Progress 09/15/23 to 09/14/24

Outputs
Target Audience:Target Audience Our target audience includes organizations in the communities outlined in the proposal. The communities are listed by zip codes.The organizations include four schools, one community garden and three farmers markets. This period we focused on four schools, one community garden, and one farmer'smarket; we focused on Hazelwood Middle school, The Montessori Adolescent Program (MAP) at Grand Center, Glasgow Elementary and Highland Elementary. We were present on A Red Circle's farmers market and the Baden Community Garden. We focused on these groups because of their demographics. They are all located in predominantly ethnic minority, Black/African American communities. Three of the schools are public schools, one is private. The demographics of the private school are a bit different from the public schools - all 3 public schools are at least 90% Africa American whereas the private school, even though it is located in a predominantly Black community, consists of about 10% African American students. We are in these communities because they are mostly at, near, or under the poverty line. This ethnic group disproportionately has health issues, and statistics support this. We believe, that by building a sustainable food access system, we can increase the knowledge and practice of sustainable farming in the communities and improve the nutritional consumption of children and families. We use a formal classroom approach to teach students in elementary and middle schools. Our approach is a hands-on approach to engaging the community. In the schools, the teachers and the school leadership were all very excited with our approach to sustainable farming. The excitement overflowed to the district where we had numerous positive encounters with the superintendent. We were even selected and awarded the Community Partner of the Year. As we moved through the school year, we made headway with our parents. Parent participation is low for a variety of reasons consistent with our demographics. We are using different strategies to engage the parents more. One way is planning a field trip to Phi Global Farms in September. We are at the peak of our growing season, and we hope to get parents to think more about and practice locating and patronizing local food outlets. At one of our community spaces, the Baden Community Garden, we have three demonstration raised beds and we provide assistance and know-how to the program. Finally, we have workshops, and day camps at the Phi Global Farm location. We've had parents and student field trips at the farm, and we are preparing now for the fall visits to pawpaw patch, a local indigenous fruit that is becoming more popular. Changes/Problems:Our first major problem was that teachers and students were switched between Fall and Spring terms at one school, so we had to start over with a new classroom of students. We were under the impression that we would have the same class for the full school year; we geared our curriculum to follow the seasons. However, the leadership decided to change student assignments, and most of the teachers at the beginning of the second semester. That set us up to start all over again with the new students without the means to introduce them to the growing of fresh food; it was wintertime, and we couldn't go outside to pick watermelons or anything else to start the hands-on foundation to our approach to learning. Midway through evaluating the curriculum, we discovered that students at the middles school level used AI tools to answer questions on the surveys. A challenge was designing a better evaluation system that eliminated the opportunity to use AI generated answers to our surveys. We also had to pivot sites. (1) In the spring, we had to switch which elementary schools we focused on due to teacher engagement and communication. This is not unexpected. But thanks to our strong relationships at other schools, we were able to deliver all 10 units of curriculum at the new partner school, Glasgow Elementary. (2) For our summer program with students from the Boys and Girls club, we initially planned to administer our summer program at Highland Elementary, but the Boys and Girls Club moved their programming to their main site. So, we pivoted to Glasgow Elementary where we ran the summer farmers markets, which ended up being enjoyable for the students and parents. We have pictures of the students weighing food and giving change for families selection of fresh veggies. Finally, regarding enrichment spaces, we moved the springtime planting of our trees to the fall season. We were advised, due to the cicada threat, it would prove wise to plant in the fall. We are scheduled to start planting trees this fall on the sites mentioned in the project narrative. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The opportunities for training and professional development centered around teaching our Urban Farm School staff how to create lesson plans, and how to conduct themselves in the classroom setting. As an educator, I believe that the creation of good, succinct lesson plans is paramount to effective teaching. As we engaged the students through the year, we trained our instructors by allotting professional development time to learn curriculum design - (1) We taught them about format and showed them how to research appropriate subject matter, (2) taught them how to locate local, state, and national educational standards, (3) taught them how to weave STEAM related materials into the lesson plans using Montessori methods. And most importantly, we demonstrated to our staff how to recognize teachable moments during instruction time. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our results have been disseminated mainly through our webpage ( www.phiglobalfarms.com/) and social media. We have Instagram and we've shared our information with The Missouri Farmers Union. In our local community, we share our information through flyers and word of mouth at our schools, and at the farmers markets. We also accept visits from youth and civic groups from the surrounding communities. We invited various youth groups out to the farm site, and we've had church groups (youth groups focused on social justice) come out to learn about sustainable farming and to harvest fresh produce. Our highlight for the 2024 growing season was our annual summer day camps. We had three youth groups attend. There was a total of 36 youth participating, an increase from 15 youth in the 2023 growing season. We plan to have students return in the fall to pick pawpaws. