Student Work at College of the Atlantic

Student’s Educative Garden Creates Controversy

Toria Harr's father tending to her garden. Photo Courtesy of Gian Luiso of the Courier Times

Toria Harr will graduate from COA this spring with a degree in Human Ecology and a teaching certificate earned in the school’s Educational Studies program. But her passionate focus on teaching science to middle schoolers hasn’t diminished Toria’s desire to make connections across disciplines—even when it miffs her neighbors. As a suburban Philly news story explains:

“Toria Harr never thought getting organic and going back to nature would land her in the world of zoning variances and court appeals. But that’s exactly where the Middletown college student finds herself after a neighbor filed an appeal in Bucks County court to a variance granted by the township zoning hearing board for a fence around Harr’s front-yard flower and vegetable garden.

Harr, 21, planted the garden in front of her parents’ townhouse on Meadowview Court in the Summit Trace development. An aspiring middle school science teacher, she wanted a firsthand feel of what it’s like to grow her own food. She figured that would better enable her to eventually convey agricultural concepts and techniques to her students.

For teacher cerification, Toria does her student teaching at a local elementary school. Here, she identifies plants with a student.

‘I have a real interest in agriculture and typically, when it comes to education, there’s a disconnection between children and their food,’ said Harr, a senior at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

‘Kids don’t have an appreciation for their food source and the agricultural system we live in that sustains us,’ she continued. ‘I was looking for ways to better make that connection.’”

And so she did. Toria tells me, “I knew what I was doing would attract attention because most people don’t plant vegetables on their front lawn, but I never expected it to go this far.” And while going further than expected is not unusual for COA students, Toria’s project, which is a component of her Senior Project-in-progress, also took her neighbors further than they expected. By challenging the status quo (however unexpectedly) over a simple garden, Toria has called attention not just to children’s but to adults’ “disconnection” with food—a serious issue in an age of commercial farming and increasing obesity among both parents and their children. She has also highlighted a disconnect at her own front door. But the lessons of Toria’s project aren’t just for her students or her neighbors—they’re for her. By thinking of the garden as taking part in both natural and social processes, Toria says, “I have learned both about growing vegetables and about how humans work together in a community—a study of human ecology at its best!”

Read the original Phillyburbs article.

Michael Griffith