From 1995 through 2019, OAEC’s School Garden Teacher Training Program supported schools to incorporate ecological design into their curricula, campus and community. With the promotion of ecological literacy at the core of its mission from the get go, OAEC saw educational institutions as one of the last bastions of “the commons,” incubators of the next generation of leaders, and hubs for intergenerational engagement in the context of ecological disruption.

Profoundly influenced by David Sobel’s book Place-based Education, Susan McGovern, a local teacher and founding member of Sowing Circle, wanted to start a garden with her fourth grade class. OAEC staff, Susan and a team of supporters designed and installed a school garden just down the road at Harmony Elementary and Salmon Creek Middle School. From this humble collaborative beginning, grew OAEC’s nationally recognized School Garden Teacher Training and Support Program. 

For over 2 decades, the program developed into a unique offering that supported teams of teachers, administrators, parents, and garden coordinators to engage in a physical and pedagogical redesign of their campuses. Through a 5-day intensive at OAEC followed by ongoing support back at school, the course integrated the school garden into curricula and state standards, and trained team members in permaculture design, organic gardening, project-based learning, group decision-making, and fundraising.

Program Impact

From 1996-2019, OAEC trained over 1,250 educators from 300 schools in launching and sustaining School Garden programs throughout California and nationally. Over 75,000 students directly benefited from these programs annually.

Although there are unlimited academic opportunities in gardens, the most valuable concept for children to experience is that of wonder. Narratives of scarcity, alienation and boredom are replaced with discovery and awe in the garden. Seed saving is a particularly potent way of rekindling children’s relationship with wonder, and naturally seed saving became a great fascination for educators and students alike. During our 5-day intensive, educators planted seeds, worked with seed curriculum, built seed processing screens, made seed jewelry, saved seeds, ate seeds, and learned about the politics of seed saving. Tina Poles, director of the School Garden Program for 7 years collaborated with other staff to create a beautiful and practical guide titled A Handful of Seeds: Seed Saving and Seed Study for Educators. This 91-page guide includes lessons linked to California Educational Standards, practical information on seed saving in the school garden, and seed history and lore. It remains an open and free resource for all, available as a free download here.

The Mother Garden disseminates seeds, both physical and inspirational, to daughter gardens throughout California and graduates of the School Garden Teacher Training are perfect examples of this. For over 20 years, OAEC helped propel the school garden movement in the Bay Area and beyond and we couldn’t be more proud to now see school gardens in practically every school in California! The momentum of the placed-based education movement is unstoppable now, with robust “train-the-trainer” models widely available in the mainstream. OAEC’s School Garden Teacher training program was such an overwhelming success that we decided to sunset the program in 2019. We consider this ecological literacy and community organizing program to be one of the foundational precursors to what contributed to the development of our current Resilient Community Design program.