Schedule for the Secondary Teacher Candidates' Community Field Experience (CFE) 3-week practicum

Welcome Alice, Pari, Sofia, Stephanie & Sylvie -- and our new arrivals, Fatima, Amandeep and Laura --  to the UBC Orchard Garden for your CFE! And many thanks to Orchard Garden and Cultivating Learning Network team members who have been planning & who will be leading the CFE: Diana, Stacy, John, Toni, Chessa, Kwesi, Bryan, Joyce and others.

It's going to be an exciting three weeks. Looking forward to it all! Here's the tentative schedule:

March 8 Medieval Bread Baking Workshop at Landed Learning on the Farm

We had an amazing workshop at Intergenerational Landed Learning on the Farm last Saturday! Many thanks to Stacy Friedman, Tathali Urueta, John Ames, Myron Medina (and Susan Gerofsky) who led this workshop, and Bryan Driscoll who planted and harvested the wheat at the Orchard Garden last summer.

We took the wheat we grew, harvested and dried in the shed and threshed, winnowed and ground it to flour, then baked it into delicious whole wheat bread. Meanwhile, we talked about the science of yeast and traditions of grain and starch processing and bread making from Medieval Europe to contemporary Belize, India and

Ethiopia. We also learned to sing a song about Medieval crop rotation practices (Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow) and a dance that goes with it. We also had a tour of the UBC Farm Children's Garden and learned about cob building, although unfortunately the cob wood-fired oven needed an important repair, so we had to use a conventional oven to bake our bread.

The sun was shining, the weather warm, flowers blooming! We had a record turnout of 30 people, in a group that included several kids and the parents of one of the teacher candidates. Most of the elementary teacher candidates doing their CFE in the Orchard Garden were there, along with their FA Jeannie Kerr, some of the grad students, and others who are committed to doing as many of the workshop series as they can. Thanks to everyone who came out for this lovely day.

Visiting academics in Sustainability & Garden-based Learning from the Free University, Berlin

We were very happy to host colleagues Inka Bormann and Karola Braun-Wanke at the Orchard Garden, Roots on the Roof, Trillium North Park and other garden-based learning sites on campus and in Vancouver in October and November.

Inka and Karola both work in sustainability at UBC's sister university in Berlin, the Freie Universität (Free University, or FUB). Karola runs a teaching and learning garden at the FUB Botanical Gardens, and is involved in very interesting workshops that often parallel our interests in the UBC Cultivating Learning Network gardens.

We hope this is just the beginning of a research and teaching collaboration between students, staff and faculty at our two universities!

Inka Bormann: Sustainability academic from the FUB

Karola Braun-Wanke & Sharon Kallis at Trillium North

Trillium North's amazing fibre arts wall

Karola & Susan at Trillium North

October 17 Orchard Garden Workshop: Intro to School Gardens

Thanks to Diana and Scott who co-led this excellent introductory workshop!

Orchard Garden graduates 2015!

In November 2015, several graduate students with strong connections to the UBC Orchard Garden graduated from their programs:

Susan, Toni and Julia at grad

Julia and Jeannie at grad

Toni (Antonia) Lazarova completed her MEd in Home Economics and garden-based learning. Her MEd graduating project included a book of garden based curricular activities for secondary home ec teachers, and a paper describing the rationale behind the design of the book.

Chessa Adsit-Morris completed her MA in Curriculum and Pedagogy based on work she did with Think&Eat Green@Schools at Tyee Montessori School, and indirectly with her work in garden-based learning at the UBC Orchard Garden. Here is a link to her MA thesis.

Big congratulations to everybody! We are proud of your great work and hope that we will stay in touch though the Orchard Garden and other garden-based learning projects that you undertake.

Toni at grad

Chessa at her thesis defense

Chessa at the Orchard Garden Summer Solstice celebration

Dr. Julia Ostertag, co-founder of the UBC Orchard Garden with a long-time involvement in garden based learning activism, graduated with her PhD in Curriculum & Pedagogy. Her dissertation is based on her interactive, growing art installation in the Orchard Garden.
Here is the link to Julia's PhD dissertation, a supplementary video of the Orchard Garden that accompanies it,  and her MA thesis. 

Salsa & Salsa Workshop #1 for 2015/16!

What a wonderful workshop today!

We had a great group of teacher candidates and other students, gorgeous weather, an exciting and accessible Salsa Rueda class taught by Diana and Jonas (from the UBC Rueda Club), and a lot of fun making fresh salsa with ingredients from the garden. Delicious lunch too! We learned that salsa (the dance, the sauce and the recipe) are all spicy mixtures of many cultural influences (Aztec, Afro-Caribbean, plus new ingredients) that create many tasty variations on the original saucy blend.

Looking forward to our upcoming workshops in this year's series.

I mostly got photos of Diana and Jonas demonstrating --
because the rest of the time, I was busy dancing!

Invitation to The Orchard Garden Summer Solstice Celebration