Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience: Youth in fifth grade or younger in the school/after-school programs: This program served six students from a local day care center. We piloted our program at a local day care center that primarily serves black and Hispanic youth that are elementary-school aged. The program called Thrive operatesin a Low Income/Low Access region on the Food Access Research Atlas. Recruitment to Title I schools in the Knox County School District as well as those in Low Income/Low Access regions on the Food Access Research Atlas. Knox County Schools Science and STEM Supervisor to revise evaluations and assist in recruitment for this component of the project. Youth in fifth grade or younger attendees of field trips and/or summer camps: Summer Camp: A total 167 campers (112 individuals; several attended more than one camp) attended camp this summer. The summer camp program offered a total of seven weeks of camp. Camper demographics: Average number of participants in each week: 23.86 (highest being 28 & lowest being 12) Age: Average camp age was 7.86 years old (oldest being 12 & youngest being 6) Gender: 64 female,54 male,2 non-binary/third gender Race:3 American Indian/Alaskan Native,15 Asian,2 Black,99 White,9 More than one race,3 Chose not to respond to question about race Ethnicity:1 Hispanic,111 Non-Hispanic,6 preferred not to respond to question about ethnicity Field trips: A total of 11 field trip programs were offered serving atotal of 463 contacts (students and teachers). A majority of those served through our field trip programs were black and Hispanic youth (middle school and younger) and/or schools that receive Title 1 Funding. 1 field trip (pilot) for grant that served a local Boys and Girls Club; 100% of participants were black; 30 participants. Teens/Young Adults: AmeriCorps members: 2 completed their 11-month term and 1 is beginning their 11-month term in August, 2024. 3 females 1 Hispanic/2 non-Hispanic Intern: 1 Hispanic female completed 2-month long summer internship. Counselors-in-training: recruited with partners but were unsuccessful in hiring someone. All participants completed at least one leadership project and assisted in program/lesson/evaluation development and testing. All participants engaged in professional development and skill building. Educators: Grow Teach Knox: Unable to award scholarships due to IRB delays. 18 attendees. Head Start/Pre-K, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, After-School teachers and administrators. Professional development training NEAT: Knox County Health Dept. requested that we offer a program to their participants who serve at area after-school facilities to teach them about plants, growing edible plants, gardening with children, and understanding the food system. Topic: Beyond the Table (National Nutrition Month) Participants #: 17 Program Representation: Wesley House, YMCA, Knoxville Parks and Rec, Shora Foundation, SHADES of Development Populations served: Knox County School elementary aged students and families TN Geographic Alliance: requested tour of UT Gardens with a focus on sustainability for K-12 classroom teachers across the state; 20 attendees; discussed green industry careers, sustainability in practice through food gardening and storm water mitigation, engaging students in project-based learning to apply classroom knowledge, etc. Other: These do not fall under any of our defined categories but were groups served with related content during this period. Galaxy Montessori School in Tamil Nadu, India: 20 elementary-aged students; bimonthly virtual programming on topics ranging from nutrition and food gardening/culture to green industry careers, etc. ORAU Appalachian STEM Academy tour: 40 high school students visited UTG to learn about green industry careers and UTG; diverse representation from Appalachian region. General public: provided education through social media posts, Green Industry Career videos (166 views), public engagement during tabling, plant sales, etc. Scout programs: 80 participants of various genders, races, and ethnicities; included both Girls Scouts and Scouts USA. Friday U: 5 middle-school-aged students; homeschool co-op where we provided weekly programming for 17 weeks in the fall of 2023. STEAMI: local private school that serves Black male youth (elementary-aged) has repeated programming with UTG and visited our site 14 times; our team visited their school the same amount over the course of the school year. Beaumont Magnet Elementary School: 4thgrade class visit; 100 students and 4 teachers. Community collaborators, partners, and related opportunities: CAC Beardsley Community Farm: Grow Teach Knox partner UT-TSU Extension: Grow Teach Knox partner and frequent collaborator Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont: Grow Teach Knox partner Knoxville Botanical Gardens and Arboretum: Grow Teach Knox partner United Way Community Schools: Frequent collaborator and recruiter for school programs Great Smoky Mountains National Park: New partner for teacher workshops planned in 2024 Knox Education Foundation: New partner with primary focus on high-school outreach Knox County Schools: our local school district University