Highlights from our October 26 Dialogue
(Updated November 30, 2006)

Earlier this fall, Global Source planted the seed for a new learning community by bringing together educators and interested community members to talk about our schools and local-global issues of food and farming.  A group of 15 Bainbridge and North Kitsap educators and 15 stakeholders from the local community gathered at the Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery to tour the Day Road farms, eat delicious locally grown and prepared food, and share ideas for teaching and learning about food and farming. During this program, we discussed ways to raise awareness, build knowledge, and foster engagement in these important local and global issues. The responses to the guiding questions can be found below.

How can we raise awareness?
Issues of importance concerning food, farming, culture and education

How can we build knowledge?
Relevant curricular themes and learning objectives

Suggested Resources: K-4, 5-8, 9-12 and General

How can we foster engagement?
Local prorgams, projects and activities

Program Partners & Participants
Global Source Education
Trust for Working Landscapes
Laughing Crow Farm
Foodmuse Inspired Catering
Bainbridge Island School District
Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery

Host: Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery,
8989 East Day Road, Bainbridge Island, WA

Other participants from:
Bainbridge Island Historical Society
(within) Bainbridge Island School District
- Bainbridge High School
- Commodore Options
- Food & Nutrition Dept.
- Odyssey
- Wilkes Elementary
Breidablik Elementary
Great Peninsula Conservancy
Island School
Madrona School
Natural Landscapes Project
Voyager Montessori
West Sound Academy
Wolfle Elementary
Parent, Volunteer
4-H

HOW CAN WE RAISE AWARENESS?

Story titles from participants about issues of importance concerning food, farming, culture and education.

• Food and Beauty
  
• Learning to eat oysters
  
• Almost Anyone Can Be a Part-Time Farmer
  
• Food and Getting Dirty
  
• Four Generations, Farming and Community
  
• Foraging
  
• Playing with Your Food
  
• Forests to Farms to Condos
  
• Food and Health: A Grandmother’s Perspective
  
• Making Healthy Choices
  
• Self-Portrait as Giant Rutebega
  
• Hot Rye Muffins with Kids
  
• Breaking Bread
  
• M & M By-Catch
  
• School Lunch: A Proper English Meal
  
• Making Rosehip Jam with My Grandmother
  
• Salmon Stream
  
• Hands in the Earth, Food in the Mouth
  
• Lets Grow Soup and Salad For Lunch
  
• Question of Balance
  
• The Evolution of School Nutrition
  
• Picking Strawberries
  
• Farming in 4Th Grade in Holland
  
• Childhood and Passion for the Land
  
• Green Living Challenge
  
• You Mean We Can Eat the Apples Right off the Tree
  

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What are compelling local-global issues concerning food and farming that can be integrated into the culture of curriculum and school communities?

• Awareness
  
• Cooperative Learning
  
• Connection to Place
  
• Relationships
  
• Depletion of Fisheries
  
• Value of Food in Our Culture
  
• Awe/All of Nature
  
• Interconnectedness
  
• Inner/Outer World Connection
  
• The Connection of Hands & Work to Food in Mouth
  
• Chain of Production
  
• Producers and Consumers
  
• Food and Appearance
  
• Poverty
  
• Obesity
  
• Nutrition
  
• Interdependence: From Here to the Beyond
  
• Food Safety (Accountability)
  
• Peak Oil
  
• Food and Inequity
  
• Spiritual
  
• Cheap Food
  
• Vegetarianism
  
• Migration/Immigration

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HOW CAN WE BUILD KNOWLEDGE?

Story titles about young people learning about food and farming.

• There is more to life than video games and computers
  
• What do the Birds & Bees Have TO Do with the Apples and Trees
  
• You Can Never Have Too Much Basil
  
• City Mouse, Country Mouse
  
• Small Skinny Peppers Are Very Hot
  
• Ice Storm Scrambled Eggs
  
• Paper Comes from Trees?
  
• What’s Quinoa?
  
• Trees Drink the Extra Water, Mitigate Flooding
  
• Hens and Neighbors
  
• Little House at Laughing Crow Farm
  
• Why We Plant In Rows
  
• Potatoes Come Full Circle
  
• In Memory of Matt
  
• Blue Ribbons at County Fair
  
• Teacher, Who Feeds The Animals In The Woods?
  
• Worms Eat My Garbage
  
• But, It Tastes Good

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What are relevant curricular themes, areas of study, and learning objectives?

