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by Larry Dome, Evan Green, Shannon Raider Ginsberg, Sarah Tracy-Wanck, and Joel Tolman
This blog post was originally written as part of a potential book project on urban farming and STEM learning, but never published. In 2024, it was brought back to life and published at teachcity.org with support from a USDA NIFA grant. Explore the full toolkit on urban farming and math learning here.
Eugenio Garcia, a freshman at Common Ground High School, stands in the cold with the 23 other members of his pre-algebra class, waiting to begin the hands-on work for which the class has been preparing over the last week. It is 8am on October 29th and uncharacteristically cold. So cold, in fact, that the ground into which the students are primed to plant garlic cloves for the spring crop is frozen. Off to the side, popped garlic bulbs are divided into 4 baskets -- one for each team of students.
This garlic planting day is the culmination of a week-long project, generated from the real crop planning questions of Common Ground’s urban farm. Students have spent the last few days calculating the number of heads of garlic that they will need to plant, and the area of garden bed required, in order to ensure the yield needed for Common Ground’s school lunch, mobile farm market, and on-site farmstand. Garlic bulbs from last year were weighed and averaged in an attempt to identify the number of pounds of garlic needed to plant two 100-foot long beds with three rows of garlic each, and six inches of space between cloves. That math took about two days, after which staff picked up that poundage of garlic from our local garlic and honey farmer and prepared for the days outside.
From the moment student teams begin to plant, Eugenio takes to the work with notable capability and vision, leading his team of students through the complicated procedure of preparing the garden bed (raking, shoveling the path, mixing in compost, smoothing it flat), staking out strings for the garlic rows at measured distances apart, and setting up the assembly line of tasks from measuring spacing for cloves, placing them in (pointy side up!), fertilizing, and covering with soil. This quiet student clearly has a capacity for problem-solving, taking initiative, and understanding how to apply his classroom math skills to the real world situation in front of him.
Two months later, Eugenio and his classmate Yasdira are speaking to nearly every one of Common Ground’s 180 students from a video they recorded a few days prior. Neither has put together a presentation for an audience this big, nor has either one of them been expected to be an authority in math, a subject in which both have struggled. But Eugenio and Yasdira recognize that the work they have taken on in their pre-algebra class is significant and worthy of sharing, so they take the plunge. They share the results of the garlic project and discuss the math concepts involved, as well as the skills in communication and collaboration required to solve a problem with a team. A few days later, they make a similar presentation at a family awards banquet.
Fast-forward a year to a Saturday in late October. Eugenio, now a sophomore, is standing in the strong stance required to operate a double bevel sliding compound miter saw. He is poised to cut 2x10 boards for a hexagonal garden bed whose interior angles he calculated in order to determine the number of degrees at which to set the saw. Eugenio has quickly become the most competent, consistent, and attentive student to operate the saw, according to his fellow crew members.
Later in the fall of his sophomore year, Eugenio is standing at the whiteboard in Common Ground’s farmhouse classroom. Once again, Eugenio is working alongside several of his peers, along with Sarah Tracy-Wanck (TW), Common Ground’s Environmental Leadership Coordinator and the leader of our paid school garden resource center crew. There is a diagram of a raised garden bed on the board, along with some pretty complex math. TW has been texting back and forth with another Common Ground staff member, Camille Seaberry, to track down a formula that will help the team calculate the length of an arc of a circle that will complete part of a outdoor classroom the crew is helping to install at the new Elm City Montessori School. While Eugenio and the rest of the crew regularly use arithmetic and geometry when cutting hexagonal beds, and basic algebra when pricing out materials, in this case garden bed construction requires a little pre-calculus.
Eugenio continues to work on the School Garden Resource Crew through his entire sophomore year, applying math skills every single day of work. Math is just one of the domains in which Eugenio must call on to do this job; as a native Spanish speaker, he regularly steps up to communicate with Spanish-speaking home daycare providers for whom he and his crew are building garden beds. Because he demonstrates such capacity for the problem-solving required for this job, Eugenio finds himself standing before Common Ground’s entire student body once again -- this time, winning an award for the sense of wonder he’s displayed through this paid job.
Fast forward several more months. On a mid-July day the summer after his sophomore year, Eugenio and six other Common Ground students stand in the driveway off New Haven’s West Park Avenue, talking with a homeowner, a Yale student intern, and staff from the New Haven Urban Resources Initiative. Eugenio explains the calculations that led him and his team members to determine that, in a half inch storm event, the homeowner can expect her new 55-gallon rain barrel -- which Eugenio’s team helped to install -- to fill up 11 times. He talks quietly, and makes his points quickly -- but he seems sure of what he’s sharing.
