Tag Archives: Stafford Creek

Peer education created by and for incarcerated gardeners

By Carly Rose, SPP Curriculum Development Coordinator and Emerico, Gardening Curriculum Author

Gardeners tend to the soil in the gardens at Monroe Correctional Complex – Washington State Reformatory Unit. Incarcerated authors at MCC-WSRU are working with SPP to author chapters on Vermicomposting, Bokashi Composting, and Soil Science. Photo by Joslyn Rose Trivett.

For the past six months, gardeners at Stafford Creek Corrections Center and Monroe Correctional Complex – Washington State Reformatory Unit have been helping to build the new Gardening Curriculum. To develop course chapters, authors are combining expertise gained through personal experience with knowledge from scholarly research. Authors are working on a voluntary basis: they elect to share based on their desire to explore and describe a particular topic; some of the chapters currently in development include Vermicomposting & Bokashi Composting, Soil Science, the Soil Food Web, Planting and Harvesting Vegetables in Prison, Seed Saving, and Aquaponics.

Developing part of a curriculum while incarcerated requires some creativity. In order to submit materials, authors have provided handwritten work that is then typed and formatted by myself. One author types his work into JPay (social email) and mails it to a family member who mails it back, which gives him a pre-typed manuscript to submit. Most authors also provide their own illustrations and diagrams to be included in the chapter. Authors use a mixture of narrative from personal experience, tips on gardening that are specific to a prison environment, and college-level scholarly research to produce their work. They provide instruction that is created by and intended for incarcerated gardeners across the country. Authors and I send materials back and forth so they may provide feedback and edits on separate drafts of their work. One of the authors, Emerico, offered a personal narrative on his motivation to learn and write about his topic, Aquaponics. 

Introduction to Aquaponics by Emerico

I first became interested in aquaponics after reading a few articles and watching some educational television programs. I was working on the gardening crew at Stafford Creek and when the gardening classes started, I was thrilled to be included. Over time, I have learned every person—incarcerated or not—has a purpose in life. My purpose was building an aquaponics system with no budget. I had to lose my freedoms before I could find my purpose in life. This is where aquaponics all began for me. I had an idea, so I put it to paper and talked to the garden supervisor about the idea.

One of my first jobs on the garden crew was working with the hydroponics system. I found out that this type of system, which requires chemicals to grow plants and vegetables, is expensive and I believe far less healthy. My goal was to get away from using chemicals and go to more of a natural resource system. I thought about a way to build a small-scale aquaponics system that uses fish to feed the vegetables. After many attempts to get it approved, and with the help of the garden crew, we built a recycled materials aquaponics system. The first part of the vision of my idea came to life.

This is part of the aquaponics system built by Emerico, who is authoring a chapter on Aquaponics. He explained that he wants the chapter to be accessible to both incarcerated gardeners and low-income families outside of prison. Photo by Jacob Meyers.

There is a sense of satisfaction when growing your own vegetables whether for self/family or others. I believe also that gardening can relieve stress. This country is blessed; there should not be anyone going hungry. We see too much senseless hunger in our country and throughout the world. There must be a solution to this problem. How can we do this? By making people aware and teaching them that aquaponics is not only a healthier way to grow produce, but is also cheaper. Aquaponics saves money in the long run for people and their families, and is a fun way to bring families together in the garden.

As for me, it is all about giving back and helping those in the community and throughout society that are less fortunate. The purpose is to get a finer perception of aquaponics through research. Anyone can pretty much build a small-scale aquaponics system with a limited budget and few resources. I hope this brief overview has helped you. Above all else, have fun.

From his lab notebook, Emerico shows a diagram of the aquaponics system. Photo by Joslyn Rose Trivett.

Next Steps

The course is projected to pilot in winter of this year. The two teams of authors plan to be part of that process as well; they will be among the first to try out the new program. Their feedback during and after the trial run will help us further refine the course, and then be ready to share it statewide and beyond.

All of the authors have personal experience gardening in prison, working on projects such as this garden at Stafford Creek Corrections Center. This garden is tended by individuals serving a life sentence, and is known as the “lifer’s garden.” Photo by Ricky Osborne.

The Challenges—and Opportunities—of a New Program

Text and photos by Amanda Mintz, SPP EVM Program Coordinator

Brian Bedilion and Rudy Smale compare a water quality test to a color chart.

From a tilapia farm to a wetland plant nursery, the aquaponics house at Stafford Creek Corrections Center has experienced major transformations over the past year. Creating a new program brings many challenges, particularly when we start from scratch with no existing model to imitate. Careful monitoring and teamwork means we can meet those challengers, and constantly improve the system.

What’s in a Name?

