FarmVille in the flesh

Who needs online games when you can create a farm in real life for free!? Okay so I don't have cows, sheep or other farm animals, or any animals (except fish), but I am getting stuck into my home grown veggie garden! And I definitely feel better for it too. Time spent outdoors in my own garden is a weekly aspiration for me.

Yesterday I managed to fit in a few hours working away in our garden. I had many plans like weeding the patio, mulching a few garden beds and planting succulents along our fence-line but got carried away with the tomatoes instead... Many months ago fifteen little tomato plants sprang up from the soil surrounding a rosemary cutting we were given. At first I thought they were weeds but decided to let them grow out of curiosity. Soon enough they were taller than the rosemary and the shape of their leaves resembled tomatoes, baby tomatoes. So I re-potted them and planted a few next to a well-lit north-facing wall until they all started competing for root space and light. That was until yesterday when I dug out the old coriander patch and transplanted these gorgeous little fruit bearing vines to their new home. I've attached a picture here for you all to admire them as well ;)


For our small area of garden I'm quite proud of these plants and have high hopes for their productivity. Especially since the price of tomatoes is expected to soar in the retail market. But more than that it's such a great feeling watching these plants grow and give life and then completing the cycle by eating their produce. Yuuumm! :P

On a related note some of you will be interested to know that my composting efforts are still going strong. I've learned through trial and error that a 20L bucket isn't large enough to facilitate the heating up of the compost or to allow enough air flow, hence the trouble I had with rotting veggies. So now I've moved to the traditional approach: a heap. The heap is brilliant! No bad smells, easy to turn, and plenty of natural oxygen exchange. It's also adaptable and can expand to any size we want, which is especially useful after a big party or when raking up lots of fallen leaves. Another awesome thing about my compost, although I'm not sure if this is meant to happen, is that a few little signs of life are springing up from the soil beside it. I've got a feeling they're baby pumpkin plants... same deal as the tomatoes I guess, I'll just let them grow and see what results...

Reviewer, reviewee

It's an interesting process reviewing someone else's written work. This week I was asked to peer review a conference paper for the Australian Association of Environmental Education. This was a first for me, and I honestly enjoyed the process. I had to read and critique the twelve page article, then summarise my comments according to criteria in the Reviewer Assessment Form.

Without saying much about the article, because it's all an anonymous process, I will simply say that I particularly enjoyed seeing similarities to mistakes I've made in the past and sometimes still make. Things like active vs passive sentence structure, keeping sentences dynamic and trying not to overstate things or say things in a long-winded way. And defining the terms used to avoid ambiguity or confusion for the reader. I guess it's like being a teacher, you usually learn more through teaching and helping others improve their work than if you were the student getting those reviews. 

Oh, and for those interested I did finish that article I was working on two weeks ago. It's probably being reviewed right now :)

Writing cleanse

For the past few months I've been working towards submitting a research paper for publication, my first for this area of research, and it's come to the fore in the past two weeks... ie. It's almost due and I've got to get the darn thing finished! lol. I'm enjoying the process though. Writing is a great way of synthesising those thoughts that have been floating around in the spaces of my mind. I find writing cleansing. It's like that day you've been meaning to tidy up your office, bedroom or the shed, to finally put things in their right place and make homes for the newly collected tid-bits. It's also the day you've procrastinated about the most... :)

The running title of my paper is Tapestry of Relationships: The Millennium Kids Approach to Sustainability Facilitation. I guess you'll be able to read it once it's done (wink wink), but basically I'm looking at the dynamics of accompanying a school to achieve it's goals in education for sustainability. It's important here to note that education for sustainability as described by UNESCO in outlining the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and as agreed by other researchers in the field, should encompasses a range of environmental, economic and socio-cultural perspectives. These three areas need to go hand in hand to engender true sustainability.

