Northeastern Class: Food Justice
– By Alison Swanitz with Northeastern Sustainability
What is the CETR Program?
Rooted in Northeastern’s commitment to experiential learning, the Community-Engaged Teaching & Research (CETR) program connects students, faculty, and local partners on community-engaged projects that advance student’s academic goals while simultaneously contributing to the goals of community partner organizations.
Rooted in Community: CitySprout’s Mission and Impact
CitySprouts’ Mission is to cultivate curiosity and wonder in students through hands-on science learning in their own schoolyard gardens, with programming starting in pre-K through eighth grade. For the youngest learners, CitySprouts focuses on the sensory exploration of gardens – learning to plant a seed, reading picture books, and then taking the kids from the page to the outdoors to put it into practice. As students get older, City Sprouts programming shifts to focus on understanding their community’s environmental resources, exploring green careers, and engaging in hands-on mapping of neighborhood green spaces and food resources.
“It’s really about access and equity in the outdoors for young learners.”
– Maddie Karotz, Garden Operations Manager for City Sprouts.
Connecting Campus and Community: The Collaboration
During the summer, school-focused organizations like CitySprouts often need the most support. Because CitySprouts is a non-profit with a smaller team, they primarily rely on volunteer labor to care for their gardens over the summer. Everything grows rapidly during these months, and without care, the gardens would become overgrown and wild by the time children returned to school. So this summer, Becca Berkey’s class has been hard at work tending to the Higginson Lewis School garden, right here in Roxbury.
One summer, CitySprouts’ team members taught Northeastern volunteers how to hand-pollinate pumpkin flowers, a notoriously difficult task. Thanks to their care, two beautiful pumpkins grew on a single vine, delighting elementary school students when they returned to school in the fall. That summer, Berkey’s class gained hands-on experience with a new dimension of urban agriculture, all while witnessing firsthand how their work can make a difference in their community.
“Kids aren’t in school in July and August, so my class is at the perfect time for my students to be able to make sure there’s a garden for those kids to come back to in September”– Becca Berkey, CETR Program Director and University Lecturer
“It may feel small, but there are 100 students at that elementary school who got to see that pumpkin grow, and it wouldn’t have happened without the volunteers over the summer.”– Maddie Karotz, Garden Operations Manager for City Sprouts
Partnership in Practice: Outcomes and Insights
At Northeastern, there is an emphasis on experiential learning and CETR provides an opportunity for students to engage in civic education while putting what they’ve learned to meaningful use. For Maddie Karotz, the Garden Operations Manager for City Sprouts, partnering with a university represents an important step towards breaking unhealthy patterns such as saviorism in volunteering and instead inviting university volunteers to truly become a part of their mission, not just fulfill a perceived organizational need. When Becca Berkey’s Food Justice course enters the Higginson Lewis School garden to work, it’s far more than simply volunteering; they are being welcomed into an experience that reflects the same sense of wonder and care that City Sprouts offers the young learners they serve.
“When Northeastern students step in through their food justice class into a garden to me, that’s about inviting them to also experience some of the wonder that we propagate for students in the garden.” – Maddie Karotz, Garden Operations Manager for City Sprouts
Interested in learning more about integrating community engagement into your sustainability course?
Email service-learning@northeastern.edu to get started!