We often call our program the EVM, a name that rolls easily off the tongue. But not everyone knows that EVM stands for Emergent Vegetated Mat, or what an Emergent Vegetated Mat even is! To meet this challenge, EVM program technicians receive training in wetland ecology, plant propagation, and aquaponics, and are capable of explaining what we do to anyone who asks.

Technicians learned about the functions of wetlands, such as water holding capacity demonstrated by peat pods, and phytoremediation: the ability for wetland plants to absorb and transform pollutants.

Ecosystem Balance

Our aquaponics system relies on symbioses among fish, bacteria, and plants; for the system to thrive, maintaining optimal water quality is a constant concern. The aquaponics unit is a living system which can, at times, be unpredictable. Technicians monitor water quality daily, looking for changes in dissolved oxygen, ammonia, nitrate, and pH that could indicate a problem. Solutions to an imbalance can be as simple as increasing the water flow to plants, or as complex as adding a new heating system. With time and experience, we have learned how to increase the stability of the system through understanding the specific needs of the living things it supports.

Technicians monitor water quality with aquarium test kits. Occasionally water is taken back to The Evergreen State College‘s laboratory and tested there to make sure the kits are taking accurate readings.

Critter Control

Any nursery will eventually experience a critter invasion. Red-legged frogs and spiders are frequent visitors to the facility, as are less desirable critters like aphids. Technicians use low-impact methods to keep pests at bay, such as manual removal or biodegradable soap. As you can see, our plants are thriving (and the frogs are happy)!

Kent Dillard and Rudy Smale use manual control and biodegradable soap to remove aphids from the mats without harming plants or fish.

Over the next few months, the addition of two new hoop houses will significantly increase our capacity for mat production. We look forward to facing the challenges of expanding the EVM program now that we have a year’s experience under our belts. None of these projects would be possible without the tireless effort of Stafford Creek Corrections Center maintenance mechanics and plumbers, the EVM technicians, the folks at Center for Natural Lands Management and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and all our funders: Washington Department of Corrections, Department of Defense, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (with a little help from us at SPP)!

This red-legged frog, lounging on the edge of a coir mat, is a frequent visitor to the aquaponics house!

Across cultures and values

SPP Graduate Research Assistant Brittany Gallagher helps an Oregon spotted frog take its first leap into the wild. Photo by Matthew Williams of the New York Times.

By Brittany Gallagher, External Affairs Manager, The Nature Conservancy

When I was looking into graduate schools, I searched for an environmental studies program in which social justice was an integral–and integrated–part. As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, I was sensitive to inequitable global environmental policy and its detrimental effects to community economic development on both a global and a personal scale. I was interested to fill in my gaps in experience and knowledge with a more thorough understanding of environmental and social justice at home in the US. Though Evergreen’s Graduate Program on the Environment seemed like a good fit, it was the existence of the “Sustainable Prisons Project” (as it was called at the time) on campus that sealed the deal for me.

Thanks to a generous Sara Bilezikian Memorial Fellowship supporting students working for justice in the environmental arena, I was able to begin my time as an MES student even as I moved to Olympia from out of state. I had also emailed SPP staff before I arrived, applying for a job that didn’t exist yet, but thanks to some persistence and a fortuitously timed grant, I became the Education & Evaluations Coordinator for SPP. Alongside my studies, I spent my two years at Evergreen running a pair of lecture series at Stafford Creek Corrections Center and Washington Corrections Center for Women. I also worked to evaluate SPP’s various ecological conservation programs. Out of this effort grew my Master’s thesis, examining the social and human effects of participating in SPP’s conservation programs on the inmate technicians who cared for frogs, dogs, butterflies, and prairie plants.

In the years since graduation, I have mentioned SPP in every job interview I’ve had, as well as dropping it into casual conversation on dates, and with strangers sitting next to me on airplanes. We may forget it on our super-green Evergreen campus in the “upper-left” USA, but SPP’s model is fascinating to people. Working with state agencies, prison staff and inmates, academics, and volunteers from the community gave me the skills needed to engage across cultures and value sets to achieve a common purpose. These experiences translate, and they have continued to pay off as I’ve gone on to work in international development and education, and in my current position as External Affairs Manager for The Nature Conservancy in Washington. Now more than ever, cooperation and collaboration with perhaps-unlikely partners for the good of people and the planet is the way to go, and I am proud to have been a piece of SPP’s important and continuing great work.

What do the students get from SPP lectures? Part One

Part One: Surveys Say…!

Text by Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP Education and Outreach Manager
Figures by Liliana Caughman, SPP Science and Sustainability Lecture Series Coordinator

Brittany Gallagher receives a completed survey from a student at Stafford Creek Corrections Center. Photo by Shauna Bittle.