It makes sense really. For example if a school decides to start a veggie garden, well that's great! They can integrate it into their teaching and learning across various curriculum areas. The kids can count seedlings that germinate or bugs that co-habit, write about different aspects, create artwork to decorate the garden, cook the food they produce, one year group can even learn about composting and then build a compost for the garden! Woohoo! :) But how much more significant would it be to the students', teachers' and perhaps indirectly the parents' holistic understanding and potential for personal behaviour change, if they were to incorporate indigenous ideas of food gardens? ...or perhaps they have a large greek or chinese community at the school? Why not invite those parents in so the kids can learn about different types of foods that are found in various cultures. Or perhaps the children could compare the price of different foods at their local store with the time and money it's taken them to grow their own foods. They could explore to some extent what factors a farmer needs to consider when deciding if it's cost effective for them to grow a certain food. But that's not all! The school could develop links with a rural or international school. They could learn about each other's cultures and even help the poorer school to develop a food garden of their own, by helping to fund-raise, etc. Or the school could link with a local community garden and thereby encourage children and parents to form their own personal links with the garden after school hours... There's really so much a school can do. But! Like the garden, it has to be organic... Students and teachers together should drive the project ideas because it needs to be relevant to their interests and concerns. The Principal can provide infrastructure, encouragement or connections to support the process. Parents can get involved where they feel comfortable. What a lovely whole-school vision, eh?

I guess this all sounds like quite a lot of work, but in reality it's fairly simple as long as the process is organic and allowed to grow in it's own time and direction. The key is helping to add the right amount of encouragement, guidance, professional support, curriculum links, self-assessment tools, clear links to different educational providers and resources along the way. That's where an unbiased external facilitator can work really well. They can help the school keep pushing the envelope, not to become satisfied with ticking boxes (eg. veggie garden = done.). They can provide perspective and simply be there with the tools or resources or unbiased listening ear as needed.

In fact, it's very much about capacity building. Sound familiar to some of you? Well yes, it's very similar to the approach underpinning the world-wide Baha'i community's efforts towards community building in every neighbourhood and locality. It's about tapping into and building every individual's capacity for contributing to the betterment of society, including caring for our environment, valuing the culture and beliefs of all people, and working to minimise extremes of wealth and poverty. This whole sustainability thing has a lot to offer, don't you think?

Hmmm... okay that's enough of my reflections for the day. Now I want to share a silly article I happened across this morning that made me laugh. It's about one clear day when a cuttlefish mistook a seahorse for a blade of grass and promptly began to lay it's eggs on the seahorse! Awkward... ;)
http://wildoceanblue.co.uk/2010/03/31/seahorse-versus_cuttlefish/

It's not easy being green...

Like many people, I have a list of 'green' behaviours that I'm working on, one of which has been to start composting veggie waste. So, about a month ago I started my first ever attempt at composting at home. Hooray!

However, it wasn't as easy as I'd hoped... From the beginning I started doing a few important things wrong. I went to a course on composting last year, how could this happen?! Well, I guess having never made the common mistakes myself those important lessons went right over my head.

Firstly, for about two weeks I made sure I was watering the compost every few days. For some reason I honestly thought compost had to be really wet! That is, until it became too sludgy to mix. I was a little confused for a while but after a few moments reflection on my second year microbiology unit the principles of aerobic and anaerobic microbial decomposition started coming back to me... hmmm... no, compost doesn't need to be soaking wet all the time, if it's too wet the whole thing will turn anoxic, whoops! lol. Okay, now I remember, compost actually needs to be dry enough and turned regularly to provide enough oxygen for the microorganisms to do their jobs properly, whilst also being damp enough for the water to be released as steam once the microorganisms start generating heat through all their hard work. I was on track now, or so I thought.

Pretty soon the veggie waste was getting near to the top of my little bin and too difficult to turn with the stick I'd been using so I decided to buy a special compost turning tool from Bunnings. It's a tool that literally winds down into the compost (just like a corkscrew only larger) and with one pull brings all that is down at the bottom up to the top. Vwallah! What a brilliant invention! In only one go I found that some of the waste from our last batch of carrot juice (made four weeks ago) was still in large clumps down at the bottom of the pile, still bright orange and not at all composted. Using a stick to mix it definitely hadn't been good enough. I was in business now! For sure my compost was going to get cranking from here!

And so i continued to be optimistic about my little compost bin until yesterday morning, when I opened the bathroom window for fresh air but all I got was fresh stench! Piieeew! What was wrong now? Compost isn't meant to smell bad... Uh oh... This time I went outside to find a few flies buzzing around the little bin and more bad smells. I was stumped. I'd been doing everything right; mixing thoroughly, not over watering, putting dirt and dried leaves (carbon) in between each layer of veggie waste (nitrogen). I'd even dug the bin 5cm into the ground like the guy at the course suggested in order to avoid bugs or vermin getting into it. Why was it smelly and what could I do to de-smell it? Hmmm... After a quick call to Dad, who's been composting for years, we figured it out. There still wasn't enough oxygen exchange. You see, in my stinginess I didn't buy a proper compost bin, with only two of us in the house and so little veggie waste we didn't need a large expensive compost bin. So instead I bought a tall 20L bucket with a secure lid and simply cut the bottom off.  $8.50 versus $100 plus, brilliant! Well, it could have been more brilliant if I'd thought to drill holes in the sides of the bin before I got started... Instead I've learnt the hard way and currently have rotting veggies instead of compost. lol.

