Living Food Towers Spark Youth and Community Wellness

URBAN GEMS | A PARTNERSHIP FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Deanna L. Wilkinson, Ph.D. Email: Wilkinson.110@osu.edu

12.05.2015

Abstract Urban G.E.M.S. (Gardening Entrepreneurs Motivating Sustainability) is a multi-faceted 21st Century positive youth development initiative designed reduce high school dropout by enriching the science, health, personal and career development curricula at two community sites that serve youth and families placed at high risk. The measurable goals and objectives of Urban GEMS are to increase student engagement through project-based learning and improve health related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors among the youth participating in our program. Urban GEMS aims to increase the youth's attendance, engagement, and fresh fruit and vegetable consumption by 50% during the program. The Urban GEMS team will create a sustainable model that propels engaged youth as leaders in developing and applying 21st century skills to address local community needs as they work side-by-side with caring adults inspired by their passion for young people.

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Educational Failure is societal problem that must be solved

Research confirms the widely held notion that the prevalence of poverty, poor health, low educational attainment, and exceedingly high unemployment plague disadvantaged urban minority communities disproportionately compared to their white, Hispanic and Asian counterparts. In fact, this vicious cycle is further evidenced in the generational poverty, current health disparities, highest rates of academic underachievement, and existence of eroded, failing communities struggling to be sustainable. Poverty begets poor health, and both are linked, or can be attributed to, under education.

In Ohio, the latest figures for the 4-year graduation rate were 59% among African Americans compared to 85% of Whites (Stetser, & Stillwell, 2014).1 Youth attending urban public schools systems and African American males are at even greater risk of educational dropout (Lewis & Moore, 2008; Miller, Wilkinson, Cummings, & Moore, 2014; Rumbruger & Rotermund, 2012). “Dropouts are much more likely than their peers who graduate to be unemployed, living in poverty, receiving public assistance, in prison, on death row, unhealthy, divorced, and single parents with children who drop out from high school themselves.” (Bridgeland, Dilulio, & Morison, 2006, p. 2). To this end, there is great public savings, when high school students graduate, move on to gainful employment and are able to contribute economically to their communities (Levine, Belfield, Muenning, & Rouse, 2007 ).

New solutions needed to reduce High School Dropout Dropout recovery and prevention is a worthwhile investment that pays dividends when it is successful. Young people growing up in economically disadvantaged urban communities in which the local public schools are poorly performing need alternative

educational opportunities in order to have a chance at future success.

Nothing torpedoes an economic future like dropping out of high school. Every 26 seconds someone drops out of high school in America. The dropout crisis costs our society an estimated $1.8 billion every year (Levin & Rouse, 2012).

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Research conducted by the Ohio Educational Resource Center for the Ohio Department of Education assessed the status of the Race to the Top initiative to reduce High School Dropout across the state of Ohio. As shown in Figure 3, urban districts across the state struggle with poor performance in a significant number of public schools. Poor performing schools are located in geographic high poverty areas within Ohio cities.

Source: Hawley et al. (2013)

When it comes to education neighborhoods really do matter. A 2013 Report produced by the Kirwan Institute on Race and Ethnicity examined the role that neighborhood poverty plays in educational achievement or challenges. The map below displays the degree to which African Americans live in areas with concentrated poverty. Those same neighborhoods serve schools such as South, East, Linden-McKinley High School and AUS.

According to Doll, J. J., Eslami, Z., & Walters, L. (2013), students drop out of high school for a variety of reasons including school-related reasons, family-related reasons, and employment-related reasons. There are 20 factors classified as pushes, pulls, and fails that are common causes of high school dropout -48.7% were pushed out, 36.9% were pulled out, and 14.4% failed out (Doll, Eslami, & Walters, 2013). Supporting oneself or a family is a strong pull factor.