Every SPP Science and Sustainability Lecture since 2009 has included surveys about the program. Before and after each lecture, we ask students to fill out surveys and hand them back, and usually they do. Lucky for us, the current lecture series coordinator, Liliana Caughman, is also a whiz kid with data. Building on the work of Tiffany Webb and Brittany Gallagher, Liliana examined answers from 15,874 before and after surveys from SPP lectures (do you see how big that number is?? It blows me away!).

The data show patterns that are impressive and statistically defensible. Here is a summary:

  • Figure 1.

    The students are gaining environmental knowledge from the lectures; not a big surprise, and always nice to have confirmation!

 

  • As the years pass, students are learning more from our lectures (see Figure 1). We wonder, does this mean they are becoming better students, or that the lectures themselves have improved?

 

  • Figure 2.

    As Tiffany Webb found in 2014, students’ attitudes about the environment have been steadily increasing over time (see Figure 2). Many students do not become more positive about the environment as a result of a single lecture, but most started with such positive regard of environmental topics that no change is still a good thing! I see this as confirmation of what we’ve experienced: that there has been a positive culture shift within Washington State prisons.

 

  • Figure 3.

    Liliana devised 3 criteria to describe how engaging a lecture is. She assigned a score for how much a lecture 1. provided hands-on experiences 2. empowered students to be helpful to others who are important to them 3. built community and connections between people. She compared each lecture’s engagement score with how much environmental attitudes increased for the same lecture, and found a lovely correlation (Figure 3). These results suggest that Liliana’s engagement score is valuable measure of a lecture’s quality. More importantly, I think, is that the 3 criteria become guides for guest lecturers going forward: we will ask them to make presentations with hands-on activities, ideas on how to help others, and ways to connect students to people inside and outside the prison.

Last week, we took these survey results to the classroom at Stafford Creek Corrections Center. We asked the students for their input on how the program is offered, lecture topics, and the surveys themselves. They had so much valuable feedback that I will save it for Part Two of the story. Part Three will come when we take the same presentation and questions to Washington Corrections Center for Women in March!

To kick off discussion of the lecture series, Liliana Caughman described what the word sustainability means to her. Photo by Elijah Moloney.

 

What is an Aquatic Emergent Pre-Vegetated Mat?

By Amanda Mintz, Emergent Vegetation Conservation Nursery Coordinator, and Master of Environmental Studies student

EVM tech at work

Technician Kent Dillard inspects the plants for evidence of pests. Photo by Fawn Harris.

In SPP’s new Emergent Vegetation Conservation Nursery at Stafford Creek Corrections Center, we are growing native wetland plants in coconut fiber mats for wetland restoration projects. The program relies on a team effort from incarcerated technicians, prison maintenance staff, Evergreen’s program coordinators and managers, Joint Base Lewis McChord, the Center for Natural Lands Management, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the United States Fish and Wildlife. All have done an amazing job meeting the challenges of the innovative program’s technical demands.

EVM meeting

DOC’s Jim Snider, technician Brian Bedilion, aquaponics expert Daniel Cherniske and SPP Program Manager Kelli Bush tour the nursery. Photo by Fawn Harris.

Coconut fiber mats, or “coir” mats, are commonly used in restoration for erosion control and suppression of weeds such as reed canarygrass. We are pre-planting them with wetland sedges and rushes, giving those beneficial plants a head start under nursery conditions. These plant types are known as “emergent” for their ability to grow through—emerge from—the water’s surface. Our hope is that the plants will be able to out-compete weeds and provide superior habitat for wildlife, such as the endangered Oregon spotted frog.

To grow the plants, we are using an aquaponics system. Two large fish tanks contain more than 100 koi, which produce waste that the plants use as nutrients. The water from the fish tanks circulates through the plant beds and then back to the fish tanks to pick up additional nutrients. The plants grow directly into the coir mats and do not need soil. By using an aquaponics system, we save water and reduce the need to weed or fertilize the plants.

We installed the first mats at Joint Base Lewis McChord in early November, and plan to have new mats ready in just a couple of months.

carl-and-mat

Conservation Nursery Manager Carl Elliott prepares to unroll a mat at JBLM. Photo by Amanda Mintz.

 

vegetated-mats-at-jblm

The first mats have been installed! Photo by Amanda Mintz.

Nothing like an octopus in prison!

Photos by SPP Science & Sustainability Lecture Series Coordinator, Liliana Caughman

looking-really-close

Lecture series student Ismael Lee and guest lecturer Rus Higley of the Marine Science and Technology (MaST) Center at Highline College observe a red octopus.

octopus-among-students

Jillian Mayer, an AmeriCorps volunteer who works at MaST, walks the octopus among the aisles at the Science and Sustainability lecture.

