Educator Alumni Share The Ecology School's Activities and Characters with Schools in the South

Andie Bisceglia (Educator, Spring/Fall 2010) and Wick Prichard (Educator, Spring/Fall 2010, Spring 2011) met during their first term as Educators at The Ecology School in 2010. Since then, they’ve been busy creating a robust farm-to-school program in Georgia called Grow It. Know It. (And getting married. And having a baby!) They work with six middle and elementary schools in Clarke County and Barrow County to create gardens on-site and to use them as tools within schools. The programs are direct correlations to in-classroom teachings, like sixth graders in these counties are required to take agriculture and consumer sciences courses. Grow It. Know It. also offers unique connections to standard subjects like English and Social Studies through creative lessons like garden poetry and history of collard greens.

 Inspired by their time in the dining hall at The Ecology School, Wick and Andie have also tackled cafeteria composting within the schools. “The Ecology School’s dining hall set up with compost showed how it can be done on a really large scale. That encouraged Wick to take the plunge of composting with 725 middle schoolers every day. Now we do it at six schools,” Andie said. (A favorite memory at The Ecology School for Andie was Friday composting turning!) The Ecology School activities like Banana Vault and Soil Rainbow as well as the crazy duo Doc Rock and Igor have become parts of Grow It. Know It.’s programming. “Wick and I have this common shared knowledge bank that has made it easy—where we don’t have to start from scratch—when putting together these programs. We have this great resource to draw on from our time at The Ecology School.”

 To learn more about Grow It. Know It., click here! (And if any FOAMers are looking to take a tour of the South, Andie and Wick hire five Americorp VISTAs and would love to see alumni of The Ecology School join them.)

Three teachers pose in familiar costumes during a Grow It. Know It. training. (Doc Rock and Igor are on the far right!)