Hunger and economic insecurity are common experiences among youth at high risk for dropping out of high school. We know that more than 15.3 million U.S. children live in households with food insecurity. One in four African American children live in food insecure households compared to 1 in 10 white children. Research conducted by The Ohio State University has shown that in certain zip codes in Columbus, Ohio access to fresh and healthy food is severely limited. According to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank more 524,000 people received emergency food assistance in 2014.

Source: http://www.columbusunderground.com/food-deserts-in-columbus

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The linkage between food insecurity and school failure at a neighborhood level is well documented. Addressing both the educational and nutritional (basic needs) of young people growing up in economically challenged environments requires new thinking.

Alternative schools and innovative after-school programs can provide nurturing environments with flexible programming that allow student placed at risk to become engaged in positive youth development activities that promote resilience and recovery. Dropout recovery is not easy. Though students may enroll in a new school or program with hopes of doing better many have been disengaged from learning and structured activities for several months or years. The best chances of producing successful students come when schools offer a safe and respectful climate, dynamic and interesting courses, engaged teachers and staff, innovative programs, and relevant extra-curricular activities. All of these things help to create a learning community focused on positive outcomes for students and productive involvement of the larger community. This essay provides an overview of the Urban GEMS program. Urban GEMS uses state-of-art Aeroponic food production to enrich science, math, history, health, and language arts curriculum. Project-based learning rather than focusing on high stakes testing will produce well-prepared high school graduates who are poised to pursue college, career, or service.

Traditional Middle and High Schools are Failing Students and the Community

The high school completion rate in Columbus, Ohio varies by neighborhood and the local public high school that serves that community. In the urban core, the three main high schools –South High School, East High School and Linden McKinley STEM academy all received a grade of F on the state school report cards. Why are these schools failing? What can be done to

make sure that educational equality means that children have access to quality schools in all communities? The state report card presented below for South and East High Schools shows that improvements are needed. What these figures do not show is the number of students who leave school without returning but do not get counted in the graduation rate percentages.

Source: http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/School-Report.aspx?SchoolIRN=021030

Source: http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/School-Report.aspx?SchoolIRN=021030

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Studies suggest that high school dropout is often a slow gradual process in which a young person disengages, experiences failure or other educational hardships, or simply stops attending school. The middle school years are critical. Miller, Wilkinson, Cummings, and Moore (2014) found that most high school drop outs had been drifting away from education for years prior to leaving school. The feeder middle schools for South, East, and Linden McKinley STEM High School also received poor or failing state report card grades in 2013-2014.

Tackling educational inequality takes a community effort. Community schools or public charter schools have proliferated to attempt to improve the situation. Community schools, in theory, have the flexibility and structure to innovate while also being held to State standards of quality and accountability. Dropout recovery charter schools provide an alternative for those at the highest risk for educational failure and dropout. One such innovative solution is being developed and tested at The Academy for Urban Scholars in Columbus, Ohio.

CYFAR funded Urban GEMS program Community. Urban GEMS aims to employ the multi-level approach aligned with the U.S.D.A. Community Youth and Families At Risk (CYFAR) Sustainable Communities Program. Our primary target audience is our youth participants. As they are armed with nutrition and health wellness principles, they will be encouraged to share new found concepts with friends, family and the broader community. Also, AUS students will broaden their influence and reach through channels well established by The African American Male Wellness Walk Initiative throughout Ohio. AUS students are engaged every year in service learning project related to the AAMWWI providing opportunities for youth to have healthy interactions with proactive, conscientious African American men and others in a range of activities throughout the calendar year leading up the annual 5K WALK hosted in 8 cities. Every year students volunteer/participate