• Any Realm of Social Studies Education (& through all WA State Organizing Themes)
  
•     Geography                                   
  
•     History                       
  
•     Economics                                   
  
•     Civics
  
• History of Local Farming
  
• Literature: reading across many genres
  
• Humanities
  
• Environmental Education (Love your world!)
  
• Science
  
• Food and Consumer Science (modern version of Home E.)
  
• Community & Culture
  
• Systems and Interconnections of Living Systems (Part of Science EALRs)
  
• Health and Nutrition
  
• Music & the Arts
  
• Experiential Education
  
• Sustainability
  
• Ecological Literacy
  
• Ancient and World Civilizations (rise of hunter-gatherer to agricultural tocivilization)
  
• Teaching the Global Commons
  
• Bainbridge Island was the grocery store for Native Americans
  
• Land Use vs. Food Distribution
  
• Food Security
  
• Biodiversity
  
• Ecological Identity (mode of expression to form deeper relationships with self,others & natural world
  
• "Why some like in hot"
  
• Labor Issues
  
• Migrant Labor
  
• Food and Human Rights
  
• Globalization
  
• Culinary Arts
  
• Biography
  
• Rethinking School Lunch
  
• P.E.
  
• How biology effects geography
  
• Meaningful experiences foster stewardship
  
• USA as a Bioregion
  
• Land use
  
• Curriculum for the Bioregion
  
• Place-Based Education
  
• Stewardship

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HOW CAN WE FOSTER ENGAGEMENT?

What are the most engaged, meaningful, and authentic ways for educators and schools to bring the study of food and farming to life for young people?

• Authentic, Meaningful Work
  
• Experiential
  
• Full Circle: creating, eating = pride and learning
  
• Sense of History and Place
  
• Celebration, Acknowledgment (honoring kids work)
  
• Compassionate work
  
• Creating a Dynamic Learning Environment
  
• Place-Based Education
  
• What is in our “backyard”?
  
• Engagement of kids
  
• 'You can lead a student to salad'
  
• Historical Engagement
  
• Through the Social Studies
  
• Sensory engagement
  
• Affecting all the senses
  
• The experience of growing, and then preparing your own food
  
• Compassion in the form of Community Service

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What are the projects, programs and activities that (do or can) model this kind of teaching and learning, locally and globally?

• Research Topic: What happened to all of the farms that once flourished on Bainbridge? Where are they now?
• Make a Compost at School
• Integrate a study of the Earth Charter into your curriculum
• Organize Slow Food events
• Help organize local pea patches, encourage family use
• Idea of Long Term Education
• Integrate a field trip, or collaborate on a service learning, project with the Day Road Farms (Laughing Crow Farm and BI Vineyards and Winery)
• Research Topic: Document the life of Akio Suyematsu and his Day Road Farm as a living history project.
• Getting Students in Involved with Local Experiential Learning & Purposeful Work: Strawberry or Raspberry Picking; Rye Field; Draft Horses; Harvest Garlic; Digging Potatoes; Bioregional Field Work (documenting, journal, art work)
• Topic of Study: Mycology: the scientific study of fungi “An amazing (and overlooked, if not taboo) science topic for young children. Opportunities for hands on & experiential learning abound.  An essential part of ecology that is largely mysterious.”
• Connection with Community: “Schools utilize the local resources, such as Marshall Strawberries- much local land was once strawberry.”http://www.bainbridgehistory.org/
• Activity, Kindergarten: “Every Tuesday we make soup for snack.  Everyone brings a vegetable that they can chop (teacher brings celery, onions, broth).  It reinforces produce, and where it comes from, and its delicious.”
• Activity (K-4): “At our school, parents bring fruit and veggies for the week’s snack.  Some of the food shared has been: carrots from children’s gardens, plums & apples from family trees.”
• Activity (K-4): “We visit our garden plot by walking through the gardern on our daily 45 minute walk.  We see the garden in various stages throughout the year.  Children are reinforced by identifying plants in their family gardens.  Children see community and neighbors working in their garden- planting, watering, harvesting- and asking questions (inter-generational)”
• Activity (all ages): field trip to Pheasant Field Farm
• Connection with Art Education: study work of Van Gogh, Cezanne, etc.

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FOSTERING ENGAGEMENT

What are the local projects, programs and activities that are modeling this kind of teaching and learning?

