Karl Ivanov, president of I & E Construction, shows Molalla High School Culture Club members how to prepare garden beds during placement of Oregon’s 500th school garden in 2013. A recent episode of the new Farm to School Podcast talked with Kelly Douglas, who helped create that garden and remains a passionate advocate for school gardens. (Photo by Kelly Douglas)
Kelly Douglas calls herself an “ambassador of farm-to-school garden joy.” Douglas created the Molalla High School Culture Club, which built Oregon’s 500th school garden in 2013. The Oregon Public Health Institute gave her an Emerging Genius Leader Award in 2014 for her work with the club.
Douglas went on to become the West-Linn Wilsonville School District director of the superintendent’s office, but she has continued to champion the “magic of kids and dirt.” She has testified in Salem and given motivational presentations on the power of gardens to transform school culture and bring communities together.
“Anywhere that anybody can give me a microphone and I can encourage people to look at the dirt and think about what can come out of that dirt with some kids involved, that’s my role,” she said.
The new Farm to School Podcast gave her a microphone earlier this month as one of its first guests. The podcast aims to highlight the interesting things going on with school gardens in Oregon and the country. The co-hosts are Oregon Department of Education Farm to School/School Garden Coordinator Rick Sherman and Oregon State University Extension Service Farm to School Coordinator Michelle Markesteyn.
Oregon now has more than 750 school gardens, with at least one in every county, according to Markesteyn, but it could be more. ODE offers grants for farm-to-school programs that are going unused.
Schools use their gardens to teach career development, science and math, social and emotional learning, and health and wellness among other things. They are also an avenue for bringing community partners into the school to support students, she said.
Markesteyn said her research shows more than 20 positive impacts on participants, including improvements in behavior, cooperation, citizenship skills, cultural identity, skill mastery, responsibility, work ethic and general happiness. They are also an avenue to help students eat better, and research shows child nutrition is tied to academic performance.
“We have seen whole cultures of schools transformed by school gardens,” she said. “Kids get more invested in school. Adults get more involved with students.”
Markesteyn has spent more than two decades with farm-to-school-type programs, before it was even called that. Within this context, farm to school is an umbrella term that covers pretty much anything that is caught, harvested, raised or gathered in Oregon and goes to a sponsor of a child nutrition program.
Markesteyn said the podcast will aim to release an episode every two to three weeks. They interviewed Douglas, she said, because “her passion is contagious, and she has a lot of great lessons to share.”
The 500th garden at Molalla is gone now, but Markesteyn said that’s the nature of school gardens. Gardens tend to fade away when a parent volunteer’s child moves on or a staff volunteer changes jobs. To sustain a garden program, a district needs a paid coordinator position, she said.
“There is a three- to five-year love bubble where it can run on volunteers and hopes and dreams, but you really need someone,” she said.
Douglas, outsider her work for West Linn-Wilsonville, strongly advocates for paid coordinators and district backing. She said a school board’s enthusiasm for a program is crucial to creating the community support and partnerships that help a garden thrive.
“When you have the support of your school board, it’s very visible,” she said.
Douglas offers instructions and resources to help schools start their own garden programs.
“I truly believe it’s so simple. It just takes one person to believe,” she said. “It’s just kids and dirt. It’s magic.”
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
jarnold@osba.org
