Getting Started in Gardening and Micro Schools

What can gardening teach us about nurturing and growth in education? Today’s episode of Southern Soul explores this question through the transformative experiences of two individuals: Alethea Victor, founder of GroLeafy, and Janelle Wood, founder of Black Mothers Forum.

 

Alethea shares her journey from social worker to gardening enthusiast, a hobby that provided her solace and therapeutic benefits during challenging times, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, Alethea had no experience with gardening and struggled to keep plants alive. Now, she is an avid gardener and composter, guiding others on how to start their own gardens, from selecting the right soil to starting seeds and managing pests organically.

 

The discussion shifts to Janelle Wood, whose advocacy is deeply rooted in her experiences in the Middle East and Arizona’s prisons. Janelle tackles critical issues like systemic racism and the school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities. Her work with the ACLU led her to advocate for micro schools—an innovative educational model offering personalized, trauma-informed environments. These schools emerged in response to the traditional public school system's inadequacies, particularly in meeting the needs of Black children and incorporating parental involvement. Janelle points out that micro schools provide tailored education for small groups, enhancing student support. The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed this initiative, pushing for a transformative approach to education for Black children.

 

This episode offers insights on personal growth, community empowerment, and innovative approaches to education. Whether you're a gardening enthusiast or an advocate for educational reform, there’s inspiration and practical advice to be found in the stories of Alethea and Janelle. Tune in to uncover how small-scale interventions can lead to substantial changes in our lives and communities.

 

Quotes

• “I just remember reflecting and just wondering that I wanted to live a healthier life now; make some choices and changes in my life that would affect me in a positive way. I know that we're not here forever, but I really wanted to just make some changes at that point.” (04:22 | Alethea Victor)
• “I would come home and I would spend hours in the garden. It would just really help me to decompress and to just relax. It was my form of self-care. And that really helped me through difficult times.” (07:22 | Alethea Victor)
• “It started to hit me that one thing that I had in common with many black mothers was that I had a black son in America and that he was deemed a threat by the police. And that became a problem for me because I realized that we raised our sons, many of us mothers of black sons, raised our sons to be respectful, to get a good education. And for me to even think that someone would think that he was a threat just because of the color of his skin was unacceptable.” (35:10 | Janelle Wood)
• “What are our top three urgent issues? Mothers, what do you think we need to do? And the mother said, ‘We want to save our children now, especially our sons. We want to deal with systemic racism. We want to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder in the black community, and we need to pray.’ So we started our first four core groups off of that. But our mission became getting educated so we could get organized to take action, to do whatever we needed to do to make sure our children could live the life that they were birthed here to live and to be who God created them to be. (36:28 | Janelle Wood) 

Links

 

Alethea Victor, founder of Gro Leafy https://www.facebook.com/GroLeafy/ 

Janelle Wood, Founder of the Black Mothers Forum.