Garden and Environment Educator

Garden And Environment Educator

Founded in Baltimore in 1985, Living Classrooms Foundation is a Baltimore – Washington, DC nonprofit that disrupts the cycle of poverty and helps our community become safer, stronger, and healthier by building skills for life. Living Classrooms inspires children, youth, and adults to achieve their potential through hands-on education, workforce development, health and wellness, and violence prevention programming. Living Classrooms has developed a distinctive competency in experiential learning – learning by direct experience – or what we call "learning by doing."

We utilize our environmental campuses, athletic fields, community centers, and historic ships as "living classrooms." We work with one child, one teen, one adult, and one family at a time to identify existing barriers towards success and provide resources and opportunities to help each person reach their full potential, thus supporting stronger family units and more resilient communities.

Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students (BUGS) is an after-school and summer environmental education enrichment program serving students in 6th-8th grades at The Crossroads School, both Living Classrooms Foundation programs. This program is designed to help get Crossroads students outside for educational and recreational programming to strengthen their environmental literacy. BUGS is looking for enthusiastic individuals who can be a role model for urban youth, and who care about the environment.

The mission of the BUGS Program is to provide purposeful, nature-based education to youth in their local environment, encouraging them to understand, respect, connect to, and enjoy the natural world around them.

As part of the Living Classrooms Foundation, BUGS students are "Learning by Doing", and using the manmade, natural, and maritime environments as "living classrooms." BUGS provides students with meaningful opportunities to apply academic and social skills and allows time and space for students to grow as individuals and as a community influenced by the world around them.

The Garden and Environment Educator will teach about best growing and cultivation practices; innovative garden and habitat building practices; benefits and sustainability of various crops, other plants, agricultural resources, and food sources; plants that are culturally relevant to our students and families; food and agriculture justice; land and water environments in regard to agriculture and human interactions with them; agricultural and gardening practices that affect the health of the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding habitats;

how to protect and restore native habitats in an urban setting; climate change and climate resilience in regards to food sources and habitats; and help students develop plans to implement gardening-based action projects, conservation activities, or stewardship projects that benefit the health and well-being of people, plants and animals, and the surrounding environment.

This position follows a typical Monday-Friday work week but requires occasional weekend work. This position reports to the BUGS Program Director.

General responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:

• This program requires all staff to participate in the BUGS Annual Student-Run Farmer's Market, which is always held on a Saturday.
• Maintain garden beds in the greenhouse and outside raised beds.
• Maintain any indoor or classroom growing spaces, including worm bins and aquaponics tanks. Daily and seasonal care and maintenance of program growing facilities including the greenhouse, vegetable and herb gardens, pollinator and flower gardens, non-traditional growing and garden spaces, and compost bins.
• Collaborate with students to create a year-round growing plan for the vegetable gardens and the greenhouse, accounting for student preference, cooking class, food pantry staples, plants that represent different cultures and growing regions, plants to be used for lessons or experiments, and plans that experiment with new plants or growing techniques.
• Partner with other BUGS educators to create collaborative lesson plans.
• Plan and execute general environmental education…