Educator Coaching Program SY2025-26 Mid-year Highlights
As we find ourselves in the home stretch of winter with snow still on the ground, you might not notice that each day the light lasts longer into the evening. Since the winter solstice on December 21st, the days have been growing longer. We begin to plant seeds like onions and celery and ginger and turmeric in late January that require long lengths of time inside before setting out. This time of year also marks about halfway through the 2025-2026 school year and with it a reflection on all the ways our dedicated teachers are showing up and caring for our youth.
Back in December, we held a winter party for this school year’s Educator Coaching Program (ECP) cohort. Educators reflected on both accomplishments and setbacks in their gardens during the Fall. Teachers tackled challenges together and found throughlines of shared experience. Looking to the upcoming spring, the cohort set planting goals and traded tips for sowing onions and when to plant strawberries. Educators also received goodies to take back to their schools, including a microgreens starter kit and grow lights.
Already our five schools have achieved much progress toward the goals they set at the beginning of the school year:
- Stanton’s team planned and led a Hispanic heritage event where students and community members tasted corn two ways and received 55 pounds of fresh produce. Major wins included submitting three grants to fund new seating and signage and hosting two garden workdays where students, staff, and family members organized their shed and installed new oval-shaped, metal raised garden beds.
- Patterson’s garden team also hosted a garden workday where students, family, and staff weeded, added compost, planted an Asian pear tree and seeded carrots. They also distributed 131 pounds of vegetables grown in the Washington Youth Garden.
- Hendley’s teachers have been on a roll this Fall, planning and sharing food grown in the garden through taste tests during students’ recess periods, including pico de gallo and horchata, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin and chive pancakes, and sweet potatoes three ways. Four of their teachers participated in a co-teaching series learning from FONA staff how to teach in the garden.
- Friendship Chamberlain has started up a regular garden club that will now complement their existing cooking club. One teacher made pickles from all the cucumbers growing in the garden and afterschool students harvested sweet potatoes and cared for the garden during a garden workday. The team has started collecting garden science lessons for each grade to use in interested classrooms.
- Last but not least, Cleveland’s solid team of three have cared for greens and scallions in containers that were planted with students during art class to create their garden anew. To further build out their garden that had been ripped out in a previous year, the team has scheduled a Build Day in March to put together new wooden raised beds and make painted signs to label their crops.
As part of our School Garden Support Program, the Educator Coaching Program provides garden teams in less-resourced schools with flexible support, empowering them to achieve vibrant school gardens that are fully integrated into their school culture.
Our upcoming cohort gathering will be Spring into School Gardening on Saturday, March 21st. Our four seasonal gatherings are meant to connect educators with one another, build confidence in teaching garden education, and share resources immediately useful in their work.
As always, I find so much hope in our educators and young people. Building connections across schools as well as within, we are creating a network to support our educators beyond our time together. By supporting our teachers, we nurture our children. The figurative seeds of love, courage, and resilience our educators plant in their students will grow throughout their lives, creating more life for future generations to come.
-Allie Arnold, School Garden Program Manager
