Leadership Ladder
Organizational Background
Land to Learn’s mission is Growing a movement for food justice and community wellness through garden-based education . The core of our programming is focused on teaching and learning about gardening during the school day with public elementary students. Through curricular l earning i n the gardens and i n the classroom, our students connect to the earth via their hands, their minds, and their bellies. We teach students about plant science, ecology, cooking, healthy eating, and food systems. In addition to encouraging and celebrating critical thought during the school year, Land to Learn programs create a nurturing environment where health is honored, and youth are taught skills that can lead to transformational change.
Values
We value the power of youth voice and youth leadership and uphold transformative practices. We value trust, radical love, support, accountability structures, and intentional reflection. We honor tradition and value change and innovation. We value intergenerational l earning, community-driven change, a diversity of voices, healthy disagreement, sitting with discomfort, collaborative decision making processes, and collaboration. We validate lived experiences and knowledge as much as institutional knowledge. We value taking the space and time for self-discovery and growth. We value seeds, food sovereignty, climate resilient farming practices, and connectedness to each other, to nature’s rhythms and beauty, to our food, to our communities, and to our bodies.
Program Overview
As we settle into our new mission ( refined i n 2019) our planning more explicitly prioritizes the food justice component of our movement. It i s our goal to provide an opportunity for marginalized youth to continue their interdependent and alternative learning through the different l ayers of programs that Land to Learn offers. While Land to Learn’s core program i s focused i n K-2nd public school classrooms, we are expanding our supplemental services to include a Garden Leadership Ladder: an apprenticeship program that i s calibrated to serve our youth partners from 3rd grade to college age.
Our core program currently serves 4,845 students per year across eleven elementary schools i n Kingston, Beacon, Newburgh, and Garrison. The schools, students, and parents want more. Because we are committed to regenerative scaled growth, we are also committed to exploring options for expanding our program i n ways that encourage the self-reliance of youth partners, while both sustaining and expanding our home-base of projects, including the apprenticeship program.
Program Objectives
We understand that systemic change and structural shifts take time and investing in youth in a transformative way is a cultural shift. We know that the students who grow in our gardens grow beyond measure i n their l ives. We see the successes of our core program: the looks of pride among students when they eat a string bean that they grew; their sadness that their in-school garden program ends after 2nd grade; their courage to try new things. As we continue to build our programs, we imagine confident young people exercising critical thought throughout their l ives, in professional settings, and by sharing their skills and passions with their friends, family, and community. We see that this is possible on a small scale through our existing rungs i n this leadership l adder. We don’t just encourage youth leadership within our organization. We value it.
In our efforts to help undo systems of oppression, we provide longitudinal experience of agency and self worth by:
Reconnecting with older youth who have possibly participated in our SproutEd program
Creating opportunities for older youth leadership
Supporting intergenerational learning
Demonstrating interdependence
healing the harm that capitalistic education creates i n us as we get older by creating a space for collaborative growth rather than competitive isolationism
Connecting to more just and fulfilling job options for young people; offering more guided alternatives to existing options
Offering systems of support in circle practice, including:
Space for reflection and self-affirmation
Explicit group-statements i n support of individual process and communal process
Allowing room to make mistakes and be indecisive
Adults who are self-reflective enough to be present with and l earn from youth
Leadership Ladder Projects
Crop Shop Fall Farm Stand (ages ~ 3rd to 5th grade): This program gets 3rd through 5th graders back into the garden - connecting them to new ideas, knowledge, and skills that open their work to a world of opportunity.
Garden and Educator Apprenticeship (ages ~ 14-20): In cooperation with partner programs including Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Green Teens, Orange County Youth Bureau’s Summer Youth Employment Program, and Our Core Inc., we provide paid work opportunities to high school students every summer. We offer both an educator and gardener track whereby our youth collaborators are able to choose a focus in their work with us. The program design includes program specific goal-setting, lesson or crop-planning workshops, mid-season check-ins, post program evaluations, lesson plan workshops, financial literacy, resume writing workshops, future goal-setting, etc. This helps participants to expand the breadth of work they may have done with us in the past and to consider diverse professional options. We hope to extend this program through increased funding in future years. As youth continue to work with us, the hope is that they can help design the future of our programs.
Garden Assistants (ages ~ 17-27): We generally offer two paid garden positions each summer. These contracted employees maintain our Newburgh and Beacon gardens during the bulk of the growing season. Because it is part of our mission to encourage professional growth in farming and education, we prioritize local youth in our community when hiring summer garden assistants. We have employed high school students and older youth, especially through Green Teens Next Step, and Our Core/SYEP programs. Based on age and financial means, transportation sometimes becomes a barrier to their work with us. We are researching ways to support geographic access for all candidates and staff.
Development and Communications Interns (ages ~ 17-27): We offer a development internship program one to two times per year. Generally this is something that is organized through local colleges, but does not result in financial compensation for the students. With the guidance of our collaborative staff, college interns offer a new view to our programs so that we are able to continue our work for diversified funding while adapting to shifts in community need. We support credit-based work, and hope to build a stipend budget for college students who are eager to support the work.
Garden Education Assistants (college specific): College students can earn course credit as they assist with the development and implementation of SproutEd (in-school) programming. Assistant positions began i n the spring of 2020, just before the Coronavirus pandemic required a pause.
Land to Learn’s programs set the stage for local schools to be a network of innovative and sustainable learning spaces creating healthy and confident environmental justice leaders. In addition to anecdotes indicating a desire for classroom program expansion, we are able to observe Land to Learn’s success through a number of evaluative metrics.
Land to Learn’s Leadership Ladder helps us to expand our reach in the classroom, school gardens, and roots us deeper i n community. In this way, we are creating an environment for values-based l earning and work.