Chapter 3 Tales from the field - an ethnography of space, pedagogy and learning
3.6 Summer job training program
The program activities in the summer represent the next arc in the ethnographic narrative where the intensity in the program is increasing from a single afternoon each week to 4 days per week. On the farm, plants are nurtured and the harvest begins. Youth are no longer interns but are now employees. Narratively the climax is being built. This section will set off with a presentation of the schedule and structure of the program. The section will then present and interpret the central pedagogical complex of farming, cooking and eating. The section continues with a number of tales of the interplay between the staff’s pedagogical intentions and the youth’s agency, learning and identity construction as it takes place in the different contexts of workshops and events.
As mentioned earlier, the content of summer job training program in many ways is an extension of the main elements in the spring internship – farming, cooking and different workshops related to nutrition, food justice or job training – but the summer program is also expanded with a range of additional elements. These elements are for example the weekly whole day of working at a local organic farm, a weekly workshop with body-mind exercises and an increased focus on public speaking, presentation, systematic sharing and feed-back through the practice in different workshops and especially the one of ‘straight talk’.
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Figure3: The summer job training program schedule
SUMMER SCHEDULE
Tuesday – PROGRAM FARM--Starting at 9 am SHARP!
9-9:30 Welcome and Game
9:30-11 Program Field (group a)----CSA Harvest (group b) 11-12:15 Lunch Prep (group a)----Workshop (group b) 12:15-12:45 Lunch
12:45-2 Nutrition Workshop then Program Field (group a)----Program Field (group b) 2-3 Body/Mind Practice
Wednesday – PROGRAM FARM--Starting at 9am SHARP!
Group A
9-9:15 Stretching or quick game 9:15-2 BLAST off site including lunch
2-3 Workshop
Group B
9-9:15 Opening Game and Team Building
9:15-1 BLAST at Social Farming Project including lunch
1-2 Workshop
2-3 Finish BLAST
Thursday-PROGRAM FARM—Starting at 9am SHARP!
9-9:30 Opening Game and Team Building
9:30-11 Low Garden with Apprentices (group b)----CSA Harvest (group b) 11-12:15 Lunch Prep (group b)----Workshop (group a)
12:15-12:45 Lunch
12:45-2 Nutrition Workshop then Program Field (group b)----Research Field with George (group a)
2-3 Straight Talk
Friday-***Organic Farm (Beta-ville)
Meet at downtown bus station by 815am-we will be taking a van leaving at 820am sharp!
***OR-pick up at Beta-ville Transit Center at 830am- We will be carpooling and leaving at 840am sharp!
9-12 Farm Work (harvest, transplanting, processing) 12-12:45 Lunch
12:45-2:45 Farm Work
2:45 Triumphs (and paychecks every other week)
Where the youth in the spring internship were offered a ride to the farm and picked up right after school hours at the high school, the summer program is radically different as the youth now have to arrange for transportation individually. Apart from a few of the youth who are dropped in the morning by their parents, the majority have to commute by public transportation. Acknowledging that this involves a number of logistical challenges for many youth, (getting up in time another being getting on the bus, checking out transfer times and finally the duration of last walk from the bus to the farm) the staff uses the difficulties many youth had with getting used to this new rhythm and
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being on time in the morning as a means to train and learn communicative skills – concretely to give notice if there would be a delay.
Photo: Planting seed potatoes
The farming, together with cooking and eating is a – if not the – central practical activity in the summer program. It takes place every day on the program farm and the daily tasks are written on a big blackboard by Astrid, who is the farm and kitchen manager. Every day when the farm work is about to begin the crew is gathering in front of the blackboard and one of the staff or junior staff persons is reading through the different tasks and asks the youth to choose what they want to do.
After the crew has been assigned to the tasks specific advice or other things to be aware of are relayed, and if youth have any questions before the work begins this is also done. A central element in the farm work is that the staff person who instructs the tasks also is working together with the youth in one of the teams.
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Photo: The farm blackboard with the tasks of the day
Throughout the summer the way youth engage in and manage these tasks is continuously observed by the staff and also the context to which the big part of the feed-back in the straight talk sessions is related to. Several aspects of the way the farm work is practiced, verbalized and interpreted – in short, how it is instrumentalized as a pedagogical tool - are important to mention here.
The first aspect is the way the gradual mastering of the different skills and the general ability to develop a work ethic encouraged by the staff that explicitly communicate how the youth should increase their performance – often with an invitation to ‘increase your pace’. This was a very clear pattern throughout the summer and can interpreted as a way that the farming is a tool – or vehicle in the program’s own discourse – to constantly challenge what the youth think they are capable of.
