Resources for Educators
Training + Professional Development
Investing in your professional growth as a garden educator strengthens both your confidence and your students' learning experiences. These conferences and training opportunities provide valuable resources to enhance your garden-based education programs and help you stay current with best practices, discover new teaching approaches, and build lasting relationships within the garden education community.
Oregon Farm to School Institute (K-12)
The Farm to School Institute model is a year-long professional learning experience that brings site-based teams together to build relationships, skills, and a collaborative action plan to further their farm to school goals. Team members bring a variety of expertise and include classroom educators, administrators, nutrition services staff, and community partners. With the support of a coach, teams spend the school year putting their plans into action and strengthening their capacity to integrate lasting impacts across classrooms, cafeterias, and communities.
SGSO Leadership institute
Every year, the School Garden Support Organization Leadership Institute provides an opportunity for school garden professionals from across the country to collaborate, learn from one another, and develop resources to share with a national audience. In this way, we all become able to better support school gardens in our regions, and also advance the national school garden movement.
OSU School Garden Coordinator Certificate Training
This unique program has been thoughtfully designed and developed to give you the knowledge, resources and inspiration to implement and maintain an edible school garden built on a foundation of broad community involvement and support.
Whether you’re new to gardening or if you are looking to bring an established school garden program to the next level, this online School Garden Coordinator Certificate Training program will meet you where you're at and give you the tips and techniques you can implement immediately.
Farm to ECE Institute
The Farm to ECE Institute model is a year-long professional learning experience that brings site-based teams together to build relationships, skills, and a collaborative action plan to further their farm to school goals. Team members bring a variety of expertise and include classroom educators, administrators, nutrition services staff, and community partners. With the support of a coach, teams spend the school year putting their plans into action and strengthening their capacity to integrate lasting impacts across classrooms, cafeterias, and communities.
Master Gardener Training
OSU Extension Service’s Master Gardener Training program prepares participants to become proficient gardeners and community resources within their own bioregion. To become an OSU Master Gardener, you must complete the training program, pass an examination, and volunteer a specific number of hours of public service through your local Master Gardener Program.
Summer Ag Institute
Summer Agriculture Institute (SAI) is a three-credit, week-long, graduate-level class through Oregon State University that educates K-12 teachers who have little or no background in agriculture. The goal of SAI is to help educators use agriculture as a context for teaching core academic subjects—science, math, social studies, and English.
Teaching in Nature's Classroom
In a garden we are able to cultivate children’s love of learning, their appreciation of healthy food, and their connection to the natural world. With vision, commitment, and some good hard work, educators and families around the globe are ripping up pavement, sowing seeds, and growing garden classrooms because they believe children need to be engaged by hands-on learning in a context that matters to them. This course, developed as a companion for the book Teaching in Nature’s Classroom: Principles of Garden-Based Education, provides opportunities for educators to consider different methodologies when teaching in garden-based settings.
Lifelab School Garden Education Certification
The Life Lab-Certified School Garden Educators Course will provide educators with tools and techniques to create inclusive and engaging school garden classrooms, integrating environmental stewardship, science-based learning, nutrition education, and community building to foster children’s social, emotional, and academic growth.
Tend, Gather, & Grow
This 10-month learning journey supports educators in respectfully integrating Indigenous knowledge into farm-to-school programs and land-based learning initiatives.
Together, we will explore the rich curriculum of Tend, Gather and Grow, focusing on native and naturalized plants of the Pacific Northwest region, and Plant Teachings for Growing Social-Emotional Skills, a toolkit that highlights how plants lead us in being healthy and resilient.
Farm to Cafeteria Conference
The National Farm to Cafeteria Conference is the premier event for anyone passionate about bringing local food to institutional settings and driving positive change in the food system. Whether you’re a food service professional, farmer, educator, policymaker, entrepreneur, or student, this conference offers invaluable opportunities to network, learn, and share knowledge with others who are shaping the future of food access and sustainability.
National Children & Youth Garden Symposium
Hundreds of educators from across the country will unite to explore how gardens serve as vital educational tools for conveying scientific concepts and preserving landscapes and culture. Leveraging a proven train-the-trainer model, the Symposium will feature interactive learning sessions covering a range of topics suitable for pre-K through 12th grade learning. Personalized visits to the area’s impressive and relevant gardens will offer opportunities to apply new concepts and connect with fellow youth garden educators from communities across the country. The theme for each symposium changes each year.
Oregon Farm to School & School Garden Conference
Every two years, Oregon's Farm to School community gathers to share knowledge, build connections, and strengthen our collective work across the state.
The Oregon Farm to School Conference brings together the diverse stakeholders who make our state's programs thrive. Our biennial event creates space for learning, networking, and inspiration as we work toward a common goal: providing farm and garden-based education and incorporating healthy, local food into school meals for Oregon students from PreK-12.
Growing School Gardens Summit
A national gathering designed to support our shared work to strengthen the school garden movement at local and national levels so that all children and youth can have vibrant, resilient school garden programs.
Teaching in Nature's Classroom
In a garden we are able to cultivate children’s love of learning, their appreciation of healthy food, and their connection to the natural world. With vision, commitment, and some good hard work, educators and families around the globe are ripping up pavement, sowing seeds, and growing garden classrooms because they believe children need to be engaged by hands-on learning in a context that matters to them. This course, developed as a companion for the book Teaching in Nature’s Classroom: Principles of Garden-Based Education, provides opportunities for educators to consider different methodologies when teaching in garden-based settings.