with AAMWI in various capacities. With thousands of participants annually, The AAMWWI provides a big stage for demonstrating leadership and competence. Urban GEMS participants will be armed with nutrition, health/wellness information, trained as “Ambassadors” of good health, and provided platforms to engage in youth-to-youth targeted marketing in an effort to inspire more young people to be interested, and take charge of, their health. Technology. Education. Urban Gardening informational content will be disseminated weekly participants via texting, social media, and email depending on accessibility to technology. Aeroponic Tower Garden representatives, OSU Extension staff, 4-H Youth Development Educator, and Snap-Ed Youth Nutrition Program Assistant will provide learning guidance as students explore urban gardening and entrepreneurship. Through GEMS they will learn word and number processing software as they are included in the research process as active learners. Communication. Participants will communicate via Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Vine videos, Instagram and other youth centered, popular social media platforms throughout the duration of program. RSS feeds, email, and text messages will serve a more “traditional” mode of communication to ensure all digitally plugged family and community stakeholders receive weekly updates. A quarterly e-magazine will also be circulated as students assume all responsibility to devise, draft, edit, publish, and distribute articles. Participants will attract and promote local partnerships and funders. By engaging local media outlets and politicians, we can showcase how the community is changing. Project Enhancement. Participants will have the opportunities to use mobile devices in new ways. Cameras, tablets, and phones will be used to document progress and share with others. Students will develop an Urban GEMS app to communicate with their peers, and share valuable data and insights with family and broader community. Data Collection. The advances of Smart phone and mobile Tablet technology allow modern day students to engage with technology while collect various forms of data. Pictures and videos will capture project displays, family/community taste tests, while note taking, instant data collection and storage, and most importantly analysis, and interpretation of the results.

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Sustainability. Urban GEMS will have a legacy beyond the yearly project activities as our students will be directly engaged in meaningful projects for community benefit. For example, the potential to create a small business around herb/leafy vegetable gardening using the Aeroponic Tower Garden® system is a real possibility. Students will be afforded the opportunity to take on this challenge as they are coached by caring professionals working in health and wellness, agriculture, marketing, graphic design, public health, and education fields. The lessons learned will be integrated as we create a model for engagement, growth, and success among a highly vulnerable population of students. In addition, we will farther institutionalize our efforts by maintaining and growing effective partners for the school. The volunteer base will grow as Urban GEMS matures making new opportunities probable. The collaborative structure, financial backing of a strong business partner and the involvement of several effective non-profit organizations are key factors in being optimistic about the sustainability of Urban GEMS. The innovative model targeting a highly vulnerable and extremely difficult to reach population of urban African American youth has great potential to attract additional funding resources in the future. GEMS workforce component was developed purposely to attract additional stakeholders interested in building a better prepared workforce for tomorrow, while reducing chronic urban, minority underemployment. We aim to build a culturally relevant positive youth development model worthy of replication to be scaled nationally in response to several issues typically acute to certain communities.

Our planned formative, process and impact evaluation will play a pivotal role in our school going forward for years to come. All aspects of our implementation plan will be carefully documented, pre- and multiple post-test measures will be collected to assess student progress, fidelity to our model, and efficacy of our efforts. Urban GEMS activities (outside-of-school learning experiences, investigations, interviews, civic engagement observations, internships etc.) will afford students opportunities to explore and connect culturally relevant issues to their families, communities, and to a larger extent society, with a deeper appreciation for health, wellness, and life.

Academy for Urban Scholars

The Academy for Urban Scholars Columbus is a brick and mortar Dropout and Recovery High School serving high school students aged 14 to 21. The AUS curriculum is designed to provide differentiated learning for every student. Each student is given a customized Individual Learning Plan. The administration and staff believe each student has the ability to learn; therefore they teach all students. AUS encourages students to become contributing citizens and lifelong learners, constantly search for effective programming, and are dedicated to maximizing students’ achievements and character development. AUS supports strong parental/community involvement, and promotes culturally relevant learning experiences. AUS looks forward to implementing the Urban GEMS program.

AUS signed on as community development site for Urban GEMS because they believe students will benefit tremendously from the exposure to urban aeroponic gardening and workforce readiness training offered through the Urban GEMS program. AUS is a critical partner in its full development into a model program. Urban GEMS complements the AUS mission to produce work and college ready, productive young people. We value the partnership with OSU faculty members and OSU extension professionals in this endeavor and beyond. AUS has already adopted urban gardening with traditional and aeroponic technologies on a small scale as one way of increasing student engagement and career exploration.