[Most of the following responses were submitted by participants.  Some descriptions are from notes taken during the program. They are not in any particular order.] 

• Collaboration between Wolfle Elementary and Laughing Crow Farm

  • Reading “Little House in the Big Woods”
  • Students work at the farm (work = respect)
  • They get to take one piece of fruit (lesson of just one)
  • Restoring physicality of purposeful work
  • Using tools: pioneer skills linked to study of Oregon Trail
  • Art & Nature (Studying relevant work, Bring to related landscape, Time to draw and write)

• Collaboration between Island School (Fifth Grade) and Laughing Crow Farm

  • The Island School fifth grade is working to incorporate an understanding of food and farming in several ways.  As part of our Oregon Trail studies we have visited Laughing Crow Farm and done a series of activities including: flailing, threshing, and grinding grains into flour and then cooking biscuits in a Dutch oven; felling and climbing trees with an axe, and then bucking it into lengths with a crosscut saw; and working with a draft horse. 
  • In support of our study of sustainability (and still related to Oregon Trail) we planted potatoes in the spring and then returned in the fall to harvest them. Back in our classroom we made mashed potatoes and ate them happily.
  • This November we will be having Brian Whorten of Butler-Green Farms and Vern Nakata from Town and Country come to talk to the class about their work towards sustainability and buying local produce.  With Brian's help we will plant our small garden with winter crops.  And we'll get to fertilize it with the compost we make in our school's rotating composter (to which we add our food scraps from lunch).
• Voyager Montessori has a Marshall Strawberry Project
  • At Voyager, we plan to eat our garbage! Students are working to implement a composting procedure that helps food waste ferment and decompose. This compost will be spread in our strawberry gardens. We have planted the Marshall strawberries and have returned our land to its historical use as a strawberry farm. In the spring, we will harvest and eat our strawberries! These are just some of our whole-school projects, as we work towards adopting the Earth Charter. 
  • This project is key component of curriculum (Local History, Composting lunch food, Teaching the Earth Charter, Student Scrapbooking)

• Marshall Strawberry Program of Bainbridge Island Historical Society

  • Schools can help propagate the BI fruit
  • Aside from the strawberry plants, we also now have a list of "curriculum builders", that is ideas to use as a basis for a study project from the historic berries.  Background and research material for this is available in the BIHS Museum library, as well as for research materials on land, land ownership, types of farms the island has supported over the years and their impact on the economy of the island, which Joan Piper shows in the packet about helps and research capabilities the museum provides.
  • Also, for educators, particularly those new to the island, who may feel at a loss about island history and wish to learn more in a nutshell form, we have a self-guided history tour of the island, called History on the Move which we will be happy to provide for anyone who would like to have one.
  • There are some follow-up, more indepth materials that one can use, if desired, after doing the tour.  Come to the museum to get your copy. Wed-Sun. 1-4 PM
  • Call Carol McCarthy, 206-842-6735 or Joan Piper, 206-842-2773 (BIHS Museum number).
• Odyssey (BISD) 1st through 6th grade public school, parents develop and present curriculum for 1.5 hr every Friday afternoon, working around themes.  
• We have a gardening theme every Friday and I am developing the curriculum. I welcome input, visitors, field trips, one time lessons/demonstrations and ongoing projects within this format.  
• One thing that came out of the 10/26 dialogue was that we will learn about the significance of and create a bed for Marshall strawberries, plant them, nurture them, and visit Voyager elementary just down the street!

• West Sound Academy (Garden Club) We received grant money and several donations to establish eight 8x4 raised beds at our new campus.  

  • We planted numerous varieties of herbs, root vegetables, salad greens and vegetables, squash, flowers, eggplant, cauliflower and more.
  • We donated over 100 pounds of food to Fishline in Poulsbo and Helpline on Bainbridge.
  • We will also supply ingredients to our Culinary Arts classes and salad greens to select school lunches.
• West Sound Academy (Culinary Arts Course) My curriculum simultaneously goes backward/forward (historical perspective), and sideways (broad/around the world).
  •  In our class, we travel from continent to continent, study the indigenous foods from that geographical place, how the foods have changed through colonialism, global markets, etc.  
  • We focus on very important moments in history that are related to food, such as the spice trade, specific markets—sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, the green revolution.
  • As we travel from place to place and study the history, we make foods from these areas to enjoy the different tastes from different cultures, and look at how agriculture shapes culture.