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In this period, we successfully developed all new lesson plans (for 10 units) with beautiful illustrations that are age appropriate and culturally-relevant. We believe that our curriculum was effective. The students responded well to the information presented to them and the hands-on activities they participated in were well received, especially outdoor activities (according to our surveys). During the next reporting period, we plan to focus delivering programming and evaluating the effectiveness of our curriculum to accomplish the goals. We'd like to improve on delivering our lessons in a more efficient manner. We also plan on having a better evaluation system in place to more accurately analyze our progress, and plan to do this by developing stronger relationships and communication with classroom teachers. Ultimately, we believe these efforts will increase fresh fruit and veggie consumption in our community, and show that nutritious food is also delicious. Our aim is to convene a focus group of parents, teachers and students. We want to learn how to find the real reasons that our communities don't consume more local fresh produce.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goals: 1. Increase access to hands-on, Montessori, culturally relevant STEAM learning experiences Phi Global LLC increased access to hands-on, Montessori-based, culturally relevant learning by instructing the students in a manner that gave them a "safe place to fail". Once they understood that failing is a part of learning, they began to explore more. For example, they explored the formation of seedlings by pulling seedlings out of the pots that they were growing in and examining their structure. As we worked through the semester, we decided to have a culturally relevant meal during the holiday season. We cooked collard greens, mustard greens and sweet potatoes that we grew at the farm and, we baked and fried chicken that was also raised on the Phi Global farm site. We established a very strong program at Hazelwood Middle school, that even the superintendent was excited about. We were able to take 6th grade students through a year of sustainable agricultural learning experiences. We divided the year into two separate classes. One class started in September and ended at the winter break. The second class started in January and ended at summer break. At Hazelwood Middle, we replaced existing raised beds and expanded from 4 to 8 beds. This increased opportunities for the students to practice hands-on learning. We were effective enough to receive the Community Partner of the Year award for the Hazelwood district. We plan to build on this success and expand to more schools in the Hazelwood district. At two Elementary schools, we duplicated the practice of hands-on, Montessori learning experiences by expanded from 4 to 6 beds at Highland Elementary, from 2 to 5 beds at Glasgow Elementary, and we refurbished and expandedschools in the Hazelwood district. At two Elementary schools, we duplicated the practice of hands-on, Montessori learning experiences by expanded from 4 to 6 beds at Highland Elementary, from 2 to 5 beds at Glasgow Elementary, and we refurbished and expanded existing raised beds, and added two more raised beds at the Montessori Lab School/MAP. By walking students through the steps of how to build their own garden spaces, they now have the knowledge to duplicate this practice at their homes and in their communities. We are measuring whether they expand these practices to their homes. In the 2024/2025 school year, We plan to expand the space at two more Elementary schools - Nance Elementary and Cold Water Elementary (both schools also in the Hazelwood school district, and prompted by the success at Hazelwood SE Middle). We plan to build 4 raised beds at each site. 2. Develop additional enrichment spaces At the Baden community garden space we have developed an enrichment space. This is for the community at large. In 2022, this space had 8 members and grew 100 lbs. of fresh produce, and now has increased to 27 members growing 1000 lbs. of fresh produce! There are also 3 peach trees and 2 apple trees that are bearing fruit. We will plant pawpaws and persimmons on the site this fall. 3. Build leadership We have identified students who a have keen interest in agriculture. We sent five students to Kansas State University ag camp - Camp Switzer. There, they experienced hands-on farming experiences and got the chance to visit Nicodemus Kansas and learn about the history of Black farmers. We hope to expand on this concept and partner with the summer Ag program at Tuskegee University. 4. Convene the regions Black and Indigenous farmers This fall, we are planning a round table discussion about long term stability of our sustainable farming efforts; the topic will be, what do we need to thrive. Objectives: Students: 1. Students learned about sustainable farming. We coincided our classroom activities with the regions growing season. When we started in the fall, we introduced our students to agricultural concepts and the history of agriculture. At Hazelwood Middle we brought in fresh produce, herbs and honey that was grown at the Phi Global farm site. The students got a chance to sample fresh watermelon, fresh honey, and they smelled a variety of fresh herbs. At the end of the growing season we prepared a meal from the farm. We ate baked chicken that was raised on the farm, sweet potatoes, collard and mustard green, and (macaroni and cheese, not raised on the farm). The students along the way, established garden beds at the school site andplanted a variety of vegetables. We developed a culturally responsive curriculum by having conversations about Black history, particularly about George Washinton Carver and the fact that Missouri was a slave state. We talked about how all of that history affects us today. We had similar experiences at the other sites, but Hazelwood took to this program rather wholeheartedly. Overall, the students, through our curriculum, were exposed to learning about seeds and soil, vermiculture, cultivation, irrigation and, food preparation. This autumn, we will teach the food preservation process by making. Community 1. We will measure how much food was grown throughout the Phi Global system. Our target was to engage 60 students and raise about 10-15 lbs of food per student. We have engaged over 80 students, and we are on pace to raise over 600 lbs of produce during the 2024 growing season. At this pace, the Phi Global sustainable farming system is projected to raise over 7 lbs. of food per student. We have a survey that will be shared in the Other Products section of this report. 2. We are measuring whether the community is increasing its engagement at local farmers markets and increasing their consumption. We inform them of the farmermarkets that are in or near their communities. They fill out questionnaires at school or at the local farmers markets that give them the opportunity to respond and provide data regarding their consumption of food. 3. We will share our curriculum on the Phi Global Farms website. The URL will be posted in the Other Products section of this report.

Publications