AUS is encouraged by the potential of the CYFAR SCP support to expand our pilot work into an entrepreneurship enterprise with collaborative

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structure for improving outcomes for our students through small business development.

Who are AUS students?

With Urban GEMS Project-Based Learning Engages Students in New Ways Getting engaged with Aeroponic food production within the High School setting is already sparking growth, interest in science and personal wellness, and teamwork. In just two months of initial exploration with the Tower Garden aeroponic system AUS students and teachers have become engaged in something remarkable. From the first day of working as a team to assemble the towers to first harvest celebration Urban GEMS is taking off.

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Young People Care about their Health, their Families, and their Communities

Urban GEMS will train middle and high school students in social justice activism around healthy food access in the urban core, improving nutritional knowledge and habits for wellness, and conserving natural resources for a sustainable food resource. The aeroponic system that underlies the Tower Garden was first developed by researchers at NASA See: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/aeroponic_plants.html. Tower Garden uses 5-10% of the water it takes to grow crops with traditional gardening methods. With grow lights installed it is possible to grow crops year round. Energy consumption from the lights is a longer term concern in the indoor classroom environment. AUS students will explore alternative options including solar panels and other ways of generating electricity as Urban GEMS grows from 2 Tower Gardens to 40! The other

test site for Urban GEMS is Reaching Higher Heights Community Care Center 4 Life, a local non-profit organization serving the Southside of Columbus. Youth at RHH4L have been engaged for two years in a summer community garden (outdoor) and for the past three months with the Tower Garden systems. RHH4L youth meet every Wednesday afterschool to learn about aeroponic food production, nutrition, positive youth development, and social justice advocacy. Adult mentors and volunteers join the youth in planting, maintaining, and harvesting the produce off the Tower Garden system. The group held a first successful Salad-in-a-Jar party in December with each child making up to 3 varieties of salads to take home for his or her family to enjoy. It was a fun and educational experience in trying new whole foods and food combinations to make tasty yet healthy meals.

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The summer, Saturday and afterschool programs offered by Reaching Higher Heights 4-Life aim to keep preteens and teens engaged in positive activities that help them find purpose and success in life. Urban GEMS provides a new avenue for promoting academic engagement and success while also teaching about healthy eating, sustainable agriculture, plant science, discovery and entrepreneurship. As the youth are responsible for producing food that is used twice weekly to feed hungry community members who come to the feeding program mission, they are learning important life lessons. Future plans for expanding the growing capacity will bring new opportunities for developing a business plan, marketing and selling produce, and engaging in a variety of ways with others in the local foods movement in Columbus Ohio and beyond.

AUS students and community youth will be independently learning to grow food in the Tower Garden. They will share experiences as the 5-year program progresses.

Conclusions The global economy is increasingly dependent on

high skill workers with significant declines in the demand for unskilled workers (e.g., high school dropouts). In 1971, male dropouts—who were employed full-time –earned nearly $32,087. In 2002, the same group earned $23,903, a decline of 35% (Barton, 2005). Since a living-wage income depends largely on an individual’s education level, dropping out of school almost ensures an individual of a continuous low-income earnings and low-economic mobility (Haskins, Isaacs, & Sawhill, 2008). It is critically important to intervene with at risk urban students to create opportunities to forge positive pathways to the skilled labor sector by addressing academic and non-academic barriers across multiple levels of the social ecology (Blankstien & Nogeuro, 2015; Haskins, Isaacs, & Sawhill, 2008). Young people placed at risk for low educational attainment, underemployment, and poverty related food insecurity can be engaged to tackle real community problems that affect their community as they learn academic and workforce skills that will better prepare them for productive futures. Urban minority students who are exposed to innovative technological solutions to food insecurity, unhealthy food consumption habits, community-based cooperative production, and entrepreneurship strategies will be more readily suited to not only explore sustainable agriculture options for the urban communities, but gain many 21st Century basic skills transferable applicable across many other industries.