Where the concrete and often strenuous farm labor on one side for the majority of the youth is a new experience that is trained extensively once a week during the spring, the intensity is increased in the summer with farm work at the program farm the first three days of the week and ending with a climax every Friday, when the whole crew is experiencing a full day with only farming as the main activity at a local organic farm in the south county. This day there are no workshops and the only activity is working with different tasks in the fields – picking strawberries, or harvesting carrots, fava beans or tomatoes or, as in the beginning of the summer, transplanting thousands of seedlings into the soil. This program element can also be interpreted as an example on how ‘rigor’ – one of the
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earlier mentioned principles for the pedagogical practice, the 4 R’s and a C, is practiced. The pedagogical value can also be interpreted as exposing youth to a real-life working experience in the context of an organic farm that profoundly differ from the widespread harsh realities of labor in conventional farming that several of the youth have close knowledge about from their own parents or families. Here employees are exposed to pesticides, long hours with no or few breaks, lack of toilet facilities not to mention the general low pay and uncertain hiring conditions. Another aspect that points to the potential for transforming the general societal stigma related to farm work into a pride is the way the specific farm work and the general ramification and contextualization of the work as contributing to social justice and food justice that is so emphasized in the different workshops that will be presented in the following tales.
The emphasis on developing a work ethic and responsibility towards completing the specific tasks around farming is also visible in the second aspect of the farming - that it is also a socializing space where youth connect in dialogue. This is encouraged by staff, as it is seen as a good place to build relationships and a space where staff model and help the youth and where staff sees, hears and responds to the verbal interactions between the youth if these inflicts on the performance. One example is if a conversation is going into a direction where it would violate a standard and the staff then responds in the situation by saying ‘language’. Another challenge is to learn the youth to keep a double focus – i.e. not to forget to engage in the concrete task they are doing while talking with each other. A much more frequently observed response that was given to the youth, especially in the first weeks of the summer was the phrase ‘work AND talk’ that was the typical response when youth had gotten so engaged in a conversation that they either slowed down or completely stopped working.
‘Finish strong’ was often used as a comment to the teams working in the field acknowledging the hardship of the manual labor but striving for the feeling of success from pulling through after a hard day’s work. Another important aspect of the staff’s role as co-workers is the frequent presentation of specific theory and context related to the concrete task that is being worked with – for example why a specific kind of weed is important to remove before it spreads etc.
The third aspect is the way the concept of ‘leadership’ is related to the concrete work with farming, specifically in relation to the social dynamics around co-working. One of the concepts from the mission statement that I have chosen to have a continuous focus on in the study is what ‘leadership’
entails. Though not explicitly explained as a concept (‘we define leadership as…’) staff often connected ‘leadership’ to the development of responsibility towards the solutions of practical tasks and very often in relation to farming and cooking. An often heard indicator of leadership skills was verbalized by the staff as being able to ‘think ahead’ and be prepared for a new task that could follow
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a finished one. Later I will describe and discuss how the learning of ‘leadership’ is not limited to the practical management of different farming related tasks but also is connected to the more profound personal transformations as these are verbalized, especially in situations where staff give feed-back to the youth on their general learning from the program.
A fourth aspect is the way the food grown as a material resource is used and distributed. Here three aspects are central. One is that the produce from the farm is a persistent part of the meals that staff and youth cook in spring and summer. Another is that in the second half of the summer program on weekly farm stands in front of a local hospital. In the fall program the farm stand continues as one of the project management activities, in this period based within the premises of a public school in a low-income neighborhood. The farm stand will be described in the section about the fall program. A final aspect of the use and distribution of the produce is the way it through the weekly CSA-bags also walks home with the youth with the potential of becoming a material resource in the cooking of their families as well as a potential vehicle for changing the family diet.
As with the farming, both cooking and eating is a daily activity in the summer program and these two aspects above – need a further description.
Photo: Cooking in the outdoor kitchen
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The physical setting of the kitchen has already been presented and here the central pedagogical activities will be described. The whole crew of 22 youth is divided into two groups in a large part of the scheduled activities as with the daily cooking. Each day the kitchen manager, typically Astrid or Rita, the Food Corps worker, has prepared the specific menu and provided the raw materials. When the youth arrive at the kitchen, the raw materials are placed in the middle of the large working table as are the cut boards and knives. The kitchen manager starts with introducing the menu and what may be special in the present day’s process. In the early weeks of the summer time is also spent on introducing specific techniques as the proper use of knives and the general code of collaboration in a kitchen - that tools and utensils stay at the table, that youth who are finished with their tasks ask for what they then can do etc. The general format of the food that is cooked is that is versions of popular dishes like pizza or quesadillas that the youth know but in healthier versions with more vegetables, alternative sweeteners etc. Throughout the summer different guest chefs are visiting and cooking with the youth. The pedagogical intention here is to present youth to possible career choices, guest chefs may also be alumni youth who now work with catering.
Photo: Lunch is ready!