But it's not over yet, I'm determined to succeed. The thought of reducing our household's contribution to methane, created from anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in rubbish dumps, and the added bonus of revitalising our sandy nutrient poor soil for zero dollars is more than enough incentive to keep at this composting thing. Then there's also that little matter of social norms, I can't just say I believe in living sustainably... 

So just like Kermit very poignantly said, "it's not easy being green", but I reckon it sure is worth it :)

Who really is the agent of change?

"Becoming acquainted with a people as an agent of a development organisation or a bearer of charity is profoundly different from working among friends for a common purpose. In the latter case, one's perception of reality is not shaped simply by academic theories that describe, from the outside, the needs and aspirations of the great masses of humanity." Farzam Arbab in 'The Lab, the Temple, and the Market'. 

I think this statement also applies to teachers and students, program providers and their audience (eg. young people), educators and the educated, we and they... This thinking is prescriptive and disempowering. In my opinion, challenging this thinking and the ego behind it is where sustainability education still needs to grow...

I attended a couple of meetings last week that got me thinking more about the importance of genuine relationships in the field of Education for Sustainability, in particular with young people (10-15 year olds,  my area of interest). By this I mean relationships that involve truly listening to the voices and opinions of young people, the very audience to whom one is reaching out to and trying to 'educate'. Relationships that can put aside any expectations or vested interest in the outcomes of a project, and instead be flexible to the design that emerges through consultation first among the young people themselves and second among all stakeholders. Relationships that nurture the capacity and speak to the potential of young people to rise and meet their challenge with integrity, careful thought and enthusiasm. 

This kind of approach, as referred to in the quote above, requires stepping back from the teacher / student model of education and moving towards the mentor / participant model. In this model the mentor can still have more experience, knowledge and insight in a particular subject area, but in order to empower the participants to become agents of their own education the mentor must allow them to own and drive the process. Young people that I've observed experience this in an authentic way are the same young people rising up as agents of change in their local community. 

So who really is the agent of change? Honestly, I say it's the young people themselves, not the teacher or even the mentor...

Over the half-way mark

I find myself staring at my computer screen often these days. In the past few months I've been entering into my computer all the survey and interview data that I collected late last year. Transcribing interviews is a tiring, long process but I have enjoyed hearing all the stories again and reflecting on the major themes emerging from them. Consequently I'm becoming excited about reaching a more creative point in the process, writing. That's where I get to weave together the rich tapestry of stories with the quantitative data collected from the surveys and make sense of it all. But before then I need to become closely acquainted with SPSS, the statistical package I'll be using to analyse my survey data. Unfortunately it won't be as simple as running an ANOVA and some t-tests.

My data is hierarchical in structure, with various levels that will influence each other unless the variance of each is properly accounted for. The levels in my data consist of three schools (A,B and C), each of which has three year groups (4,5, and 6), and each of those have two or three classes (x,y and sometimes z). You see, the children of one class might have quite different responses to the children of another class in the same year group because their teachers differ. The same goes for year level and school. So I need to use a multi-level approach to analysing my data in order to see clearly where differences lie, if there are any. Perhaps, as one might hope, the average attitude of children in each of the classes and year groups in a school that has adopted a whole-school integrated sustainability program will be very positive in response to a question such as "These environmental experiences are important to me". If so that's a great measure of how well the school is motivating and involving children in the school's sustainability initiatives, but I think it's fair to admit that such a finding might be unlikely. For example there may be one or two classes out of the six or so classes that were surveyed whose teachers just aren't that interested in environmental topics. As such one might expect that the average attitude of children in their class to the question stated above would be less than the average attitude of children in other classes (not to mention year groups). Of course, this is where the story will become more complex and this is where my qualitative data collected through interviews and open-answer questions in the surveys will come in handy :)

That's enough talk about data analysis for today I think. Instead it's time for me to go do some! ;)