Dear friends of Land to Learn (formerly known as Hudson Valley Seed),
We are living through trying and troubling times. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced our society to adapt to a difficult present and an uncertain future. Our organization has been working remotely since March 20th, finding innovative and meaningful ways to achieve our mission of growing a movement for food justice and community wellness through garden-based education. Indeed it feels like our mission is more important now than ever before. We are committed to serving our community by helping ensure no one goes hungry during this era of prolonged economic turmoil. Additionally, we are engaging online with our dear students, who are doing their best to adapt to the challenges of remote learning.
Towards these ends, our staff is diligently pivoting our program to meet the needs of our community in the following important ways:
1. Local Fresh Food: School gardens now grow food for donation to local food access programs. While schools remain closed to students, our garden classrooms will shift towards food production of nutritious staple crops like beans and greens to help feed our community. Our program managers have permission to grow at select schools in Kingston, Beacon, and Newburgh. In Newburgh we are collaborating with our community partners Downing Park Urban Farm and Our Core to donate produce to a local food access initiative. It is our goal to make sure food grown in Newburgh feeds Newburgh families. In Beacon we are working closely with Common Ground Farm, Fareground, Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Green Teens, Beacon Mutual Aid, and Beacon City Schools to grow and distribute food to Beacon residents. Our staff has also been engaged with local community support networks in the distribution of free groceries to anyone who needs them. Among additional collaborators are Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, Helping Our Neighbors 12550, and the Kingston Emergency Food Collaborative.
Ms. Purdy’s 1st grade class at GAMS connected with Serena squash on April 2nd to do a lesson based on the book What’s in a Garden?
Santos, first grader at Vails Gate, shares his garden map that he made at home!
2. Garden Education: SproutEd, our flagship in-school garden-based education program, has shifted to remote learning lessons, tools, and educational videos. As classroom teaching has moved online, our team of educators is meeting students where they are. Our garden-based lessons now take place online, centered on curriculum-aligned Youtube videos that we create and share with teachers. Educators are also hosting video conferencing sessions, and engaging with students through online tools like Google Hangouts, Google Classroom and ClassDojo. Teachers are giving us very supportive feedback about how much students cherish our videos and appreciate our efforts to connect with them online. Second grade teachers at a school in Beacon reported that they are basing their science plant unit on the lesson videos we created. As teachers across our districts adapt to online teaching and learning, our videos are helping them deliver much-need educational content to students. Simply hearing from their friendly, familiar and beloved garden educators has been an emotional lift for our students as they cope with the difficulties of remote learning.
3. Connecting With Community: Our team is committed to staying connected through this period of social isolation and school closing. We are creating new content to build community and foster compassionate connection during this time of “social distancing.” Check in with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where we are connecting our community with creative videos that include academic content, games, insights, important food access information, gardening and vegetables. We are also encouraging families to prepare healthy food together. Through our online content, our goal is to create a healing space where people feel more connected during this time of physical distancing.
4. Checking In With Our Teens: Our Newburgh program managers are facilitating biweekly virtual check-in circles with local Newburgh teenagers that have previously participated in our programs. We are talking about how we are doing, sharing what is happening in our neighborhoods and communities, and sharing strategies for coping and taking care of ourselves. At the end of the session, we each share one word that describes how we were feeling after the time spent together; some words shared were: grateful, hopeful, connected, and safe.
Now, and always, we have so much gratitude for all of our supporters. You are here for us so that we can be here for our students and our community, all of whom need us so much right now. Together we will overcome the challenges of Covid-19. Together we will grow a better future out of the lessons we learn together through this public health crisis. When this is all over, we will continue to be here for our community. We hope you will continue to be there with us.
Thank you so much for all of your support!
-The Land to Learn Team
By the numbers:
We are communicating and collaborating with each one of our 120 teachers to offer remote learning opportunities to students
We have shared 15 educational videos (and counting) with our teachers and students
We have held 10 video conference lessons (and counting) with our students
15 hours each week of staff time spent assisting with coordination of getting people needed food and supplies during school closures and corona quarantine
