Establishing a food garden in a school setting offers an array of exciting science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) learning opportunities, and is a great way to teach and reinforce state and national learning standards. To achieve success and sustainability, food garden programs should provide powerful, hands-on experiences with fruits and vegetables while also serving as tools for educators to meet existing educational standards.

In this webinar, a panel of experienced garden educators and professional development providers will discuss ways to connect school food gardens to STEAM curriculum. Join us as we highlight the importance of using student-driven teaching methods to teach STEAM through the garden.

STEAM's significance and applications in the garden

Connecting STEAM  in the garden to standards

The event recording will be available here on Crowdcast indefinitely.

To add live captions, please use Google Chrome. 

At the top right, click More 📷 📷 Settings.

At the bottom of the Settings page, click Advanced 📷 Accessibility 📷 Captions.

Registered attendees will be entered to win a copy of "Growing Food"

Tasha Gomes, Georgia Program Associate Director, FoodCorps

Based in the Atlanta area, Tasha Gomes is Associate Director for FoodCorps GA, where she oversees the AmeriCorps direct service program in schools across the state. In partnership with school district leaders and community-based organizations, FoodCorps GA places service members in elementary schools where they integrate garden and food - centered activities into their schools’ culture, cafeterias, and classrooms. Prior to joining FoodCorps, Tasha managed Project Learning Gardens, Captain Planet Foundation’s nationwide school garden grant program. Tasha recently joined Georgia’s Farm to School Alliance steering committee, where she looks forward to working with leaders across the state to make Farm to School resources in Georgia even more accessible and inclusive for local growers, educators and school district leaders.

Tasha brings years of garden-based teaching experience into her nonprofit work, having roots in Drew Charter School, an innovative STEAM certified school in Atlanta, GA. Here the school gardens were central to her instruction and classroom culture for all students K-5. Using the PBL model and authentic integration of STEAM components, Tasha worked with students in the school and surrounding community to cultivate a sense of stewardship and ownership that transformed their campus gardens into thriving outdoor learning labs, earning their school state and national recognition for the projects that sprouted from those spaces. These experiences with students and community stakeholders continue to push Tasha to support other educators in their efforts to overcome perceived barriers to developing standards-based, garden-based, STEAMy projects in meaningful ways. In her free time you can find Tasha gardening (naturally!) – or otherwise outdoors, exploring Georgia’s greenspaces by bike or foot.

Sarah Lane, Program Director, KidsGardening

Sarah grew up in Seattle, WA and graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language. In 2016, Sarah moved to Arkansas to serve with FoodCorps at Conway Public Schools, where her passion of working with students in nontraditional educational settings, engaging with farmers, growing school gardens, and leveraging systems to create sustainable farm to school programs blossomed. She earned her Master of Arts in Teaching at Trinity University in San Antonio in 2019 and moved back to Arkansas to be a lead teacher at Ferncliff Nature School, a nature-based preschool in Little Rock.

Sarah then became the state’s first Farm to School and Early Childhood Education Program Coordinator at the Arkansas Department of Agriculture. She recently joined KidsGardening as Program Director in fall of 2021. Sarah loves how transformational school gardens can be and brings a wealth of experience teaching students in preschool to high school in Washington, Arkansas, and Texas.

Sara  Severance, Educator Training Specialist, LifeLab

Sara comes to Life Lab after working as a public school science teacher,  instructional coach and science education researcher for the past 14 years. Sara brings expertise in implementing and facilitating NGSS-aligned lessons for diverse learners in the classroom and other informal spaces and strongly believes in making science accessible to everyone.  Recently, she has also been trained in best practices related to the science of reading to support early literacy.  Her passion for children and the outdoors started as a child attending summer camp on a lake in northern Michigan and led her to a teaching career in Denver, Colorado where she worked with a variety of students using educational programs such as Expeditionary Learning, Amplify Science, and the International Baccalaureate program. Sara received her MA in curriculum and instruction in secondary science from the University of Colorado, Boulder and her BS in biology from the University of Michigan. Sara enjoys spending time with her husband and 2 children, reading, and playing volleyball.

Sarah Pounders, Education Specialist, KidsGardening

Lily Nguyen, Education Specialist, KidsGardening

Stay tuned for the rest of this FREE webinar series! Each event will be posted on our Crowdcast page.

Click this link to add the GSFG webinar series dates to your calendar or check the GSFG Events page for updates.

1) Feb. 8 - Welcome Webinar
2) March 8 - STEAM in the Garden - Merging the indoor and outdoor classroom
3) April 12 - Teaching for Sustainability
4) May 10 - How to use school food gardens to teach place-based, culturally-relevant, and indigenous learning
5) June 14 - Funding Your School Food Garden

The GSFG community is designed  to facilitate networking and collaboration among school food garden practitioners and offers:

Discussion threads will enable practitioners to interact and leverage their collective strength in tackling shared challenges.

Regular, expert-moderated group coaching sessions will provide practitioners with structured opportunities to secure answers and assistance in real-time.

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) in the Garden