Using gardens to teach young people about social issues and social change

rudmehta — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 15:37:53 +0000

Using gardens to teach young people about social issues and social change rudmehta Sun, 06/26/2022 - 11:37

This article was originally published on September 8, 2021.

It used to be more typical to think of the flow of innovative ideas between educators in academia and those working in schools as mostly from the former to the latter. But as the educational system has become more fractured and complex, and teachers face challenges specific to their students’ geography and demographics, the on-the-ground knowledge of innovative teachers is getting far more critical attention. A great case study is a recent project led by ��-Dearborn Education Professor Julie Anne Taylor, which takes an intense look at a learning garden run by Detroit teacher Marquita Reese. School-based garden programs aren’t, of course, a new idea. What makes Reese’s learning garden project special, says Taylor, are the educational content areas she uses to frame her students’ experiences of the garden. Typically, learning gardens in schools are used as a platform to teach kids about nutrition, agriculture and STEM topics. And while Reese’s work does cover those things, for her, the garden is really a launchpad to think critically about topics we’d normally associate with social studies curriculum: social inequality, food insecurity, sustainable communities, Black male identities, and how to tug at the levers of power to transform society.

Marquita Reese with a student in the learning garden.

Reese started her garden in a way that many Detroit gardens start — on a piece of weedy, nondescript land that had a prior life as something else. In her case, the site was the former practice field of the football team at her small, all-boys alternative high school, and she recruited several students to help with the field’s initial transformation. As in other school garden programs, they prepped the soil, planted seedlings, battled pests and diseases, and learned how to harvest, cook and even sell their produce. That part Reese characterizes as “easy.” The bigger challenge is what she calls the “why” part — her shorthand for a broad slate of socially focused topics that assert themselves when you start thinking critically about food systems. Why is it that it’s hard to find fresh produce in many parts of the city? Why do so many people in the community struggle with heart disease and diabetes? Why is it that until the garden existed, one of the boys had never eaten a raw green bean? How did it come to be that large, multinational corporations control so much of the food supply? How could they learn to use environmentally sustainable methods so future generations still have a world where they can live and grow things? And how could they find allies to help them sustain their work and build a better world?

Students pose for a photo inside the learning garden's greenhouse.

These were just a few of the themes Reese and her students explored during a program where she says there was almost no topic they didn’t discuss. It was emotionally intense at times, and personal too, as the socially charged themes brought to the surface many challenges the young men faced in their own lives. But digging this deep helped Reese turn their attention to what she says is really the end goal of the program: learning how to create a better world. That phase of the work took all kinds of forms. To support the project as it expanded, the students learned to write grant proposals, many of which were funded, including one from Senator Debbie Stabenow. On another assignment, each young man was charged with landing a business sponsorship, which required doing research about area companies, their ownership, and their missions — and then making an in-person pitch for funding. They went on local TV and radio, giving interviews that forced them to overcome their nerves about public speaking and be articulate about their cause. They even learned to cook with the food they’d grown, often incorporating cuisine styles from metro Detroit’s diverse immigrant communities through connections they’d made.

Education Professor Julie Taylor

“I find Ms. Reese’s work to be remarkable because it’s so interdisciplinary. She addresses so many social studies standards and methods through a learning garden,” Taylor says. “We typically don’t look at learning gardens through the lens of social studies, but her approach is rich. The depth of what she was doing with the students and what they were walking away understanding made such a huge impression on me.”

Inspired by Reese’s work, Taylor spent two years documenting the project, its methods, and its impacts on the young men, all of which were recently summarized in a new paper published in Social Studies Teaching and Learning. (The paper was co-authored with ��-Dearborn Associate Professor Dara Hill and doctoral student Jerry Tait.) In particular, the intimate portraits of the students’ growth that emerge through detailed interviews suggest that learning gardens have much wider educational applications than previously thought, including for social studies educators.

