Kelly Hedberg

This month, Sun Produce is pleased to highlight another outstanding member of our community – Kelly Hedberg. Kelly is the Outdoor Education Consultant at Rover Elementary in Tempe Elementary School District. In addition to her work on the school’s garden, she serves as a valuable resource to the teachers and parents of Rover, many of whom depend on the Co-op’s Farm Bag Program for access to fresh, locally grown produce.

Kelly spoke to the various aspects of her role at Rover:

I have been here for four years as the Outdoor Education Consultant / Garden Educator. My main role is to support teachers on how to incorporate outdoor education and the garden space into the existing curriculum. Support could be modeling a lesson for them, co-teaching, gathering supplies, funding, growing something in the garden – really whatever they need to come outside with students. Support is different for each person depending on what they’re teaching and how comfortable they are outdoors with students. It’s like educational coaching. The other part of the job is community development. How do we get parents in the garden related to food? How do we involve the community? How do we partner with groups like Sun Produce to bring value-added programming to the school?

On the benefits of outdoor education for the students of Rover, she had this to say:

The benefits of being in nature are well documented and include reduced stress, improved mood and mental/emotional well-being. The research is really clear that if kids have an emotional connection to nature in some way – it can be through food, science, an attachment to a specific space, maybe they love a certain animal or they have an affinity for a certain plant – that emotional connection results in future stewardship of the environment. If we want our environment to be healthy in the future, we have to create those connections for kids now.

Connecting science to nature is really easy. Nature is essentially the ultimate teacher of our science curriculum. It’s been really cool to see kids learn other subject matters in the garden space too – such as writing, social studies/maps, geometry, measurement, area/perimeter, liquid/solid measurement of produce – these are life skills. We shop at grocery stores where we have to weigh produce in pounds and ounces to determine a price. We read recipes that include measurements of ounces and pounds. Practicing those skills with kids just makes sense.

Outdoor education is a big equity issue for me because a lot of students don’t have access to green spaces. When they’re here at school it’s a real chance for them to grow and thrive outside. Schools don’t have a lot of funding, but what they are rich in is land. They have a ton of property so let’s use that property as a green space for our students that don’t have it at home. Expose all students to the benefits of nature as well as how to grow healthy food. It’s a huge opportunity that is currently underutilized.