Digging In! A Farm-Based Education Peer Learning Community in Four Parts

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Join FBEN member, and farm/nature/humane/garden-based educator, Barbara Sarbin in a conversation in four parts to explore new ideas, gain inspiration, and build peer support for your programming. Sarbin founded Something Good in the World in 2002 and is currently completing her Master’s degree in Humane Education at Antioch University. She is excited to weave her experiences together with yours in this interactive series of presentations, dialogue, guidance, and sharing. We'll discuss emergent issues in farm-based education today, and work towards solutionary practices. The 4-part virtual series could potentially culminate in an optional spring with in-person site visits to more fully open up individual challenges and support one another with finding specific solutions. In addition to the Zoom sessions, participants will be invited to engage with learning materials between sessions. Sessions will be recorded, but in-person attendance is highly encouraged! Register by November 11th!

Program Purpose

A chance to gather together to...

• To build relationships that can support one another during the series and thereafter; 

• To enhance and offer reflection on the nature-based experiences you offer to children, families, teachers, and visitors on your farms or gardens;

• To create a safe environment within which you can envision your future and discuss emergent issues;

• To help make a better situation for the planet, children, teachers, families, and animals;

• To gain strategies for integrating nature with the learning process year round;

• To support the pursuit of education that makes a difference: all-sensory, hands-on, experiential education in action;

• To offer resources that can deepen your learning experiences and accountability to spend time with them; 

• To connect to core values around caring for the earth, connecting with animals and agriculture, and sharing this; 

• For newer educators, to listen in, get ideas, ask questions, provide new perspectives

Program Schedule

Week 1: Why farm-based education?

• Synchronous Meeting: November 12, 2024 | 3-4:15 pm EST

• Question: What are the essential qualities, components, core principles, criteria for doing this kind of work?

• Goals: Get to know each other, both as individuals and in context, building a peer learning community

• Readings / resources: Visit each other’s websites, watch each other’s videos, read each other’s articles!

  
  
  
  

Week 2: Integrating academic learning with nature-based education

• Synchronous Meeting: November 19, 2024 | 3-4:15 pm EST

• Question: How can we support teachers to integrate their students’ learning with nature?

• Goals: Draw inspiration from books and articles and personal stories that provide the evidence of why children (and all humans) need to be in nature, and why hands-on experiential education is the most impactful.

• Readings / resources: Oliver Sacks: The Healing Power of Gardens (article), The Natural History of the Chicken (film), Dirt: The Movie, (film), The Biggest Little Farm

  
  

Week 3: Building recognition, support and partnerships

• Synchronous Meeting: December 3, 2024 | 3-4:15 pm EST

• Question: How you can you get the word out, build momentum, and secure funding?

• Goals: Share experiences around fundraising, outreach, attracting visitors, volunteers and board members

• Readings / resources: forthcoming

Week 4: Emergent issues

• Synchronous Meeting: December 10, 2024 | 3-4:15 pm EST

• Question: What issues are you contending with, and how can we navigate them together?

• Goals: Explore ethics of animal consent in farm-based education, strategies for going into collaboration, building partnerships, identifying the intersection of oppressions, equity centered climate change education and adaptations, and practices for doing the most good, least harm.

• Readings/ resources: Restoring the Kinship Worldview; Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, Topa, W., and Narvaez, D (book), Transfarmation (film), Angry Inuk, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (book)

This program is for... 

• Farm-based educators, garden-educators, farm to school professionals, farmers, and non-formal educators who work with agriculture on any scale 

• Participants with any level of teaching experience who are building or looking to re-inspire farm-based programming

• Educators working with students in farm or garden settings 

• Anyone looking for a group learning environment where we'll do our best to get to know each other's sites and emergent issues

Pricing

This program has no registration fee.

About the Facilitators 

Barbara Sarbin is the Director of Something Good in the World, a charitable, 501c3, children’s educational organization, which focuses on nature, gardens, and farm-based learning integrated with the arts, using the principles of permaculture and sustainability. She has been the lead teacher and curriculum developer for the Earth School programs that take place in the Children’s Peaceful Garden in Westchester County since 1999, and on the Big Island of Hawai’i since 2019. She leads the Earth School-to-Farm programs for refugee children, shelter youth, and K-12 students from underserved areas. Recognized as a visionary in farm-based education, Barbara is a workshop leader for the Farm-Based Education Network, a guest blogger for the Jane Goodall Institute, the Edible Schoolyard Project, and Project Wild Thing. SGITW’s Children’s Peaceful Garden design was recognized by the United Nations and the Jane Goodall Institute in 2016 as an example of Peace and Sustainability, and Barbara currently serves as a JGI Roots & Shoots “Garden Ambassador.”

Vera Simon-Nobes is a mom, gardener, and farm-based educator who comes from a family of teachers. She became the Farm-Based Education Network Coordinator in 2013, and observed the Network's potential to connect peers through shared values of experiential learning, joy, equity and inclusion, and a humble desire to grow. Vera believes farms are the best places for relationship building, learning through doing, and connecting with oneself and the ecological communities that support us, and that everyone has the right to these opportunities. Vera's job brings her across Vermont for agritourism collaborations, and throughout the Shelburne Farms campus to eradicate invasive species, harvest crops, teach camp, welcome visitors to the farm, and plan professional learning workshops that nourish the whole person, all alongside a wonderful Shelburne Farms team.

Questions 

Reach out to Vera Simon-Nobes with any questions: vera@farmbasededucation.org.