Learning To Learn
Growing up in Staunton, I had heard of Project GROWS since its inception as a community-centered project founded to address food insecurity in our area. Although I had visited the farm on field trips before, eating radishes fresh from the field, it wasn’t until high school that I became enamored with the place.
In 2021, I was offered a mentorship placement at Project GROWS as a high school senior. Once a week for the next semester, I visited the farm—still quiet from the pandemic—to learn about permaculture and assist with farm tasks. In my time there, I learned invaluable lessons: not only did I learn how to seed peas and blanket a bed of crops in row cover, but how to stop, listen, and observe. During my mentorship, I reflected on life quietly, with my hands in the dirt. Surrounded by such tangible growth, watching plants survive the last frosts of winter and swiftly bloom into spring, I learned how to follow in their suit. There is something infectious about watching green things grow; they urge you to do the same.
After graduating from Staunton High School, I spent a year in Massachusetts, studying biology at Smith College. I soon began to miss Virginia’s verdant green forests and rolling hills, and I came home to Staunton on a gap year. Soon after, I returned to Project GROWS as a staff member. My time here has been integral to my career development, as well as my own personal growth.
Project GROWS is a place that cultivates plants as well as people. My time on the farm has solidified my love of sustainable agriculture, but more than that, it has helped me to discover a new vocation: outdoor education. When I first began working at Project GROWS, I was told that nature is the best teacher. Witnessing crowds of chattering students fall silent in amazement at nesting bluebirds, I soon understood that lesson myself.
Outdoor education is unique in its ability to enrapture every student, in one way or another. Over the past year, I’ve watched students gather potato beetles, go hunting for the perfect strawberry, and learn to identify swathes of native trees—each child inquisitive and content to be lost in their individual inquisition. These experiences have reaffirmed the importance of nature to me: not only does nature fulfill and enrich us, but it is the most engaging teacher.
Project GROWS works in tandem with the outdoors to teach students how to inquire. My time on the farm has delighted me, and it has changed my perception of what education should be. Watching students eagerly cook vegetables they have harvested together with their own hands, I realize that these are the lessons I yearn to teach: ones that foster connection and community.
Working at Project GROWS has highlighted the importance of these values in the everyday, and I move forward from my position holding them—and the Project GROWS farm— close. I’ve been inspired by my time here to pursue a Master of Education in addition to a Bachelor in Biology, in hopes of helping to foster the innate curiosity we feel when trekking outdoors.