of Tennessee, Knoxville: where we serve but also includes collaborators and program participants Rooted East Knoxville Collective: led recruitment for CIT position American Public Gardens Association: adult workshop collaborator that was professional development for our team Knox Area Museum Educators Roundtable: Co-PI is a Co-Chair; professional development for our team Knox Outdoor Education Coalition: Co-PI is a member; professional development and collaboration opportunities One Health K-12 Education Committee and TN One Health Committee: Co-PI is a member of each; professional development and collaboration Youth Horticulture Roundtable: Co-PI is member; community network and service Seed Your Future: Provided Grow Teach Knox presentation and resource share; Co-PI has assisted in Green Industry Career Week presentations; both orgs share social media content (including our AmeriCorps members' Green Industry Career Week Video series) Society of St. Andrew: food gleaning organization that collects and distributes UT Gardens produce Changes/Problems:This year the team dealtwith problemsrelated to the IRB approval for this project. The IRB process took much longer than expected due to the size of the project and staffing changes within the IRB office. Once the IRB was approved at the University of Tennessee, we also had to reach out to Knox County Schools to seek out approval to do research with the programs. The IRB was approved in December, but we were unable to get full approval from Knox CountySchools until March 21, 2024. Due to this delay, the in-school portion of the project has been pushed back to taking place in the 2024-2025 school year. After working with KCS on approval, they have assisted with project recruitment by providing a list of schools who may both qualify and be interested to this type of project. We have been recruiting fourth grade teachers using that list and our own over the summer. Currently, we have a list of interested teachers that we intend to follow-up with to conduct the program. Wefaced problems/challenges with recruitment of our summer counselors-in-training. Our partner organizations were responsible for recruitment of one high school student to serve as a counselor-in-training. Although the partner organizations worked to recruit a counselor-in-training, they were unable to do so. By the time summer started, the partner organizations notified us that one challenge the possible counselors-in-training had was transportation and competition with other, geographically closer, organizations hiring high school students. Though we continued recruitment through June, we were unable to recruit someone using the methods we had employed. We will work with our partners over the fall and early spring to come up with solutions to the challenges to be able to hire two counselors-in-training for the summer. The project team met with the Knox County Science and STEM Supervisor in the spring 2024 once the IRB was approved. After meeting with the Knox County staff, we were informed that the State of Tennessee does not follow the Next Generation Science Standards. The content for the 5th grade Next Generation Science Standards targeted in this grant are taught in the fourth grade State of Tennessee Science Standards. We changed our math standards to fourth grade as well. Based on the KCS feedback, we also decided to remove the lower-elementary evaluation component of this project. In the state of TN, students below third grade do not take standardized tests, so our planned method of evaluation would not have been applicable. Removing this element has enabled us to focus our efforts on fourth grade standards and recruitment. This has required us to make a change in the IRB and this project. The target grade for this grant moving forward will be fourth grade students in schools. A related challenge that has arisen is that focusing our content on fourth grade math and science standards created a difficulty in summer camp. As stated above, the average age of our campers is about 8 years old, which is, generally, a rising third grader for us. Many of our campers had not been exposed at all to our grant-related content and several of the younger campers struggled with simply reading the questions of the evaluations (though we did read every question aloud.) That being said, we did see improvement in scores from the pre-tests to the post-tests, which means that, generally (and in preliminary analysis), the camp program works for not only students who are working at grade level, but it also supports that our content supports students learning above their grade level. Currently, we are unsure if this will hold to be true moving forward, but it is encouraging. Even during the math investigation lesson, we had several campers take the investigation further by not only creating bar charts, but they also created pie charts and calculated percentages, which was above grade level for each student who completed that task. Our team will continue to monitor this unexpected result and will consider future implications as well. Another challenge was that our Kitchen Garden was fully renovated during this first grant period. The Kitchen Garden renovation began with