Tait, who’s also an Assistant Principal at Cooke STEM Academy in Detroit, said he’d personally love to bring something like this to his school. They already have a garden and a greenhouse, which gives them a running start. The challenge, aside from funding, he says, will be replicating the fluid interdisciplinary approach that Reese brought to the table as a team of one. But he and Taylor think multi-educator teams from social studies, STEM disciplines and art could be one viable way to replicate some of the magic they witnessed in one very special school garden in Detroit.

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Story by Lou Blouin. Want to dig deeper into Reese’s work and the experiences of her students? Check out Taylor, Hill and Tait’s article “Learning Gardens and Social Education in Detroit,” which features interviews with Reese and her students. If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview Taylor or Reese about this topic, please drop us an email at ��Dearborn-News@umich.edu and we’ll put you in touch.

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Education

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Wed, 09/08/2021 - 05:00

Recent work by ��-Dearborn education faculty takes a look at the power of a unique learning garden project that’s Detroit-grown.

Students take a top spot in global business competition

stuxbury — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 16:23:03 +0000

Students take a top spot in global business competition stuxbury Mon, 06/08/2020 - 12:23

Graduate students participated virtually in a business competition

The international 4flow Case Study Competition expanded to North America in 2020. And a ��-Dearborn team grabbed a top spot, right behind Rutgers and Georgia Tech.

��-Dearborn Wolverines did more than showcase their adaptability and knowledge in the supply chain competition, which took place last month; they were also major players behind the scenes.

4flow — a German company specializing in supply chain, software and consulting — previously only offered the opportunity for graduate-level students in Europe and Asia.

But when meeting with College of Business alumnus Mike Dworakowski — a consultant at 4flow — last year, Operations Management Associate Professor Yi-Su Chen inquired about U.S. teams participating and said COB would sponsor a team. Dworakowski, a former student of Chen’s, said he’d see what he could do.

“Well, he made it happen,” Chen said. “When Mike was a student, he took part in business competitions that I coached. He knows how important opportunities like this are. I am always looking for new experiences for our students and am so happy we can now compete.”

Chen said 4flow’s contest gives students a chance to play a consultant role and learn what it is like to work on a real-world project. The competition has students draft a logistics proposal outlining a program idea (this year’s focus was to implement a grocery store chain’s delivery service) and give cost analysis, implementation strategies and resulting profit margins in two weeks.

M.B.A. student Dovile Fiodorovaite, who is a logistics planner for DanLaw Inc., has a Six Sigma Green Belt and years of work and school experience. But she said the 4flow Competition was a challenge unlike anything she’s experienced before. In addition to the rigor of the competition, COVID-19-related restrictions added a layer of difficulty.

“There was definitely a learning curve. We didn’t all know each other and we couldn’t meet in person. At our first Zoom meeting to prepare, we all felt like we were in over our heads. But we took it one step at a time, divided tasks based on our strengths, and were open to advice and criticism given in our team and by our mentors. Of course we would have loved to have been first, but my personal goal was to place in the top three. And we did that.”

Chen and Dworakowski, ‘17 B.B.A., mentored the ��-Dearborn team that included College of Business graduate students Fiodorovaite, Camille Allensworth and Sayali More and College of Engineering & Computer Science graduate student Harish Prakash.

Chen is proud of her students, saying the experience will serve them well in the future — and that was her overall goal for this experience.

“After COVID 19, many things are going to be different even after we go back to normal. Due to travel restrictions, the business world needed to adapt and now knows that product and service delivery can be done successfully in a virtual environment,” Chen said. “Having students create and present a proposal from start to finish while working remotely gives an added layer of preparation for the future. It’s always important to look for new opportunities for students because our job is to help get them ready for what’s next.”

College of Engineering and Computer Science

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Mon, 06/08/2020 - 16:04

The 4flow Case Study Competition, which expanded to North America this year, awarded third place to a ��-Dearborn graduate student team.