• Wilkes Elementary (4th Grade)  I am most excited about the stream habitat restoration projects that we have participated in the past 5 years.  

  • Brian Stahl of the Kitsap Conservation District has worked with me coordinating these projects.  He has found several sites for us to work at that are on or adjacent to farmland.  The site of the first project was at the old farm near the big bend along Miller Road.
  • We planted trees along a stream on the property that feeds Manzanita Creek to help mitigate runoff from the pastureland.  
  • We also have a worm box outside our classroom to help process food and yard waste.  We use the compost in a perennial garden outside the classroom, a Mother's Day gift and other
  • Gerard Bentryn and I spoke about the possibility of a planting project on the city land to the east, adjacent to the winery.
• Woodward Middle School (Food and Consumer Science Course)  Since 1977 we have incorporated Hunger and Food Distribution within the General Cooking Classes, at the Middle School Level for the BISD. 
• Much of what we cover has been directed toward an international or global level, but we are currently shifting to include the local level in a more clear and comprehensive manner.   
• Although there is more teaching resource information available from worldwide organization such as UNICEF, CARE, The WTO, and The Heifer Project, The Earth Charter/YES Magazine, just to name a few sources, with International Food and Water Distribution; we are in the process of adapting lessons to local demographics and resources.  
• This year Woodward Middle School and Eagle Harbor High School have been chosen as test sites for Facing the Future's Sustainable Living Curriculum.  This curriculum is directed toward an international view, but provides lessons that lend themselves easily to our local situation, as well.
• Within the classroom, the objectives involved with meeting the needs of understanding hunger are met through lab simulation games, research, garden plot experimentation, and other teaching techniques to help students understand the interconnection of food, water, finance, employment and energy.

• Bainbridge High School (Course) Designing and proposing an elective for the high school on sustainability education. The course will include three 6-week units and one of them will be on food production.

• Bainbridge Island Historical Society: The Bainbridge Island Historical Museum gives docent tours of the exhibits, which include topics relating to farming on Bainbridge Island.  School groups may arrange for a program.

  • We prefer to give tours in the mornings when the museum is closed to the general public
    For researchers, we also have an extensive library of books, subject and biographical files, oral histories, and historic photographs.  We're open from Wed - Sun 1- 4 to the public.  
  • You can see a list of our files on our website www.bainbridgehistory.org <http://www.bainbridgehistory.org>  by clicking the "Collections" button.
  • Access to Library & Primary Sources for Research projects (Island history & biographies)
  • School programs (i.e. w/ BISD Four Grade)
  • Joan Piper, Education Coordinator, Bainbridge Island Historical Society and Museum
    206-842-2773; education@bainbridgehistory.org

• Natural Landscapes Project: As part of the Project I am looking for a few more schools/classes who wish to have a presentation on composting.

  • I can adapt it to any age level. I can focus on yard waste/food waste.
  • I am also interested in helping a class or school actually do some worm composting.
  • That, of course, takes some commitment from a staff person to carry out. It is possible that my grant partially fund the construction of a worm bin and the cost of worms. We would plan a few educational opportunities for staff/parents to learn about it, too.
  • Interested persons should contact me.  I work anywhere in Kitsap County. Bobbie Morgan, Natural Landscapes Project, 206-842-5955

• Great Peninsula Conservancy: The GPC is working to protect forever the rural landscapes, natural habitat and open spaces of the Great Peninsula region.  
• Through voluntary efforts the Conservancy now protects nearly 1900 acres that represent every significant landscape type in the region including working farms and agricultural lands.
• Although protecting family farms is only a part of our mission, the Conservancy’s community outreach and education efforts, through the stories of our farm landowners in our printed materials, displays and video, work to inform the public of the importance of protecting forever family farms, not only for future generations of family farmers, but for the health and well being of the whole community.
• Contact Kate Kuhlman, Development and Outreach, Great Peninsula Conservancy, (360) 373-3500 or (866)373-3504

• Trust for Working Landscapes

  • Farm Education Committee
  • Partnership with BI Parks Dept.
  • Pea Patch Neighborhoods
  • Curricular Docents
  • Community building with kids an integral part of that engine

• Global Source Education
  • Building a professional learning community, Further Professional Development
  • Deepen the Intitial Fall Dialogues with follow-up programs in Winter 07
  • School-Community Projects
  • Inservice & professional consultation services
  • Curriculum & Resource Development

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

General

Food and Farming Home Page

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