The Urban GEMS program recognizes that by effectively engaging “urban” minority students in nutrition and health wellness education, they are inherently engaged in the type of active learning that precipitates high school graduation and productive adult lives. Urban youth need education for the purpose of liberating them and their families from the grip of poverty and limited opportunity. CYFAR SCP provides a mechanism for integrating 21st century global workforce needs with endemic community needs by empowering students through GEMS program activities, which not only provide academic enrichment experiences, but enable participants to be change agents that pioneer personal/community health wellness awareness.

Urban GEMS will be the first program in Ohio (and perhaps the United States) to combine high school

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dropout recovery; urban workforce development/entrepreneurship in food production through gardening; health/wellness through nutrition education; and youth development education. Urban GEMS has the potential to become a model for community change addressing multiple needs by harnessing the untapped potential of urban youth at risk. The CYFAR SCP national framework and knowledge network will support our team’s efforts with an infrastructure that will ensure successful development and implementation of our program. The program will be implemented at two community sites, both located in predominantly African American communities. Science, technology, math, accounting, business management, production, and marketing content will be more readily absorbed when program content and delivery integrates positive youth development strategies that are cultural relevant and delivered by well-trained facilitators. Initial planning for this program included AUS faculty and staff members, leadership of the African American Male Wellness Walk initiative, the National Center for Urban Solutions (NCUS) staff (workforce development firm that serves as the management company for AUS), partners in Ministries 4 Movement, several community members, OSU faculty, OSU extension team members in the areas of food production, nutrition education, and positive youth development, and several current AUS students.

References

Barton, P. E. (2005). One-third of a nation: Rising dropout rates and declining opportunities. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Services.

Blankstein, A.M. & Noguero, P. (Editors) (2015). Excellence through Equity: Five principles of courageous leadership guide achievement for every student. Thousand Oaks: Corwin, A Sage Company.

Bridgeland, J. M., Dilulio, J. J., Jr., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The silent epidemic: Perspectives of high school drop outs. Washington, DC: Civic Enterprises, LLC.

Bronx Green Machine. (2015). http://greenbronxmachine.org/

Columbus Underground. Food Desert Map. http://www.columbusunderground.com/food-deserts-in-columbus

Doll, J. J., Eslami, Z., & Walters, L. (2013). Understanding Why Students Drop Out of High School, According to Their Own Reports. SAGE Open, 3.

Haskins, R., Isaacs, J. B., & Sawhill, I. V. (2008). Getting ahead or losing ground: Economic mobility in America. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

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Kirwan Institute of Race and Ethnicity. (2013). 2013 Franklin County Children’s Report: Why Neighborhood Matter to Education. Columbus, Ohio.

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Levine, H. M., Belfield, C., Muenning, P., & Rouse, C. (2007). The public returns to public educational investments in African American males. New York, NY: Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Lewis, C. W., & Moore III, J. L. (2008). African American students in K-12 urban educational settings. Urban Education, 43, 123-126.

Miller, E., Wilkinson, D.L., Cummings, S., and Moore, J.L. III. Perspectives on Educational Attainment among Vulnerable African American Male Youth. In African American Males in PreK-12 schools: Informing Research, Practice, and Policy. p. 125-150. Edited by Moore, J.L. & Lewis, C. Boston: Emerald Publishing.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2015). Retrieved from: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/aeroponic_plants.html

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Ohio Department of Education. State Report Cards. Retrieved from: http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/School-Report.aspx?SchoolIRN=021030

Rumbruger, R. W., & Rotermund, S. (2012). The relationship between engagement and high school dropout. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), The handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 491_513). New York, NY: Springer.

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Tower Garden website: www.TowerGarden.com