Octopus-beauty

During the lecture on octopus intelligence we learned that octopuses have smarts not only in their brain, but in their tentacles and skin. (Check out those good looking smarts! ;>))

Octopus-love

Students take a closer look at the visiting red octopus and get an immersive lesson in marine biology.

good-hand-jesture

Rus Higley attempts to derive the meaning of “intelligence” to a full classroom at Stafford Creek Corrections Center (SCCC).

student-portrait

We at SPP would like to thank Rus for initiating the first ever live animal lecture at SCCC. With the inspiration of this fantastic creature, the students were more engaged and inquisitive than ever.

Roots of Success Graduation Speech

This speech was presented by Roots of Success graduate Robert Mayo on July 22, 2015; shared here with his permission.

Good Afternoon.

My name is Robert Mayo and I’m here today because I completed Roots of Success.

I would like to take this moment to show the utmost respect and give gratitude towards all of those who were involved in Roots of Success.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Raquel Pinderhughes [Roots founder], Mr. Aleksinski [SCCC Roots Liaison and Classification Counselor] and the rest of the supporting cast up here today that made all of this possible. Next, I would like to thank Mr. Walrond, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Duhaime and Mr. Powers for doing such an amazing job instructing us. And lastly, I would like to thank all of us here today who are receiving certificates, because today we all proved to ourselves that hard work, dedication and determination truly pays off!

SCCC-Roots-graduate-Mayo

Mr. Mayo gives a speech at the Roots of Success graduation. Photo by Joslyn Trivett.

Before Roots of Success I had the mind frame to put things off until tomorrow. I was a procrastinator and I hated to try anything new or anything I wasn’t good at. For example, PUBLIC SPEAKING! This has been one of my biggest fears throughout my entire life. Even as a kid, I can still recall the feelings I felt when having to speak in front of the class. My heartbeat would start to speed up. My hands would become all sweaty. My armpits would start to drip. And my mind would picture everyone in the classroom laughing at me. IT WAS HORRIBLE! I remember telling Mr. Walrond about this when I first started Roots of Success. He told me that by the end of this course not only will I be able to speak in front of any crowd, but I will be able to do it with confidence and conviction. That conversation was just a few short months ago and today I’m happy to be able to have Mr. Walrond’s prediction come to fruition.

50+ inmates graduate from Roots of Success. Photo by Joslyn Trivett.

Over 50 Roots of Success graduates listening to a speech. Photo by Joslyn Trivett.

You see, Roots of Success didn’t only teach me how to make my environment a better place for me to live in, but it also taught me how to become a better person within my environment. My favorite modules were “Community Organizing and Leadership” and “Financial Literacy and Social Entreprneurship.” These two modules really hit home for me. I never realized all the procedures being taken to make certain laws come into effect. I was unaware of people going to local town hall meetings to fight against the major corporations that are placing factories inside of their communities without their permission. Or the ongoing battle that’s been prevalent all across the U.S. between minorities and The Department of Justice on police brutality. Or the parents who protest constantly about the lack of education their children are receiving throughout their low income neighborhoods. If I choose to fight when I get out of here these are the types of fights that I want to be a part of. As a collective, we have the power to make a difference! We have the power to make our voices heard! We have the power to take action! So why don’t we?

Roots of Success students study together in a group.

Roots of Success students study together in a group during a regular class. Photo by Joslyn Trivett.

In the “Financial Literacy and Social Entrepreneurship” module, I learned how to fill out an application correctly. I learned what I should wear, how I should talk and what I should do when going in for an interview. I know now how to set short and long term goals, how to budget my finances and how to live comfortably within my means. I got something from each and every module, but these were the two modules that woke me up the most. I’m done living life in a daydream and I’m ready to fight for what it is that I want.

Roots of success was essential to my growth. It was the first building-block to the foundation of my future. The only negative thing that I can say about Roots of Success, is that it’s already over. I hope that eventually there will be an additional course offered to us here at Stafford Creek. If possible, I would like to be the first person to sign up and I can guarantee you that many others would be soon to follow.

Roots of Success is a Success!

Before I leave here today I would like to mention three things that I can now say about living green.

I KNOW IT!

I LOVE IT!

AND I BELIEVE IN IT!

Thank you for your time.

Recent Roots of Success graduates proudly display their certificates

Recent Roots of Success graduates proudly display their graduation certificates. Photo by Joslyn Trivett.

For more information on the Roots of Success, please contact the program coordinator Emily Passarelli at passaree@evergreen.edu.