bed demolition in late August 2023, which coincided with the start of our AmeriCorps members' service term. Limited food bank donations were made between August and December 2023. The members helped with soil building and weed control in the planting beds outside the Kitchen Garden during September 2023 to help make them ready for spring. From September 2023-December 2023, the members focused primarily on learning, training, and research. They began working on the planting plans and growing the plants for the spring 2024 garden in December of 2023. Though the members were only working during the spring gardening season, their efforts have resulted in roughly 1,000 lbs of produce harvested from our edible garden plantings. Both members mentioned that experiencing the complete process of plant selection to harvest was incredibly impactful for them, which we count as a success in our program. In preparing for summer camp 2024, we recruited for camp scholarships through local after-school care centers and summer programs. We also shared information online and elsewhere, but not only did we have little interest in the scholarships, we had families turn us down and choose to pay for camp. This was completely unexpected by our team. During this next period of the grant, we will reevaluate how we recruit and advertise camp scholarships. One current idea includes recruiting an organization or more to have a camp experience just for them at no cost at UT Gardens. We will work with our partners to develop a solution that best serves our community. We were only able to offer 5 camp scholarships for summer camps in 2024. One of our most recent challenges during year one of this project was that we successfully recruited two CAC AmeriCorps members for the 2024-2025 term, but one of them dropped out of the program a week before training. This has impacted our schedule, but our team has worked with the AmeriCorps office to recruit someone else for the position and at the time of this submission have conducted two interviews to fill the position. We hope that it will be filled by the end of the month. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Program staff assisted with the 2023 Grow Teach Knox education training event. This event provided professional development to 18 educators. Program staff led a garden education training programs for schools who are taking part in the Knox County Health Department Nutrition Education Activity Training program. This program provided professional development training to 17 educators. Program staff led a tour and talk of UT Gardens to members of the TN Geographic Alliance who are K-12 educators. The program focused on incorporating sustainability (including careers in the green industry, food system inequity, environmental stewardship, etc.) into course content and student engagement. AmeriCorps members attended multiple professional development opportunities. One member even completed the volunteer forester training. Both AmeriCorps members competed IRB training. Both AmeriCorps members and the Co-PI attended the Greenville Master Gardener Symposium. The Co-PI enrolled in graduate school in the Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications program at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture and has completed 6 credit hours. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The curriculum being developed was piloted and disseminated to the summer campers and students taking part in the field trip programs. The two AmeriCorps members and Summer Counselor developed presentations about their learning experiences and presented to UT Gardens staff at the end of their service. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to launch the program in the schools. Eight teachers/schools have expressed interest in participation in the program; several of these teachers teach multiple classes who may be able to participate. We will continue to work with our partners to recruit a total of 2 counselors-in-training for the 2025 summer camp season. We will begin drafting a peer reviewed publication focused on the Getting Rooted in Gardening program in public schools serving students in food deserts or are a Title 1 School. We will work with our partner agencies to identify students to benefit from our summer camp scholarship programs. The final Getting Rooted in Gardening curriculum will be written and provided to educators at the end of the 2024-2025 grant period. We will complete our final revisions of the recipe book based on community and expert feedback after which it will be publicly shared. We will recruit and plan to hire summer camp interns and a second AmeriCorps member. We will conduct a teacher workshop in 2024 with community partners and conduct the final component of our project that has been on hold. We will complete and publish our garden guide. We will recruit schools for field trips.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The project team has been able to obtain IRB approval for the project as well as approval from Knox County Schools to conduct research. This delay did set us behind on our overall project timeline. We were able to move forward with evaluation development, program development and piloting. The program has a solid foundation to launch the second year of the grant. 