Access Asheville: Overview of our project

This summer I was honored to receive a fellowship from Funds for Teachers (FFT) to study how the term access is relevant to what I teach, agriculture. It seems especially appropriate this memorial day weekend as the world reopens and everyone seems to be enjoying access to each other, restaurants, and the places they love to travel. To put this into context for those of you who have not been to our farm - here's a short overview my student created.

I am spending the next week in Asheville and surrounding gardens and greenhouses focusing on the concept of access. Specifically, I am studying greenhouse interior design, student outdoor learning centers, and community gardens in an effort to understand the idea of accessibility and how this word relates to both greenhouse and accessible outdoor design with the goal of creating outdoor learning spaces within our greenhouses and throughout our farm that our K-12 community of learners can enjoy. I’m joined by 2 of the best K-12 subject matter experts (SME)/film crew, Katherine Anderton (15) and Joan Taylor (15). Our study of access will focus on physical access (universal design), but also nutritional, natural, and environmental accessibility.

Our permeable paving will help the environment and helpmate students access our farm.

Physical Accessibility: I would like for all of our high school students to feel comfortable and welcome in our greenhouses and gardens and not feel detoured from visiting them or signing up for classes. The goal of this arm of my study would be to identify and address ways to make our greenhouse more physically accessible to all ages as our budget allows.

Access to healthy food is demonstrated in our permaculture garden and our food pantry garden.

Nutritional Accessibility: I would like to learn to create learning spaces that best support student understanding of how important and easy it is to grow healthy, seasonal foods year round. Yet, many of my students don’t have access to large garden spaces. The goal of this arm of my studies would be to understand ways to design lessons that can easily be repeated in their own homes regardless of space and finances. Some examples would be using vertical and container gardening on balconies and patios, using recycled materials for containers, composting, and seed saving.

Signs placed on our farm.

Environmental Accessibility: I would like as many students as possible to have access to our school farm and all that can be learned by spending time in nature and understanding the connections between our own lives and the environment around us: how everything is connected and how our choices impact our immediate environment. We are creating interpretive signage throughout our 3 acre farm which will explain what all of the 20+ eco rooms on our farm are designed to do. By visiting outdoor nature centers, I hope to improve the connections students make when visiting our farm.

Creating habitats for birds

Natural Accessibility: Along with providing a safe place for our farm animals, I would like our farm to be a safe and welcoming habitat for beneficial wildlife such as pollinators, birds, bats, amphibians etc, so that students understand the importance of encouraging natural interactions between plants, animals, water, soil, and us. The goal of this arm of my studies is to understand practices that the average visitor to our farm can implement in their own home.

Through FFT, from now through December, I will be working with other teachers across the country within various focus circles (Innovation Circles) to discuss the term access in relation to what we teach. My plan to address my problem of practice, expanding access to the farm on the four levels of access described above, includes but is not limited to the following:

1. Study the barriers encountered by physically, visually and mentally impaired individuals (plan in wheelchair accessible paths on the farm and build greenhouse tables that students in wheelchairs can work comfortably from, identify tasks that allow cognitively challenged students to feel success).

2. Understand through dialogue how an agriculture program can support K-12 learning throughout the curriculum (why is it important to add fertilizer to plants).

3. Develop lessons that can be practiced at home to support healthy lifestyles (creating a square foot garden).

4. Develop lessons that can be practices at home to support best practices in environmental management (adding floating wetlands to neighborhood retention ponds or knowing when to put up a hummingbird feeder).

5. Study greenhouse and garden design from the standpoint of access (how high should tables be and how far apart should tables be to allow movement for all).

6. Visit accessible community gardens including state and national parks.

7. Interview persons successful at creating accessible outdoor areas to better understand how my farm and lessons can be adapted.

8. Study and discuss the benefits of horticulture therapy and gardening.

9. Create a long term plan for implementing my discoveries into future projects and lessons into our agricultural program to support the needs of not only our ag students, but all of the visitors we plan to host at our farm.

My first problem with access this Memorial Day weekend was access to a place to stay! Not being able to find a hotel, airbnb, etc available, I joined a home exchange site. After contacting over 20 homeowners, Charles said his place in Asheville was available for the week. The organization works on a point system that I don't yet fully understand, but in order to get points you have to let people use your home. I don't recall if I've told my husband about "my really good idea" yet. But here we are, waking up in Charles' house with Chunk the cat.

It's weird being in someone's home that's not here and whom you've never met. But its hard not to snoop a little in order to get a feel for the host. Charles has left very clear directions for how things run around here but as far as who is, we can't gather much.

We do know:

Charles does something in the restaurant business.

Charles repurposes many items from the restaurant.

Charles wants to keeps us out of the creepy basement.

Charles wants us to water his plants.

No photos of anyone help us determine what Charles looks like, if he has a family etc.