Progress 06/01/23 to 05/31/24
Outputs
Target Audience:Common Ground's project is designed to reach the following target audiences: 1. Schoolyards: will partner with 15 New Haven Public Schools to increase K-8 students' connection to food and agriculture through hands-on, experiential education. Research from the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) indicated that in recent years nearly 17% of New Haven students surveyed had not visited a park or other natural area even once in the past year. Nearly three-quarters hadn't spent time around flowers, trees, animals, or other "wild" things in the previous week. African American and Latinx young people engage with these natural places less than their white counterparts. The Schoolyards program at Common Ground was designed in response to requests from New Haven Public Schools teachers to create outdoor spaces where teachers can engage students in academic lessons through direct experience in onsite gardens. Schoolyards will support educators by providing curriculum support, gardening skills, and educational best practices to grow educators who are equipped to build the next generation of food system leaders. Schoolyards programming encourages students to explore where food comes from through hands-on learning in edible gardens and farm field trips to improve their nutritional health through exposure and familiarity with nutritious foods. Target Audience: Over 130 K-8 elementary and middle school teachers will benefit from gaining curriculum guidance, edible garden support plus ongoing mentorship regarding outdoor experiential learning. An average of 1,600 students a week from NHPS will benefit from engaging in learning activities at their schools receiving the Schoolyards Program. The NHPS district's minority enrollment is 90%. At schools in the New Haven School District, 75% of students are eligible to participate in the federal free and reduced-price meal program, and 14.5% of students are English language learners (Connecticut State Department of Education, 2022). 2. Green Jobs Corps: Green Job Corps (GJC) is a youth leadership and workforce development program for CGHS students that emphasizes food justice solutions while working on real community projects on campus and with partner organizations. Through GJC, Common Ground creates authentic service-learning opportunities through paid student employment on-site on its urban farm (positions include compost operation, production market garden, mobile farmer's market, and farm-to-school) and through partner organizations focused on food security. Each year an average of 80 high school students successfully complete more than 130 paid agricultural and environmental job placements. Their job placements increase community capacity in a variety of ways. For instance, GJC members, directly and indirectly, impact nutrition education programs and help to maintain community and school gardens across the city. These job placements provide career exposure and mentorship within agriculture and environmental-related positions while also educating students and fostering their awareness of food insecurity and related social justice issues by giving them direct experience in careers geared toward problem-solving strategies and impacting positive change across our community. Target Audience: GJC will engage and benefit a minimum of 80 students from CGHS. CGHS's 225 students are diverse; 65% percent of CGHS students hail from various neighborhoods of New Haven, and approximately 35% live in one of the 11 surrounding towns. Almost two-thirds (64%) of students are eligible for free and reduced lunches, putting them among the lowest-income households in New Haven. 3. Teaching Our Cities: Teaching Our Cities connects urban public elementary, middle, and high schools in New England (CT, RI, MA) and New York -- building capacity by sharing resources to encourage the use of different environments as learning laboratories, root schools in the cities and communities students call home. The peer schools involved are engaged in work parallel to the work we are taking on; focused on growing the next generation of agriculture, environmental, and civic leaders. As a co-founder of this community of practice, Common Ground will continue to manage digital publications, quarterly symposiums, and networking opportunities, in addition to digitally publishing modules (at www.teachcity.org) and program accomplishments and methodology involving Schoolyards and GJC. Target Audience: Project beneficiaries include at least 50 teachers, 10 school leaders, 2,100 students, and 20 other staff from at least eight urban public schools in the Northeast United States. Teaching Our Cities will also create a wider ripple effect by creating and sharing learning modules, curricula, and student projects rooted in agricultural learning with a national audience of K-12 schools.? Changes/Problems:The largest obstacle or change we experienced during our project period was unexpected staff turnover within the administrative arm of our nonprofit. While program leads responsible for the carrying out of the project have not changed, and have been successful in achieving their goals, our organization is currently working with an Interim Executive Director and a professional talent acquistion firm in order to locate and hire the next leader of our organization. During this several month period we have been operating without a permanent Executive Director, many senior staff members (including the project manager for this grant) had to take on additional executive responsibilities in order to ensure the organization continued our vital, community-driven work and services. In addition to the change with our Executive Director, our Director of Finance and Business retired, and our full-time Grant Writer and Project Manager moved on to a new opportunity. This uniquely challenging staff shortage resulted in delayed submission of our Progress Report. We are glad to report that we have now hired, onboarded, and are productively working with a talented, experienced new Senior Manager of Grants and Contracts. The Senior Manager of Grants and Contracts has developed strong grant project management systems and timelines and has been able to successfully collect the data needed in order to submit our progress reports for this grant opportunity in a timely manner from this point forward. Staff capacity is returning to a tenable place, and program leads are feeling confident and empowered by the grant management trainings that the Senior Manager of Grants and Contracts is providing on an ongoing basis. