Chico Jr. Builds a Program

Chico Junior High School’s approach to building a garden program has been slow and steady. From the beginning, they recognized the importance of a support team and buy-in from different sectors. Initiated by members of the Slow Food chapter of Shasta Cascade County, the program gradually brought in the school Principal, teachers, students and parents.

Building coalitions outside the school community

Chico Junior High School’s garden program began from outside the school with Noelle Ferdon, Co-Leader for Slow Food Shasta Cascade County.  This Slow Food convivium set a goal of developing partnerships with schools as a way to get involved with the community.

Noelle looked around at various local schools.  At the same time, she contacted Cindy Wolff, PhD., who heads the Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion at CaliforniaStateUniversity, Chico.  They discussed what the Center was doing in relation to nutrition and garden programs. 

Partnerships that pay off

Building connections with key networking people is wise strategy.  Cindy had information about the entire district and could provide a perspective and profile of the schools that would be best to work with.  She suggested Chico Jr. High School because of the supportive Principal.  Administrative support for a new project is crucial, particularly if the project is being suggested by an outside group.  Cindy’s relationship with the Principal gave the planning team a foot in the door.

The team also saw Chico Jr. as an opportunity for building community partnerships.  The school is not eligible for federal program funding such as Nutrition Network, so the team felt they could call on parents and community in their efforts to build a school garden, with the hope that this would build in success. 

Third, Chico Jr. High school has high identity with the city, since it is named after the city, and it is located right next to the University.  This also affords and opportunity for volunteers from the University to help with the garden establishment and the program.  

Meeting with school personnel

Developing relationships first is key: Cindy Wolff gave Noelle an entrée to the school’s Principal Joyce Burdett.  Having this referral from Dr. Wolff afforded Noelle the credibility she needed as an outside person to approach the school personnel.  And meeting face-to-face with the Principal jump-started the process.

It’s always a boost to a program if the Principal has had previous experiences with gardens, either in schools or at home. Principal Burdette enthusiastically supported the idea, having had a garden at the elementary school where she worked before coming to Chico Jr.  She realized that it would be a real asset, for both beautification of the campus and enrichment for the students.

The Principal then introduced Noelle to interested teachers who started the slow process of organizing a core team.  The team includes:

Mary Anne Pella-Donnelly, Science teacher, was excited to teach science with a living garden.

Sarah Jensen, Resource teacher

Ronnie Cockrell teaches Outdoor Adventure Education and Industrial Technology.

Noelle Ferdon, Shasta Cascade Slow Foods liaison.

Abe Simmons teaches the Opportunity Class.  These are the students who are at risk and not doing so well in the regular school environment. The garden offers an opportunity for them to be hands-on and have something to take care of and be responsible for.

Making these connections requires lots of patience, persistence and dedication, all of which Noelle has in plenty supply.  Getting to know people and the school first is especially important if it is an outside group or even a group of parents who want to establish a garden.  It doesn’t work to go over or around people. Buy-in is needed from all levels—administrators, teachers, maintenance crew, and students, of course.

Publicizing the program

Noelle’s enthusiasm was infectious. Once teachers started talking, they became excited and with Noelle’s help started to launch a plan.

To bring the program to the community’s attention, Slow Food coordinated a big fund-raising night. They showed a popular film, The Future of Food, at their local independent movie theater and organized a dinner at a café next door.  This event helped build visibility and brought in community and parent support.  People enjoyed themselves and the team got lots of positive feedback.  From the money collected, about $1700 was donated to the school for the garden project. 

 “Go slow, go slow…” Wise words from Chico Jr.’s team

• Create a vision: Each school will have its own vision for a school garden program.  Chico is an agricultural community and CSU, Chico is an agriculture college, so incorporating agriculture into the vision was important.  Teachers began with ideas about plant propagation and building a greenhouse.  This way, students could be involved in the building and running of the program.
• Start small: The team’s enthusiasm resulted in a 13-page document, but they quickly realized that implementation needs to be in small phases.  They also realized that they need to get other classes involved, like the art classes, bringing in other teachers in all kinds of ways. The art classes might make stepping stones:  Slow Food-Chico Junior High Garden Project.
• Learn by doing: Noelle Ferdon offers these words of advice,
  “You just have to get started—have to start the process before you can figure out which design is going to work. Until we were physically doing something, we couldn’t visualize it. “Learn by Doing” that’s what the team needs to be doing also—learn by doing.  Once we do one garden, we will know what to do the next time.  It’s important that the whole team is flexible in order to keep the project moving, even when you encounter barriers (e.g., irrigation).” 

Each school will have its own vision for a school garden program.  Chico is an agricultural community and CSU, Chico is an agriculture college, so incorporating agriculture into the vision was important.  Teachers began with ideas about plant propagation and building a greenhouse.  This way, students could be involved in the building and running of the program.

Got sun? Logistics kick in

Great ideas still need to be grounded in reality. The team’s plan changed several times over, even up to the time they started digging the ditches. At their first location, by 3:00 in the afternoon, they realized there was where they were planning to dig the garden!  What to do? Wait a few days and scope out the sun pattern for about 7 hours of good sunlight.

They settled on a spot between two classroom wings that is very sunny, sheltered from public cross-traffic, sits next to the life science classroom, and is a large area with easy access and high visibility for the students

Earth, air, sun—what’s missing?

First after finding an appropriate location was to tackle irrigation. This can be quite a challenge if the potential garden area is run from a main line sprinkler system!

Water source became the first real glitch, because district maintenance was enmeshed in a cumbersome bureaucratic process.  This is where the administrative support was so important—eventually, the Principal approved the project and negotiated with district maintenance to sign off on it. 

The team wanted students to be involved in building the garden.  With irrigation approved, Ronnie Cockrell, the Instructional Technology teacher could begin enlisting his students to help construct the irrigation system and work on plans for building raised bed boxes. 

According to Ronnie, “It’s HUGE, because for one, it’s hands on. They get a chance to get their hands dirty.  A lot of them we’re teaching, some of them are now at the age where they mow their own lawns, and if they run over their own sprinkler heads, it’s all above ground. 

They don’t know what is under the ground underneath the sprinkler head.  So it’s nice when they started digging. They took the process from its actual water source and went backwards, instead of fixing the pipe, they went to the source. They went from ground up.

And just listening to the kids go, “OH! So THIS is what it looks like!” and you look over at the kid doing it, and he says “Man, I just broke one of these, and like I didn’t know this is what it was connected to.

They are on their way!

"The Slow Food people appeared on the scene, and it all started happening.  The cool thing is that we are taking all the I-Tech students to tour some local farms next week.  They will see the whole process from beginning to end. Walnuts and almonds—pumping water from the river to their fields, to shaking fields, to processing to shipping out to the countries that need them.” Ronnie Cockrell