Marlo Stein

Through my experiences at Farm and Wilderness and Chewonki, I have realized that I learn best when my curiosity for the world around me guides my education. At Farm and Wilderness, I would wander through the woods surrounding the camp learning edible plants and learning to identify wildflowers. At Chewonki, the weekly tree and bird identification quizzes consistently inspired me to pay attention and learn to understand the interactions between different species and ecosystems. Through these adventures I learned the importance of thinking in systems and looking at education through an interdisciplinary lens. Arriving at Smith, I worked to find the departments that would allow me to continue this style of learning and to further develop skills that would inspire me to creatively approach many of the complex problems society is currently facing.

The sustainable food concentration has allowed me to supplement my traditional academic learning with practical knowledge. Every summer I have taken jobs that have given me exposure to different aspects of agriculture and sustainable farming. My first summer of college I worked at CitySprouts in Cambridge, MA which helped me explore how complicated concepts like food justice and soil science can be easily implemented into fun curriculum for middle schoolers. I was able to use much of the knowledge I have gained from my geoscience major at Smith to feel confident teaching others. It was also exciting to see my major applied to farming and gardening.

The next year I built on that experience by working as the Instructor of the Growing Green program at Calleva Outdoor Adventure Camp. In this role I was consistently working to become more self aware and to grow as an educator. Each week, I met with my co-counselors to review the curriculum from the week in order to decide best practices and strategies to make the program better. I thought very critically about the programs I was developing and learned to ask for and be receptive to constructive feedback.

Back at Smith, these experiences have pushed me to be more attentive to different teaching styles and to find new ways to convey complex ideas to varying audiences. I pay attention to the teaching styles that I respond best to and work to embody those strategies in my leadership. The concentration has helped me hone in on educational experiences that are most beneficial to my learning style while motivating me to actively seek out these experiences even when they aren’t directly offered or advertised by Smith. My practical experiences in garden education have also helped me learn new ways of sharing information with diverse groups such as middle school aged students, college aged counselors, and parents. I thought critically about ways to teach topics like food justice that would effectively show the intricacies of the issue and the systematic ways it affects different communities. I frequently questioned my role as an educator in communities I wasn’t a part of and always worked to listen to those around me to incorporate their voices and experiences into the work I was apart of.

Overall, the concentration has both helped me delve deeper into one specific area of focus while broadening the scope of my academic experience beyond the Smith College campus. It has given me the academic framework that has helped me think critically about the work I do in my practical experiences as well as helped me find a career path that will be fulfilling to me while working towards a solution to many of the complex issues in our food system.

Sweat soaks the back and front of my t-shirt. A horsefly incessantly buzzes around me, attempting to land on the back of my neck each time I pick up an object heavy enough to keep both my hands occupied while it bites me. I lean over the large leaves of the squash plants trying to ignore the distractions to the task at hand. The plants scratch my arms and legs as I reach deep into the center of the plant to cut off the zucchini hiding among the blossoms. Bees flee the flowers in a hurry, unsure of my presence in their space. 

We have four rows of summer squash and zucchini to harvest and we’ve been dreading it all day. Sarah’s 18. She just graduated from high school in Virginia and arrived in Maine for the first time in mid-June to see if the farm life is for her. We work a row apart; I’m listening to an NPR podcast in my headphones while she sings along to the Grateful Dead in hers.  We work independently, however we both know the job requires us each to work as hard as we can. We each must carry our weight, yet remain ready to help the other. I reach the end of my two rows first. My crates are overflowing with zucchini and I struggle to carry them back to the van. I pause, then hurry over to Sarah to help her finish her rows. Together, we carry both crates to the van, realizing how much quicker we completed the task by helping each other. 

Working at Merrifield Farm Stand in Porter, Maine this summer taught me how to motivate myself to work hard individually while keeping my coworkers and the common goal in mind. Whether it was harvesting in the fields, setting up for the Portland Farmer’s Market or keeping the farm stand cleanly, my actions always affected those working alongside me and the amount of food we were able to bring to our customers. This awareness help
ed me become a more motivated and more responsible farm apprentice.

 

Calleva is an outdoor adventure camp in Maryland that attracts campers from the greater Washington DC and Bethesda areas. This past summer, I was working as the instructor of their Growing Green camp, which teaches 9-15 year olds gardening and cooking skills. While working with Growing Green, I focused on teaching youth how to garden in fun and creative ways, but also how farming in Poolesville, Maryland and making connections to other food production and distribution systems could affect the food system in general. Although many food justice topics are difficult for middle-school aged kids to understand, I tried to apply many of these complicated topics to the fun camp activities we did throughout the week. For example, while milking the cow we discussed terms such as “pasteurization,” “grass fed,” and “hormone-treated” and later when they tasted the warm milk they had just worked to receive, I could see their recognition of difference between this and the store-bought milk they drink at home.

I was first inspired to do this work by similar programs. As a camper at Farm and Wilderness Summer Camps, I milked a cow for the first time and noticed that the milk was not being served in our dining hall. The resulting discussions about dairy policy and the difficulties of producing enough for a large amount of people helped me learn how to approach leading these same discussions. Many educators at Calleva before me had neglected this incredible opportunity to inspire youth to think about the way food affects their lives, their communities, and the earth. So at the end of the summer I took initiative. There were so many brilliant individuals working at Calleva with amazing visions of how to better the environmental programming, yet no support to make it happen. Using what I had learned from other summer jobs in similar programs and environmental science classes at Smith, I designed and wrote out a detailed copy of my program that I hope can be used at Calleva in the future. I also helped lead an environmental training for any interested staff with another instructor who was passionate about the farm and other sustainability efforts at the organization. This training allowed me to share my enthusiasm for all things farm and food related and my knowledge of these larger systems. This enthusiasm was definitely infectious. Many directors saw my work and expressed interest in finding ways to continue what I had started, and many of the staff who knew very little about the environmental programs at Calleva became excited about those opportunities. Although I may not return next summer and am unsure what the lasting effect of my work will be, Calleva gave me more confidence in my knowledge of farming and food justice, my skills as an outdoor educator and myself as a leader.