Garden Educator

Garden Educators - Site Staff Position Description
About Real Food SEED (Student Engagement Every Day)

Come join our team! Real Food SEED is a school-based food literacy project embedded in the School Food Service Programs (SFSP) of several Muskegon County schools. Our programming integrates health and wellness into the school environment through school gardens, taste testing, and other programs that support food literacy, such as farm field trips and student-led school lunch recipe development. In turn, students will leave our schools healthier and bring that knowledge and healthy behavior back to their families and the greater community.
We are looking for garden educators to facilitate garden lessons, maintain school garden spaces in local schools, and nurture relationships with students, teachers, and staff.
If you would like to join an up-beat, driven, and passionate culture and share our vision to have elementary students exploring, thinking and learning about food literacy in school gardens, classrooms, cafeterias, and the community, we look forward to hearing from you.

Job Details:
Collect and/or prepare supplies for lesson days
Facilitate/teach garden lessons (using Real Food SEED curriculum and lesson plans) Plant and perform routine garden maintenance (using organic and regenerative agriculture practices)
Build relationships with school staff, classroom teachers and parents to promote a culture of engaging outdoor learning
Coordinate occasional garden clean-up work parties and/or family open garden sessions Participate in ongoing documentation of student experiences by taking and uploading pictures, maintaining garden class and student engagement records
Work cooperatively with Food Service staff in classroom- and cafeteria-based taste testing
Comply with ServSafe protocols
Initially, Garden Educators will train alongside Food Literacy Program Coordinator at various sites to learn curriculum, processes, and programming. After training, Garden Educators will become responsible for coordinating a school site.

Successful candidates will:

• Be team players!
• Successfully complete Live Scan fingerprint and ICHAT background check
• Have a strong desire to work with children and classroom teachers to help cultivate an interest in nature and food literacy
• Have a demonstrated interest and track record with gardening, farming, environmental science, and/or nutrition education
• Have personal skills including dependability, flexibility, and a willingness to get dirty
• Possess excellent facilitation and problem-solving skills, a positive attitude, and a mission-driven work ethic
• Be able to work effectively in collaboration with diverse groups of people
• Have experience working with young children in a large group setting (preferred)
• Have reliable transportation.

Schedule
This position is part-time, approximately 8-25 hours per week during the school year. Flexible, but Garden Educators should have 1-3 days per week available to work in an elementary school during the school year from approximately 8:30am-3:30pm. The position runs throughout the remainder of the 2022/2023 school year (with all applicable school holidays), with summer programming negotiable.

Compensation: $20/hour

This is a contracted position through Edustaff (includes paid required school safety training). This position also has the potential for growth as the scope of our work increases.