The physical framework of the eating had, as earlier described in the tale in the spring, changed to become a communal space. Where the eating in the spring internship was practiced standing up or sitting, the space now presented the youth to a potential for a very different experience with eating.
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How staff and youth experienced this is explored in the ethnographic interviews and will later be analyzed and discussed in relation to the central goal of challenging and changing the youths’ diets in a healthier direction.
Photo: The communal meal in the kitchen
A range of other and also important program elements that are part of the summer program are not
‘covered’ by the following tales. These are: a workshop where local employers come to the farm to meet the youth for a talk about advice for job applications and job interviews; a workshop where alumni youth who are now in college come to the farm to tell the youth who are seniors about their experiences and give the youth tips and advice for the choices they are about to make; and finally, the weekly workshop with a local instructor of mind-body awareness and martial arts. This workshop appeared to be highly valued by the youth and the presence of this program element points to a reflection on the significance of embodiment that has also been explored in the interviews. This element can be interpreted as an important supplement to the pedagogical intentions of challenging and pushing the youth in their physical performances with a dimension of awareness building that both focuses on physical and mental wellbeing. On a physical level this element is providing the youth with knowledge of a range of stretching tools to counter the sore muscles from the farming work, and on a mental level a range of exercises that are inviting youth to develop awareness of breathing, of body language and a range of techniques related to building strength and body
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awareness. An interpretation of this element could be that the program work is a concrete way is challenging the youths’ bodies but there is also a discourse offered to ‘deal’ with – and become empowered through - these challenges.
The rest of the section about the summer consists of a number of tales. It begins with a tale of the first day where the new crew is meeting for the first time. Having in mind that though all the youth hired for the summer job have in common that they have succeeded the 10 week spring internship, the individual youth will only have met maybe a quarter of the total number of the 21 youth. So although the physical space of the farm is known by the ¾ of the youth that spent the spring internship here, the majority of the new crew is unknown to each other. The staff put a big emphasis on the first day as the time and place where the foundation for the coming period of collaboration is laid. This foundation is labeled ‘tone setting’ and the following tale describes my experience of how this is practiced. Included in the first tale is also a description of the way I as a researcher was presented as a member of the crew.
Tale: ‘Tone setting’ – the first day in the summer job training program
It’s the first day in the summer job training program on the farm and the group of 22 youth that form the new crew is seated in the shade beside the blueberry field. Not all seats are in the shade and Byron asks if anyone is uncomfortable sitting in the sun. One of the boys would like to swap and Byron asks the youth sitting in the shade to make more room for him. All of the youth has been handed a personal binder and the topic right now is to go through all of the pages and introduce a range of practicalities. Byron is talking about the time-sheets that each youth must fill in every afternoon with the time of arrival in the morning and the time of finishing. Byron then moves on to the next sheet, the Standard Movements Chart (SMC), which deals with basic rules and expectations in the program - and the consequences if they are broken or not adhered to. He runs through the different standards and say that the first time one of these actions is observed by the staff it will result in a warning and if it happens again it we be labeled as a ‘standard movement’ and one hour of pay will be subtracted from the next paycheck. If the action is repeated a third time, 2 hours will be subtracted ending with the 5th time resulting in the youth getting fired. The chart is divided into two groups of ‘incidents’ – the ones that can be earned back and the ones that can’t. Movements that can be earned back are e.g. arriving late, poor attitude/poor role model, being unmotivated/poor work pace or glorifying drama/violence/sex/drugs/alcohol or using inappropriate language.
Movements that can’t be earned back are e.g. verbal or physical abuse, vandalism, coming to work intoxicated etc. Earning back means that, say a youth had been observed swearing not only once but twice – the first time it resulted in a warning from the staff and the second time the youth was told
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that this was a standard movement and in the next pay check one hour will be subtracted – that is IF the youth doesn’t swear again in the week to follow the movement will be earned back and nothing will be subtracted. Byron explains that the reason why the program is using this is that it should be seen as an incentive and tool for the youth that can be helpful in learning how to act if one is to meet the expectations in the jobs they will be applying for in the future. He says that in a regular job there’s normally a short road from breaking a rule to being fired, indefinitely – here you get the chance to learn from your mistake without the same consequence38.
Figure 4: The Standard Movements Chart
After the seated introduction to the different sheets in the binders we get up and move to an open space where we first stand in a big circle. Here we introduce each other’s names, class and high school. It is also time for me to introduce myself. I have agreed with Byron and Astrid that I do a little
38When I asked the staff in the end of the summer about how many standard movements they had been giving the answer
was only a few warnings and no standard movements at all. This made the staff reflect on this summer’s crew as being especially well functioning compared to the crew the preceding year. At that time, a small group of youth had been caught smoking weed during farm working after which they all were fired, followed by the option to reapply, that also is a part of the SMC, which ended with a re-hiring of 3 of the 4 youth.