Welcome. The project started from a placement at university. Looking at the situation of school gardens in Thunder Bay, Ontario. There are many pieces of the puzzle and eco-justice, social justice, food security and education all find a home at my Blog.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Community Service Learning experiences

Community Service Learning.
What is Community Service Learning? The Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning states that CSL is where,” Students, educators, and communities build partnerships to learn from each other while working together to strengthen individuals, communities, and society”

It is a form of pedagogy that involves students and community partners, usually connected to a course. Some universities have CSL programs, others do not. I was lucky to be at Lakehead University which offers CSL opportunities as part of its degree courses.

Part of the CSL experience is learning about the changing world of work. It is about learning about complexity in this world and how the world is constantly changing and shifting. There is no more certainty in the world of work anymore. Things change, people seem to have multiple careers and CSL is about learning how to adapt in this changing world.

So if CSL has been about learning about the changing world of work, how has this impacted my placement?  I began this blog and my placement whilst completing a social work degree at Lakehead University. I was lucky enough to begin work with Dr Connie Nelson and the Food Security Research Network at the university to learn about how school gardens can have a place in schools in the city. There is a growing movement of school gardens across North America and it has been exciting to see the impact of this in schools. Some gardens are teacher led, others are led by parents, all with the desire to include gardens as part of a wider curriculum on environmental, experiential and placed-based education.


The Food Security Research Network has been part of many projects in our city. Recently I wrote about poultry farming in Thunder Bay and how the students of Lakehead and the FSRN had begun a project to see how viable a poultry abattoir would be in the city. Other students have been working on community gardens or therapeutic gardens and youth. The FSRN has also produced a short film about local food initiatives in the area. For information about this and other projects, please see ,http://www.foodsecurityresearch.ca/

I started this project with a little knowledge from my previous courses on social work theory and have ended my degree learning about education, science, new theories, environmental studies and much more. I can’t extoll the wonders of community service learning enough. The biggest thing I can take from this experience I think is how little deeds can grow into bigger things, much like the pay it forward idea. Children benefit so much from gardening and learning about gardening and how wonderful that it might be included into curriculum of schools.

From my work over the last 6 months, I hope that there is the start of a network of school gardens in the city of Thunder Bay that can each support and help each other, whilst advocating for new school gardens in other schools. This network might be about a sharing of knowledge and support, which can sustain each other and new schools in this endeavour. 

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