Company description

Hudson Valley Seed educates children in school gardens, empowering students through curriculum-integrated lessons focused on healthy eating, food literacy, outdoor learning, and academic success. As thousands of children across the Hudson Valley participate in weekly standards-based garden education, they develop a love of learning and the outdoors. As students plant seeds, steward the land, and share new foods with their peers, they are also cultivating compassion, patience and self discipline. By partnering with schools to provide students with innovative, experiential and project-based food education, Hudson Valley Seed helps students connect discoveries in the classroom to action in the community.

Job description

Position Overview:

Hudson Valley Seed’s Garden Educator will implement and help develop Hudson Valley Seed’s curriculum-integrated elementary school garden program across six Newburgh gardens. The Garden Educator will work in public schools in the Newburgh City School District administering lessons both indoors and outdoors year-round, teaching kindergarten through 2nd-grade students, and working with K-5 students in after school and summer programing. The Educator will teach using Hudson Valley Seed curricula, which focuses on academics and food literacy through experiential garden learning.

The Garden Educator will work closely with the HVS Program Coordinator to assist with parent engagement and community outreach surrounding the school garden program. The Garden Educator will work closely with the rest of the Hudson Valley Seed team, especially the other Newburgh Garden Educator, as they collectively educate over 5,000 students throughout the school year across Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster, and Orange Counties.

Responsibilities:

Education Program:

• Teach garden and food literacy programs to approximately 30 classes, Kindergarten - 2nd grade, in the Newburgh City School District, teaching in indoor and outdoor settings. Classes run bi-weekly or monthly throughout the school year.
• Teach in after school and summer programs (K-5th grade).
• Work with education team to develop new lessons and curriculum as needed. Work independently to creatively and flexibly adapt lessons as needed for specific classes and situations.
• Work with teachers and school administrators to create teaching schedules. Maintain regular communication and documentation of programs with teachers and administrators in regards to Garden Time programming.
• Understand and apply Hudson Valley Seed’s philosophy of education, which is based on democratic principles and experiential learning.
• Manage and care for existing education program materials as needed.
• Maintain necessary paperwork (weekly, monthly, and annually), ex: weekly teaching recaps, records of time spent on programs, and contact lists.
• Participate in regular Hudson Valley Seed staff meetings.
• Participate in events at schools (family fun nights, back to school, etc).
• Send school-specific communications home to parents.
• Manage students’ photo releases, and take photos of garden time.

Newburgh Garden Coordination and Outreach:

• Maintain the Newburgh school gardens in optimum condition and presentation for students in collaboration with Garden Manager and other educators including, but not limited to, a maintenance schedule, regular watering, weeding, and harvesting, timely seed starts, determination of best practices and plans for garden projects, annual garden plans and budget, delegation of garden tasks with Newburgh educators, and coordination of volunteers.
• Recruit and train parents as Hudson Valley Seed volunteers and engage them in maintaining school gardens and participating in garden work days.
• Assist the Program Coordinator in the Newburgh community, including acting as liaison to PTAs and partnering community organizations.
• Assist in writing program descriptions for newsletters, program guides, social media, and website.
• Occasional evening and weekend work is required.
• Other duties as assigned.

Position Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or commensurate experience – with demonstrable work experience in environmental education, garden education, elementary education, or related field. Candidates without Masters’ Degrees should apply if they have 3+ years of relevant work experience.
• Positive, engaging, student-centered, creative and enthusiastic teaching, communication, and presentation skills.
• Familiarity with teaching in public schools.
• Experience using gardens as outdoor classrooms. Experience working with people of all ages and backgrounds in an outdoor environmental education setting, with an emphasis on outdoor classroom management.
• Experience in environmental educational program planning, development, and implementation.
• Demonstrable gardening experience. Strong background in and passion for the natural world & gardening.
• Ability to work as part of a team as well as independently, and in a culturally-diverse environment.
• Experience with Microsoft Office, Apple Pages, and Google Drive software.
• The strongest candidates will be bilingual, and able to teach in Spanish.
• Must pass a criminal background check, and be able and willing to be fingerprinted by local schools.

Hudson Valley Seed works in diverse small cities in the Hudson Valley. As an organization, we value accountability, integrity and community as essential to fulfilling our mission of educating children in school gardens. Therefore, the most competitive candidates will have a sophisticated understanding of how race and other dynamics of oppression impact organizational culture and education systems, will be a systems thinker with high attention to detail and relationship management, will be able to work independently, and will have a great sense of humor with an ability to encourage fun and laughter in a team environment.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, varies DOE, $38,000.00 - $41,000.00

Application instructions

Deadline

July 31, 2017