Georgia+Organics

//What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating?// Georgia Organics of Atlanta Georgia has developed this curriculum as one of its many programs connecting local, organic farms to local schools. //What is the overall mission of the organization?// Georgia Organics believes "food systems should be community-based, not commodity based" and that "a sustainable local food system is critical to the future of Georgia's health, environment, and economy", according to its website. [] //What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization?// According to its website, Georgia Organics seeks to educate organic growers and provide outreach programs to stimulate the demand for organic products and fuel market opportunities for local food. One of the ways it does this is through its farm to school program and organics curriculum. It is built as a guide for adult farmers or for teachers to develop as a program for students with the hope of educating students to support the organic market and economy or join it. //What does the curriculum module aim to teach? What are the learning outcomes supposed to be?// This curriculum teaches anything relevant to organic farming, from soil, soil management, plants, plant applications, composting, marketing, certification, and labeling. The learning outcomes are an understanding and fostered appreciation for organic food over conventional food, food safety and security, local economies, community building, food quality, and the environmental footprint of the local community. //Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes?// The curriculum covers a range of topics and provides a mixture of formats and media (objectives, summaries, powerpoints, lesson plans, hands-on activities, demonstrations, videos) for each topic. Each topic is thoroughly broken down into manageable sections. This will create a detailed but manageable and dynamic experience to achieve the learning goal. //Does the curriculum teach the kind of literacies advocated by EcoEd? What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes advocated by EcoEd?// EcoEd: Understanding of their own health and well-being as shaped by an array of both proximate and far-off causes. Curriculum: This curriculum starts with the fundamentals of organic gardening and farming and then addresses this literacy by discussing the need for organic practices in terms of one's own health and the environment. EcoEd: //Understanding of how their actions have an array of proximate and far off effects.// Curriculum: The division of each part of organic farming in this curriculum shows students how impacts on all the little things like soil type, aeration, and fertilizing make a huge impact on the food we eat. The unit on disease, pest, and chemical management show students how chemicals from neighboring farms, or even nonorganic farms miles away, can compromise organic farms, effectively showing the broad scale of cause and effect by one's actions on the food system. EcoEd: //Understanding of different scientific disciplines and medical specializations, aware that they rely on diverse methods, produce many types of knowledge, and are ever evolving-- science as a crucial but far from straightforward social resource.// Curriculum: This curriculum shows students organic farming as an alternative agricultural method that moves away from traditional science and medicinal procedures within farming, calling them to question the scientific procedures affecting their food and food choices. It shows students the old, new, and developing agricultural procedures developed by organic farmers and addresses how science can be used to test the health of our food. It also shows how changing food science and evolving it to suit our and the Earth's needs can cause social change and benefit communities on a local and global scale. EcoEd: //Understanding of government at various scales, from the local to transnational made up of diverse agencies and types of experts, which rely on diverse decision-making processes.// Curriculum: A huge part of organic farming is the struggle to maintain a strong local and global relationship to the population. This organics curriculum covers both how to boost the market and appreciation for organic food locally, and organic growers' struggle to be recognized by various government agencies, groups, and powers for legal protection, policy, and certification. EcoEd: //Understanding of potential for change, alternative ways of doing things and organizing society.// Curriculum: This curriculum is built on the premise of changing the food system to benefit our bodies, communities, and the Earth. It emphasizes organic farming as a beneficial alternative to mass-production agricultural practices. Students will learn how organic farming is different, how it works, and what changes need to be made and why, putting them at the heart of a social and economic movement. EcoEd: //Use empirical understanding of complex causation to identify specific points of intervention.// Curriculum: As mentioned previously, this curriculum breaks down organic farming into its various, tiny parts so the student may see the long chain of cause and effect and the vast impact small changes can make. Students learn how interfering at different points change the health of the plant, our food, and ourselves, and how organic practices interfere with natural ecological processes to produce food for people. EcoEd: //Recognize the multitude of factors influencing what they are told about environmental problems, including vested interests, disciplinary bias and blindness, and the sheer limits of knowledge.// Curriculum: Students are taken on a video tour of a different organic farm at the beginning of each section. This gives them a view of the multiple motives, interests, and practices within organic farming. This gives them a sense of how people's different perspectives and sources of knowledge change their decisions, give them bias, and influence our own actions. At the same time students learn of the rules and restrictions of those against organic farming that have changed what farmers need to do to practice organic. This gives them an inside view on the conflicting motives, bias, and the manipulation used by large agricultural corporations, and the many sides to environmental problems faced by U.S. agriculture. EcoEd: //Recognize and productively deal with diverse perspectives, avoiding the paralysis often produced by insistence on "balance" and "consensus" leveraging heterogeneous collectivity and epistemological pluralism.// Curriculum: Organic farming is framed by this curriculum as something that must be fought for against the norm. Students learn about the many perspectives of different farmers, organic and not, and actively fight against the societal norm of big agriculture by learning and practicing organic farming. EcoEd: //Creative info-seeking practices, animated analytic capabilities, and a capacity to narrate complex chains of events.// Curriculum: As a farming curriculum, there are many demonstrations and hands-on activities that ask students to look at the change their actions are having on their plants, fostering inquiry and insight through kinematic experience. They are then asked throughout the curriculum to identify the many actions and their effects to the plants, to farming on a larger scale, and on the environment. EcoEd: //Understanding of the challenges and value of deliberation and cooperative action.// Curriculum: This curriculum puts emphasis on organic farming not just as an agricultural practice but a social and community-based movement. By showing students various farms, their practices, and the changes they've made students see the effect of a broad network of communities that work together to accomplish something for their own good and the greater good.