If you’re interested in one for your outdoor classroom, send us a message at farmtoschool@foodconnects.org.

Farm to School Program to Expand Professional Development Offerings

As Farm to School programming continues to grow in local schools, Food Connects’ Farm to School team is gearing up to train and support even more educators. We are excited to connect with new teachers, child nutrition professionals, and community partners to share best practices from schools across Vermont and New England.

We understand that connectedness is essential to the success of farm to school programming in southern Vermont. We know that this kind of education cannot happen in silos and it’s clear that our southern Vermont school partners feel the same way. In an effort to facilitate peer learning, resource sharing, and general connectedness in the farm to school community, Food Connects will kick off our “Let’s Grow Together” series of workshops for farm to school champions this spring. Workshops will be content-specific, including topics such as composting, seed-starting, cooking with kids, school food 101, farm to school curricular connections, and much more!

It is our hope that these workshops will serve as a space for farm to school partners to gather, learn, and inspire one another. By creating these “communities of practice,” we hope to help make farm to school programming easy, sustainable, and fun! Stay tuned for more details.

We are eager to learn more about your professional development needs and interests, so please reach out to our team with any ideas you may have.

Learn more about our Let’s Grow Together series today!