The work Eugenio and his fellow Common Ground students are doing to strengthen and feed their city is leaving its mark. Pictures of these students -- blown up ten feet tall and affixed to a highway underpass that was previously the site of consistent illegal dumping -- now look down on a neighborhood park, an “urban oasis” that they helped to create.
Figure: Eugenio Garcia planting garlic in Common Ground’s production garden, working with Sarah Tracy-Wanck to calculate the length of a circle’s arc for a school garden project, standing next to hexagonal raised beds he helped to install, receiving a school-wide award for wonder, presenting calculations on stormwater runoff, and looking down from a photo on an overpass above a park he helped to restore.
The line that connects these points is not a straight one. There are a lot of unexpected dips, as well as recoveries, in the curve that describes Eugenio’s path as a math student and an emerging community leader. Eugenio explains that he couldn’t always see the next step on his path -- “but it was always interesting, so I stuck with it.”
Still, the “best fit” line that connects these experiences may describe something significant. Eugenio is doing math that is rooted in a place and a physical experience; problems ask him and his peers to build bridges between abstract mathematical concepts and these places and lived experiences. Each of these experiences involves math with a purpose, as well. Eugenio and his peers are solving problems that don’t just just resemble or simulate reality; they are solving actual problems that need answers. In some cases, this value is great enough that students are being paid to take on mathematical work. In every case, math is a social activity; young people and adults (math teachers, families, partner organizations, community members) are working together to explore problems and find answers. Math is also performative work -- there is a real audience for their answers, and both their struggles and their solutions are worth lifting up into public view.
At the same time, Eugenio and his peers are using math in contexts that are intentionally designed to practice extra-mathematical concepts and skills -- including communication, fine motor activity, planning, and problem-solving. As a result, the learning and leadership work that students are taking on is simultaneously more rigorous, more authentic, and more supportive than traditional mathematics instruction. The rigor and authenticity of Eugenio’s work is likely clear on the surface; students are being challenged to solve complex problems and mobilize multiple skills and concepts from different domains simultaneously. Supportiveness is built in through several common features of these mathematical learning experiences. Students who may struggle in mathematics have the opportunity to apply skills and conceptual understanding from other areas in which they excel. They are invited into contexts different from the ones where they have previously struggled with mathematics, potentially giving them a fresh start. These contexts encourage students to use math to solve tangible problems, rather than remaining at an entirely abstract level. As they build these mathematical skills, students are surrounded by a broader range of teachers -- fellow students, farmers, community members, and others -- whose approaches can complement those of their math teachers. And, when students succeed in taking on challenging work that serves a public purpose, they are celebrated and lifted up as valuable, contributing members of their communities.
As an arc of experiences, Eugenio’s math learning starts close to home -- in this case, on Common Ground’s urban farm, directly outside the door of his math classroom. Over time, math experiences build from the farm and students’ experiences out into the community -- tackling problems related to stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflows, for instance. At Common Ground, we continue to strive, as well, to create bridges between farm-based math experiences and the mathematical context of Eugenio’s home and neighborhood -- for instance, by inviting students’ families to see students’ presentations of mathematical progress, and by asking students to identify how the mathematical concepts they’re learning apply to their experiences as consumers and emerging entrepreneurs. At its best -- and we are certainly not always achieving this goal -- the boundary between the math classroom and the outside world is permeable, and students are climbing a ladder of connected, increasingly complex math and leadership experiences.
About the Authors: This practice toolkit was originally written as part of a potential book project on urban farming and STEM learning, but never published. In 2024, it was brought back to life and published at teachcity.org with support from a USDA NIFA grant. At the time this practice toolkit was written, Larry Dome and Evan Green were math teachers at Common Ground. They co-taught Common Ground’s LEAP course, and also teach Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 courses that integrate farm-based problems and projects. Shannon Raider Ginsberg was Common Ground’s Farm Manager at the time, and had worked for more than 4 years to grow the production and educational impact of Common Ground’s farm. Sarah Tracy-Wanck was Environmental Leadership Coordinator, and is responsible for facilitating farm-school connections, both during school and through after-school opportunities. Joel Tolman, Director of Impact & Engagement, is responsible for efforts to evaluate and grow Common Ground’s impact, including efforts to share and partner with other schools.