GLOBAL SOURCE EDUCATION

Enriching K-12 Education for the 21st Century

Food, Farming, Culture and Education

Betsy Wittick and students cultivate with a plow at Laughing Crow Farm.

Day Road Farms, Bainbridge Island, WA

Overview of Food, Farming, Culture and Education Institutes

What are the possibilities for teaching and learning about food and farming in our classrooms and communities?

By touring, experiencing, and tasting produce from a local farm, we see firsthand the healthy and organic processes necessary for wholesome food.

Since Fall 2006, more than 100 local educators and community members have been gathering to engage in a meaningful professional and civic dialogue about food, farming, culture and education. Participants represented fifteen different schools and an equal number of community organizations. These dialogues attracted a wide range of community stakeholders who addressed diversity of perspectives and identified common threads around a number of key issues.

• Community-Based Education
  
• Farming other Working Landscapes
  
• Food & Nutrition
• Habitat and Ecology
  
• Healthy Living
  
• History and Heritage
  
• Local and Global Commons
  
• Civics Education

 

Upcoming Events The Third Annual Summer Institute on Food, Farming, Culture and Education (FFCE), July 27-31, 2008, hosted once again at Day Road Farms (and other sites on Bainbridge Island) This week long intensive professional learning experience will take place amidst the natural beauty and agricultural richness of one of the oldest, most continuously farmed, working landscapes in our region, which is being transformed into a center of learning of K-12 and community based education. The institute is aimed at supporting educators in building their professional repertoire around cornucopia of food and farm related subject areas. Grounded in place-based education and framed around a curriculum for our bioregion, we explore the possibilities for enriching teaching and learning and bridging classroom and community. We are creating pathways for practicing education for sustainability and building stronger relationships between farms, classrooms, and lunchrooms. It has been a wonderful opportunity to practice the integration of scholarship, stewardship, citizenship, and sustainability. For more information please contact Global Source , 206-780-5797

 

The EduCulture project at Day Road Farms The Farm-Schools Projects at Day Road Farms are helping to transform one of the oldest working landscapes on Bainbridge Island into an educational landscape to explore the possibilities for teaching and learning about food and farming in our schools and communities. Through an open space levey, this farmland has become part of Bainbridge Island’s community commons, and has inspired an effort to bridge sustainable local farming with educational for sustainability, by offering lived experiences for teachers and students that cultivate scholarship, stewardship and citizenship. For more information about class visits and school projects, contact Global Source.

 

What Teachers Said About Our Last Summer Institute

"I felt it was a very worthwhile institute and it fed my soul as well as my educational interests."

-Eric Hoffman, Bainbridge Island Highschool

"Kids need to understand where food comes from and that they have power and control over what goes into their bodies. Even with a full plate of curriculum, there is a way to integrate this information into the classroom and make it meaningful."

-Peggy Koivu, Odyssey School

"Because of the content and opportunities provided by the Institute, I was able to have two life-altering discussions, one professional and one personal. One outcome is an alteration of the 7th grade food and nutrition curriculum at Woodward Middle School, and one outcome is the opening of common ground between my father and myself."

-Christine Fulgham, Woodward Middle School

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Past Programs and Consultations

Second Annual Food, Farming, Culture and Education Summer Institute
July 28-31, 2008, Day Road Farms, Bainbridge Island

First Annual Food, Farming, Culture and Education Institute
July 16-20, 2007, Day Road Farms, Bainbridge Island, WA

FFCE Curriculum Projects with Wilkes Elementary and Island School
Ongoing, Bainbridge Island

Food, Farming, Culture & Education Dialogue
March 9, 2007, Chelan, WA

Food, Farming, Culture & Education Dialogue
February 6 and 13, 2007, Bainbridge Island, WA

Food, Farming, Culture & Education Dialogue (see highlights)
October 26, 2006, Bainbridge Island, WA

Food, Farming, Culture & Education Dialogue (see highlights)
December 5, 2006, Bainbridge Island, WA

Suggested Resources

Grades K-4, 5-8, 9-12

General

Mike Derzon, fifth grade teacher from the Island School, gets a starter plant of
Marshall Strawberries from Carol McCarthy of the Bainbridge Island Historical Society,
during our October Dialogue at the Bainbridge Island Winery.
She has been helping to propagate this fruit of Island heritage, including with local schools.
(Read more about the Marshall Strawberry project in our program highlights.)

Global Source Education is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
serving elementary and secondary education in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

info@GlobalSourceNetwork.org • (206) 780-5797
PO Box 11316, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

©1999-2008 Global Source Education