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Common Ground Students and our Compost Coordinator presented on a national webinar hosted by the Green Schools National Network, focusing on their campus composting work (June 2023). Common Ground has also partnered with the Barr Foundation to organize an in-person workshop in Massachusetts (May 2023, before the grant period) and a follow-up in-person site visit to Common Ground (scheduled for October 2024) for school teams from partner schools across New England. The Green Schools National Network invited Common Ground staff to lead a 3-hour workshop, focused on how we use our urban farm and environment as a learning laboratory, at their national conference in Santa Fe in March 2024. Common Ground has developed a partnership with the Green Schools National Network (GSNN) to co-organize our Spring 2024 educator summit, and to attract a national audience for this convening. It took place in June rather than in May, to support additional participation. Two of our compost crew members and our compost coordinator shared their experience on a webinar facilitated by the Green Schools National Network (June 23) How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The workshops, webinars, and site visits described above engaged more than 200 educators from at least 30 other schools and organizations. Working with the Green Schools National Network as a dissemination partner has helped us to grow our reach beyond New England, to include educators and schools across the country. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, we plan to continue fostering relationships with a number of schools across the country to increase K-8 students' connection to food and agriculture through hands-on, experiential education. This includes strategies to maintain school gardens and engage students, and teachers, in food and garden education. We currently [work with X schools] to date through the Schoolyards Program. Through this work, we expect to provide teachers with resources and mentorship to increase their capacity to provide garden education in outdoor learning spaces. We'll be collecting quantitative and qualitative data throughout the school year in order to effectively evaluate program effectiveness. Additionally, in the second year of the grant period, we are positioned to move forward with the goals and concrete work described in our proposal to the USDA regarding our Green Job Corps (GJC) youth leadership and workforce development program. Through GJC, Common Ground creates authentic service-learning opportunities through paid student employment on-site on its urban farm (positions include compost operation, production market garden, mobile farmer's market, and farm to school) and through partner organizations focused on food security. With each goal, find our plans to accomplish them in this next reporting period Goal 1: Increase nutrition/garden education in K-8 New Haven Public Schools. Evaluate the quality of the education provided and review the objectives met the prior school year. Garden maintenance at 12 partner schools. Conduct school outreach, connecting with teachers and administration to gauge professional development needed, and build secure partnerships for Phase 4. Engage 8 partner schools with 800 students weekly in food and garden education. Monitor and collect qualitative and quantitative data on activities and educational objectives met. Provide 65 teachers in partner schools with resources, mentorship, and feedback to increase teacher capacity in their ability to deliver garden education in outdoor campus environments. Schedule, conduct outreach and host two family events at common ground or partner school gardens reaching 50 families. Collect data from family events during and post-event Conduct full qualitative and quantitative program analysis and share findings on program effectiveness in our USDA Final Report. Goal 2: Cultivate high school student leaders in agriculture. Evaluation and assessment of the prior year. Hire and manage 20 student summer positions at Common Ground and partner organizations. Provide students with 5 weeks of professional development. Complete P.O.W.E.R. Standards Pre+Post Evaluations with students and provide feedback for growth and improvement. Survey youth for feedback on training effectiveness, work satisfaction, and ideas for improvement. Analyze and record survey responses. Contact partner organizations and confirm agreements, supervisions, and plans partners. Meet with partners and provide training for best practices in workplace management and supervision of youth. Engage and hire 20 students and provide 8 weeks of skill development training to youth. Complete P.O.W.E.R. Standards Pre+Post-Evaluations with students and provide feedback for growth/ improvement. Survey youth for feedback on training effectiveness, work satisfaction, and ideas for improvement. Analyze and record survey responses. Monthly check-ins with partner organizations. Weekly data gathering from partner organizations Evaluation and assessment of the prior year. Conduct full program analysis, and create and share findings in USDA final report. Track how many hours GJC students have spent on composting program Take pre-post surveys for GJC students to demonstrate their growth in composting knowledge Collect qualitative stories + anecdotes about GJC students with composting including pounds of compost produced during the grant period. Goal 3: Assist in growing school garden programs and service-learning education programs regionally and nationally. Publish the first round of resources for the web (digital) platform. Work with a web developer to make necessary updates to the web platform; publicize resources broadly through partner networks, press releases, etc. Work with partner schools to finalize plans for a 2-day summer summit, supporting program development and documentation, and engaging 40+ school team members. Reaffirm school commitment to engage in SY 24-25. Support SY, GJC, and partner school staff in IDing and documenting practices and programs ready for sharing. Develop at least 5 new resources - book chapters, practice profiles, resource guides, etc. - sharing SY and GJC-based practices with a broader network of schools. Seek participating school input to finalize plans for peer-to-peer visits. Facilitate full-day visits, engaging at least 40 school team members each; survey participants to understand the impact. Plan and execute a minimum of two peer-to-peer capacity-building workshops and site visits, bringing together partner schools. Work with a web developer to make necessary updates to web platform; publicize resources broadly through partner networks, press releases, etc. Final evaluation of impact ?