1. Youth (fifth grade and younger) who participate in the school and/or after-school programs will increase their knowledge of gardening and plant science, will practice making healthy lifestyle choices, and will improve the well-being of their community. - Developing and trialing curricula: included research and discussions on effective ways of teaching and evaluating content - Work with KCS on refining project evaluations and target audience (change from fifth grade and second grade to fourth grade primary focus); KCS also assisted with program recruitment - Pilot 1 program at area summer day-care center in which participants took part in food tasting, planting edible plants, and the program has asked us to return for the school year - Developing and seeking feedback on recipe book to complement lessons and programs for participants to take learning home 2. Youth (fifth grade and younger) who attend UT Gardens field trips and summer camps will gain an improved understanding of food systems and will improve their understanding of science and mathematics concepts for their grade level. We served 167 students in our summer camp programs in 2024. A total of seven weeks of camp was offered this year with an average age of 7.8. An evaluation of learning was given at the beginning and end of each week. The average scores of the camper evaluations increased between the pre-test and post-test for every week except week five. When averaged for all seven weeks the results show that campers gained knowledge by taking part in our summer camp programs. Campers also participated in food harvesting and tasting and growing their own food. Lessons taught during camp include topics related to TN science and math standards including lessons on food chains, ecosystem roles, photosynthesis, geometry, statistics, and understanding fractions. Anecdotal evidence showed that our campers not only learned science and math content during our programs, but they also increased social and life skills. One repeat camper asked to help lead an activity on food chains, which he was empowered to do. This provided an excellent leadership experience that he took and continued to develop throughout the summer through peer-to-peer teaching, modelling of appropriate behaviors, and more. We also received positive feedback from our camp families on our programs, especially on food tasting/harvesting days in which campers had the option to taste food that was harvested from our Kitchen Garden. Field trips provided opportunities for our program staff to pilot learning materials and content for the curriculum that we will be offering schools starting fall 2024. 3. AmeriCorps service members, interns, and counselors-in-training will increase their knowledge of agricultural fields of study and careers in agriculture, plant sciences, entomology, and food science. Program staff will also develop leadership skills. The two AmeriCorps members and the one summer intern reported increased knowledge of agricultural fields of study and increased leadership skills after taking part in the project. Project staff reported learning more about professionalism, teaching elementary-aged students in outdoor settings, and learning new ways to teach concepts using gardens and natural settings. Based on our entrance and exit interviews, all participants experienced an increase in understanding pathways to agricultural careers. All three participants, at the time of their exit interview, were set up to begin a role related to our program including education, another year of service in an ag-related field, and employment at a plant nursery. Our members developed a recipe book, our summer camp programs, three videos on green industry careers, wrote social media posts, and engaged in various professional development opportunities through field trips, lectures, and more. A notable accomplishment for our members was their design, planning, implementation, and harvest of our Kitchen Garden beds in spring 2024 following a complete renovation of the space in fall 2024. To date, 1,000 pounds of produce have been harvested and donated from our Gardens. Our summer intern created a math-centered camp investigation for our campers and provided leadership through instruction, observations, and feedback of camp staff implementing the lessons. Each of them presented their experience and reflections to UTG staff at the end of their experience. 4. Educators (including ten Grow Teach Knox scholarship recipients each year) will gain an improved understanding of how to incorporate plant science, agriculture, and nutrition into their curriculum. In all three of the educator-focused programs we provided, educators expressed growth in understanding of how to incorporate plants/agriculture into their programs/lessons. Much of our data at this time is anecdotal, so we plan to improve our evaluations of understanding in this section of our project. All the feedback provided by Grow Teach Knox attendees indicated that they are interested in more professional development under that umbrella of content and that they enjoyed the speakers provided.

Publications