Grow It Know It gives teachers food for thought
A dozen K-12 teachers from five area counties gathered at the UGArden this summer to learn how to incorporate food-based education in their classrooms. Now in its third year, the program is a collaborative initiative between the UGA Office of Service-Learning’s Grow It Know It program, UGA Cooperative Extension, and UGArden.
The three-day workshop immersed participants in the ins and outs of the food system, including how to plant and maintain a garden, the intricacies of the food distribution network, and how to integrate food into the school curriculum to talk about larger societal issues.
“It’s sort of like drinking from a fire hose when we’re trying to teach all of this,” said Kathy Thompson, a clinical professor in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice who has been part of the teacher training program since its inception in 2018. “Really, it’s just to whet their appetite to get them interested and at least have some knowledge about everything. A lot of them just need confidence that they can do it. There are a lot of ways to take something like food and gardening in lots of different directions in the classroom, no matter what content you’re teaching.”