Research & Service - 1st Semester 2009
Farms-to-Barnes
Instructor: Mark Cline Lucey
So far, this has been my favorite R&S class that I have taught at Vermont Commons, by far! Thirteen students and I have been working with the Burlington School Food Project, Vermont's largest farm to school program. This program encompasses the entire Burlington School District but we have been working specifically with the new Sustainability Academy at Barnes Elementary School. It is widely recognized as a model program for the rest of the state and country, and its mission is to connect students and their families with whole, fresh, and local foods to improve the health of the community. We have met and worked with Bobby Young, the Farms 2 School Coordinator, but we will also be meeting and providing service to the multiple community partners: Burlington School District, Shelburne Farms' Sustainable Schools Project, Friends of Burlington Gardens and the Healthy City Youth Initiative, City Market/Onion River Co-op and Vermont Food Education Every Day (VT FEED).
The students have been getting out into the community twice a week, harvesting carrots and cabbages at the Intervale, helping to make banners or do some heavy lifting for the Burlington School Food Project, and hanging out with the 2nd and 3rd grade students at the Sustainability Academy, talking to them about their yummy lunches. The other two days each week we have researched and discussed questions of childhood obesity, school lunches, and the American food system in general. And we have a lot of ideas for projects and services we'd like to provide during the remainder of the semester! This theme of local food and health fits so perfectly with our Common Text and with VCS' commitment to ecological stewardship and community engagement. And the students and I are having lots of fun in the process!
Feeding our Neighbors
Instructor: Adriana Comtois and Allison Fayle
The Feeding our Neighbors Research and Service class is doing work with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf in Burlington. We help them with a variety of tasks, ranging from cleaning the parking lot and windows to stocking the shelves and packaging butter, flour and coffee. Every Monday and Wednesday we check in with Vesna Juric-Orlic, the volunteer coordinator, and Matt, the food shelf coordinator, to get instructions on the projects of the day. They are very thankful for our work and happy to see the students' strong work ethic and positive attitudes. Next week, we will be working with Chef Brian and Chef Jean at the food shelf to cook a big batch of butternut squash soup for donation. It is our way of celebrating Fall and sharing the harvest with the people who need it the most. We have met many other volunteers who work alongside us and they are there just because they want to be productive and help people who aren't able to feed themselves.
The students also helped sell tickets and publicize the VCS Homecoming Dance. We collected 2 food items per ticket sold and at the end we had 180 pounds of food to donate to the food shelf. A big "thank you" to the Select Board for helping us with our food drive! Also, we are planning a Hike for Hunger in collaboration with the Campaign to End Childhood Hunger this coming Saturday at Mount Philo and a school wide Green/ Gray competition in November. We are hoping to gather enough food so that food-insecure families can enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday as much as the rest of us.
On the days that we don't go to the food shelf, we discuss the food insecurity issues that Vermonters deal with everyday, our role in society and what can we do to help them. Also, we are learning about the nutritional value of foods that we consume everyday and the pros and cons of GMO crops. In the upcoming weeks we will be going to the Intervale to gather food for donation, and growing our knowledge of nutrition and how hunger affects our bodies.
Backyard Beetniks
Instructor: Ben Patrick
We have just finished our first quarter of backyard beetnikiing! We have picked hundred of tomatilloes, carrots, and beets, wrote over two hundred poems and learned a lot about our local farm community. Please read our poems, and look at the pictures on our Backyard Beetnik website.
Prison R&S
Instructor: Chance Cardamone Knewstub
What is this Research and Service class about? We strive to form an understanding of why the incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up radically in the last 30 years. We try to tease out the complex factors influencing prison policy in the US, including race, economics, shifting cultural moods, perceptions of morality and personality responsibility, etc.
At the same time we examine local initiatives that attempt to respond to some of these thorny problems with progressive, evidenced-based, solutions. By working with Northern Lights (see below) we learn how programs that address the difficult transition from prison to society can reduce recidivism; perhaps the most effective strategy for slowing the ever-increasing rates of mass incarceration.
Lex Jackson, Ali Hanson, Cat Silverstein wrote up our Prison R&S visit to Northern Lights:
Northern Lights, in Burlington, Vermont is a transitional housing option for newly paroled women, looking for structure and guidance. In order to stay at Northern Lights one must apply, and then successfully comply with all of the requirements of the program (these vary but can include attending AA meetings, counseling, earning academic credits, job training, etc). Housing is offered for up to ten women for up to one year, by the end of ones stay the goal is to have created a healthy, productive citizen ready to truly re-enter society.
In visiting Northern Lights, our hope was to receive first-person information about the lives of those who have been incarcerated. While we have had the opportunity to study prison issues through documentary films, readings, and radio program, we really wanted to be hear directly from people who have experienced these issues. The Northern Lights residents we met with were more than helpful in answering any questions we had, and more than happy to share their personal experiences. We all felt honored that they were willing to discuss what was clearly very hard for them. This experience was truly moving.
Their insight helped me better understand the experience of incarceration, and what life is like after. Seeing their side of the story was extremely valuable. Something, which still stays with me, was when Julian asked Stephanie (25 year old Northern Lights resident) what the hardest part of being out of jail was. Stephanie's response was truly heart-wrenching, she said her biggest challenge was not being able to approach people, knowing they would see her first as a felon, and only second (if at all) as a human being.
Allie Reed, Joe Congdon, Oban Galbraith report "Numbers to Ponder" from the Prison R&S class:
(Caveat: We recognize that all stats have the potential to be controversial and/or misleading. We have attempted to look at stats from a variety of sources and to be skeptical of all the #'s we find. The majority of the stats we found were contradicted by other sources with different underlying biases. Each stat above was repeated by multiple sources, yet we recognize that the reader could probably find very different numberss than the one presented here.)
Fact 1: Number of people in prison in the US:
- 1970: 200,000 (approx)
- Present: 2.4 million
Fact 2: A new prison is completed approximately every 15 days.
Fact 3: 2/3 of prisoners will go back to prison after release. Half of them for parole violations.
Fact 4: The average cost to imprison someone for one year is $29,000. The national average cost for one year of community college in $1500. (High quality education is one of the most effective forms of crime prevention).
Fact 5: The US holds 25% of the world's prisoners. (as reported by official government sources)
Fact 6: 35% of the prison population is white, 40% of the prison population is black, 22% of the prison population is latino, and the remaining 3% is another race or 2 or more races. In the entire US population, 74% of the population is white, 13.5% of the population is black, and 15% of the population is latino.
Fact 7: 13% of black males in the US are ineligible to vote because of felony convictions.