Do you work in or with school gardens?

Do you have a story you’d like to share broadly?

Would you like to see your story published in a book collection for school garden researchers and practitioners?

We are inviting school garden practitioners to submit vignettes (short stories, narrative essays, creative works--poems, images, visual art, etc.) that showcase something you find valuable, challenging, enriching, surprising, or important about working with learners in school gardens.

Contributors can be anyone who has experience working with school gardens in a K-12 context: general or special education teachers, informal garden educators, parents, students, volunteers, school administrators, support staff, nutrition service staff, paraprofessionals, etc. Contributors can be novice or experienced working in school gardens.

Curricular aims for using school gardens could be anything (e.g. science, math, agriculture, STEM, social studies, art, creative writing, gifted and talented, special education, social and emotional development, etc.)

We are looking for contributions from schools in across a wide-range of contexts: urban, rural, and suburban, serving low-, middle-, and high-income student populations.

Accepted contributions will be included in a book that links school garden research with practice. Contributions will be organized across themes and complemented with critical analysis to create a platform for educators from various positionalities to share their experiences and voice their hopes and challenges of working in/with school gardens. We aim to include the experiences of contributors with a range of experience with school gardens and working in a variety of educational settings.

The organizers of this volume are Dr. Sarah Stapleton, PhD (a science & environmental educator and Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Oregon) and Dr. Jennifer Jo Thompson, PhD (a medical anthropologist and Assistant Research Scientist in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia).

Interested? Have questions? Please contact Dr. Sarah Stapleton: sstaplet@uoregon.edu.

Potential contributors need to send an abstract (100-200 word description) to sstaplet@uoregon.edu by April 1st 2019.