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
SCHOOLYARDS - Goal 1: Increase nutrition/garden education in K-8 New Haven Public Schools OVERALL YEAR 1: 800 Students Engage with Schoolyards and 80% increase awareness of healthy foods, 65 teachers at 8 schools receive PD through 2 workshops and 90% Q1 Secured and scheduled K-8 programs as indicated show growth in outdoor ed, 13 school gardens are implemented/maintained, 600 students come to farm field trips, 50 families reached through 2 family events and 80% show growth "Engaged 5 partner schools with 700 students weekly coordination in process with other schools" maintain 5 school gardens Q2 maintain 11 school gardens Q3 engaged 11 partner schools with 1600 students weekly in food and garden education collected data that captures qualitative data and lesson plans collected data that show increased awareness of healthy foods and gardening 89% of participants tasted something new in their school garden this school year maintain 11 school gardens Held two family events for at least 50 families held two teacher workshops GREEN JOBS CORPS - Goal 2: Cultivate high school student leaders in agriculture. OVERALL YEAR 1: 40 students receive agricultural/environmental job placement, 85% complete their placement + increase leadership in field, 50% express interest in pursuing ag. or a related field in post-secondary education, 75% students increase growth 1 employability skills in fields of ag., partner with 3 ag-related community partners for job placements. Q1 Two of our compost crew members and our compost coordinator shared their experience on a webinar facilitated by the Green Schools National Network (June 23) TEACHING OUR CITIES - Goal 3: Assist in growing school garden programs and service-learning education programs regionally and nationally. OVERALL YEAR 1: Create 5 blog posts, case studies, practice toolkits. Engage 10 schools through 2 workshops and site visits. Q1 Common Ground students & compost coordinator presented on a national webinar hosted by the Green Schools National Network, focusing on their campus composting work as a case study for other schools (June 2023). https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UtiqjC3LgrxH_yRhmM0qL6_PE0CZaJWU_vxKYbV1znw/edit?usp=sharing Q2 Common Ground has also partnered with the Barr Foundation to organize an in-person workshop in Massachusetts (May 2023, before the grant period) and follow-up in person site visit to Common Ground (in October 2024) for school teams from partner schools across New England, including tours of our urban farm and opportunities to learn about our four-year process for supporting students as food and environmental justice leaders. 100% of participants in this site visit agreed or strongly agreed that "our team was exposed to new approaches, perspectives, and solutions that we can apply to our work," and that "our team gained a broader perspective and has a clearer picture of the necessary work ahead." In addition, 92% of participants in the site visits agreed or strongly agreed that, "we were able to draw upon our community of peers for advice and/or collaboration," and that "being a part of this visit helped us learn new skills and advance our work." 100% of participants identified a clear next step they planned to take based on their participation upon returning to their home schools. This workshop resulted in the creation of a practice toolkit focused on our environmental leadership portfolio process: https://sites.google.com/view/schoolvisitcapstone Q3 The Green Schools National Network invited Common Ground staff to lead a 3-hour workshop, focused on how we use our urban farm as a learning laboratory, at their national conference in Santa Fe in March 2024. The workshop was full to capacity, engaging more than 60 educators from across the country. The workshop provided participating schools with a toolkit on mapping place-based learning opportunities around their own campus: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1viTgfeHg5mhau1ay3iPhRKKjwztBGwGSgIhoeWfcPEI/edit?usp=sharing Common Ground has developed a partnership with the Green Schools National Network (GSNN) to co-organize our Spring 2024 educator summit, and to attract a national audience for this convening. It will take place in June rather than in May, to support additional participation. In preparation for this workshop, Common Ground worked with GSNN to develop a model project-based learning unit focused on our urban farm, to disseminate to other schools: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tj9bVo8q6VET8KZ-V-qw5aEKw-iTTwMG9evqePazf8g/edit?usp=sharing Through these workshops and site visits, Common Ground has engaged schools including Boston Green Academy, Elm City Montessori, Brennan Rogers K-8 School, The Greene School, New Roots Charter School, Mundo Verde Charter School, Blackstone Academy, Kreiva Academy Public Charter School, Nowell Academy, Holyoke High School, Salem High School, and Lowell High School.
Publications
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