HISGN Summer Updates
The Hawai’i Island School Garden Network (HISGN) has had a busy summer full of professional development and exciting new partnerships!
Professional Development
We kicked off the summer with the 13th annual cohort of our flagship Kū ‘Āina Pā Garden Teacher Training program. This was our second year online and we enjoyed exploring strategies that incorporate kilo and in-person garden activities with virtual meetings to create meaningful place-based learning experiences.
HISGN was also part of the Hawai’i Farm to School Hui’s Summer Institute, and worked with over 40 teachers, students, and food system stakeholders to develop the online Farm To School Toolkit (to be released this fall).
Our very own Dr. Koh Ming Wei partnered with Dr. Albie Miles from UH West Oahu to offer the first session of Aloha ‘Āina Academy, a professional development opportunity for secondary school teachers seeking DOE highly qualified status in science that focused on food and agriculture. And Jessica Sobocinski hosted Sustenance & Science, a professional development training opportunity for K-8 teachers from FoodCorps schools.
Partnerships
Through a partnership with the UH Manoa Curriculum Research And Development Group, we were able to provide 2675 free “FEASTKits” to Hawai’i Island students in grades 3-8. These kits, which contain a book of lessons written by local teachers and a set of practical science tools, were especially designed to allow students with limited internet access to high-quality, meaningful distance learning experiences in agricultural science. FEASTkits for grades 3-5 are currently sold out, but teachers interested in ordering kits for grade 6-8 students can sign up here. Both grade 3-5 and grade 6-8 workbooks are freely available for download at this link.
This summer HISGN also partnered with the Hawaii Island Food Alliance (HIFA) as part of the Hawaii Island Community Food Summit. We organized a virtual talk story session between school garden teachers and food system stakeholders to both identify roadblocks to keeping our school gardens thriving on Hawai’i Island and to strategize solutions. With HIFA’s generous assistance, we were also able to organize synchronous school garden workdays at six different schools across the island on Saturday, July 31st. Over 75 people volunteered in school gardens at Mountainview Elementary, Pahala Elementary, Innovations Public Charter, Kohala Elementary, Honoka’a Elementary and E.B. DeSilva Elementary and helped to revitalize school gardens before the start of the new school year.
HISGN looks forward to the 2021-22 school year and is excited to continue to help Hawai’i Island schools and teachers to build thriving gardens that enhance keiki and ʻōpio senses of aloha, responsibility, excellence, belonging, total well-being, and ‘ike Hawai’i.
Mahalo nui loa for the good work that you do and for your continued support of school gardens on Hawai’i Island,
Ilana Stout
HISGN Program Director
