Though it doesn’t look like a regular classroom, the Knowledge Garden is a teaching and learning space--a living classroom. Indeed, the TEA team believes that outdoor spaces like the Knowledge Garden offer many advantages and opportunities that regular classrooms cannot match. 

This post is excerpted from a Climate Action initiative that teachers at Chabot College proposed to the college. The Knowledge Garden serves as an inspiration for this proposal, and in fact it is inconceivable that this kind of project would ever have been imagined without the Knowledge Garden as a place in which to conduct it. 

The Climate Action Project (CAP) at Chabot College

Mission:

The Climate Action Project (CAP) at Chabot College is an ambitious new program that brings students, faculty and the wider community together to problem solve around the core concept of climate action.  CAP’s focus is on eco-sustainability, responding to the climate crisis, and supporting  sustainability of local cultures.

CAP understands that taking climate action implicates all academic disciplines and that every area of Chabot can bring important perspectives and insights to bear on issues such as: environmental racism and classism, climate change, food insecurity, local living economies, green building, and a wide range of other matters. 

• For students, CAP provides opportunities to deepen academic knowledge, connect to local culture, and develop leadership skills. CAP supports students in taking action to steward a more sustainable and equitable world. CAP provides  educational training, hands on experience through Action Learning, curricular resources, and culturally relevant education for students to become active leaders in their communities to address the compelling environmental and related cultural justice challenges we face.

• For faculty, CAP offers comprehensive professional development support for developing Action Learning opportunities of varying degrees of complexity and commitment. CAP also provides a forum for faculty from across the curriculum to share expertise about sustainability issues. 

• For the wider community, CAP serves as an arena for bringing together outside organizations and Chabot faculty and students. CAP also will nurture “local experts”--citizens who possess untapped knowledge about the environment and community--and invite them to share their knowledge with the Chabot community. CAP will provide opportunities for children from the community, who may live much of their lives in the “concrete jungle,” to engage with gardens and the natural world. 

Statement Of Need:

The issues that face us and that impact Mother Earth amount to an eco-battle for the very future of this planet. We believe that too often we--both students and faculty--are cut off from the natural rhythms of the planet, and that in order to repair our planet we need to engage with and contemplate the nature that surrounds us. CAP provides those opportunities and experiences. 

Communities of color and low-income communities are on the front lines of eco-battles, and are often most impacted by environmental injustices. Our program addresses the environmental injustices that directly impact students, their families and the wider community.

Simultaneously, any college’s academic disciplines, while they offer much in the way of technical and applicable knowledge, don’t always address the stark inequalities in systems of food, transportation, housing, energy and pollution that frontline communities face. Nor do academic disciplines always tailor their content to address local issues. CAP provides support for faculty to tailor their teaching to meet these challenges. 

Project Parameters:

CAP is designed to develop Chabot College into a thriving regional hub for climate action, urban sustainability studies, and ecological change practice through a linked array of projects and opportunities:

• CAP will be situated in the Knowledge Garden which provides a living classroom for education in ecological stewardship, urban agriculture, leadership for social change, and community based food security. Our program believes in the efficacy of “learning through doing” and will thus provide students and faculty with empowering learning projects that center students as agents of leadership and social change through environmental assessment and action on campus and in the community.

• CAP will introduce students to relevant careers that position them to continue to work on sustainability issues once they leave Chabot. In addition CAP will leverage its many connections with the wider community to create internship opportunities at prominent environmental and social justice organizations around the Bay Area while students matriculate at Chabot.

• Working with Chabot faculty and administration, CAP will develop a “Climate Academy” that offers students an interrelated selection of courses and experiences. Students who complete the academy can earn certificates with a Social Activism or Environmental Science focus. 

• The CAP team--peer advocates, faculty advisors, and staff--will also engage in “the work of the college.” This can include: developing and tending to the garden, working with student groups like RAGE to address campus issues such as recycling and plastic mitigation, and acting as stewards of the Sustainability Center when it comes on line.

• CAP will offer professional development support to Chabot faculty from across the curriculum as they create outdoor learning opportunities

• The CAP team, working with stakeholders from across the campus, and from the wider community, will design, develop, and shepherd the creation of a cutting edge and world class Sustainability Center on the Chabot campus.  

CAP’s Short Term Objectives and Goals

To get the CAP program started and to focus our work inside a topic, sustainability, that can be rather daunting in its scope, we will concentrate our energies around a singular concept: Food. To this end, we will develop a number of projects and programs during  the current semester. These include:

• Continuing to develop and expand the Knowledge Garden on campus as a living laboratory for student based environmental education. Our Project Coordinator will be responsible for stewarding all aspects of the on campus garden as well as coordinating education and project based learning with students.

• Develop appropriate materials and methods that will be used to train and educate Peer Advocates and other CAP staff.

• Partnering with faculty from across campus  to offer specific project based learning curriculum around the topic of Food and provide students with resources and participatory education around our local to global food system as it relates to culture and tradition, politics, health and wellness, ecological sustainability, race and socio-economics as well as the action oriented opportunities students can initiate. 

• Partnering with students from RAGE (Revolutionaries Advocating for Greener EcoSystems), a student led environmental group, to launch the on campus food pantry and monthly farm fresh choice program. The Farm Fresh Choice program will utilize the food pantry as a way to provide healthy affordable food options on campus for students and their families. 

• Teaming up with faculty in the Environmental Department and student led clubs to co-produce an Earth Day event on campus to raise awareness around environmental issues, celebrate our work together and connect students with pertinent resources for environmental, personal and community health. 

• Forging relationships and partnerships with community based organizations in Hayward that are providers of important services especially related to health, housing, transportation and food, as a way to connect students at Chabot to a larger community network of opportunities. 

• Growing and tending relationships with families around the Knowledge Garden by hosting community food and culture sharing events that leverage the “local expertise” of citizens, as well as forging partnerships with local environmental groups and organizations in the Hayward community and other Bay Area counties. 

• Arranging site visits at other institutions and with groups doing this kind of work in order to deepen our knowledge about ecological issues, garner ideas for how best to roll out CAP across the campus, and be introduced to creative and workable ideas for building the Sustainability Center.