52 - Earth School Hawaii
[00:00:00]
Christa Hein: Hey there, welcome to the Farm Educator’s Roadmap. I'm Christa Hein, former nonprofit girl turned farm education entrepreneur. I've spent the last 30 years creating hands-on programs that connect people to the land animals, and the traditions that nourish our daily lives.
If you're listening, you probably believe what I do, that farm education is needed now more than ever. Not just on rural farms, but in suburbs, cities, and everywhere In between. In this podcast, you'll hear real stories and practical advice from farm educators all across the country, people who are creating change through their programs in creative and inspiring ways.
Whether you're dreaming about starting your first program, are already knee deep in your own farm education work, or are just curious about how others are impacting their communities through farm education. You're in the right place. [00:01:00] Let's dig in.
Christa Hein: Welcome back to the Farm Educator's Roadmap. Today we're heading to the island of Kauai to visit Earth School Hawaii, a K through eighth learning community. It began in 2017 with just three children learning out of a bus and has grown into a non-profit school with a team of educators and plans for an entirely new campus.
Instead of trying to bring every experience onto one campus, Earth School has built relationships that allow students to learn directly from the people who know the land best. Along the way, children are growing food, exploring medicinal plants, caring for the environment, and discovering that education doesn't have to stop at the classroom door.
And that's especially interesting for us as farm educators because Earth School isn't operating a traditional teaching farm. They found ways to give meaningful experiences to children with food, [00:02:00] plants, animals, and agriculture by building relationships with people and organizations already doing that work in their community.
Joining me today is founder Christina Zimmerman. Christina, welcome to the show.
Christina Zimmerman: Thank you for having me.
Christa Hein: Yes. So, you grew up in Ohio, where I'm based, and also taught in Kentucky public schools, and then eventually ended up teaching sixth grade in Hawaii. What brought you all the way to Kauai in the first place?
Christina Zimmerman: I know, from Ohio. Kind of a crazy story. I was actually living in Kentucky at the time and went to Eastern Kentucky University, and I taught in Lexington for a couple of years. And I came here to visit a friend for spring break for a week, and I was in my younger 20s, and I don't think I'd ever been further than Florida at that point in my life. The West Coast was out of realm.
And I came to visit a friend, and I fell so in love with the culture here and the island and the [00:03:00] people and the lifestyle. And I was young, and I remember just thinking, "I'll just go for a year, and I'll just.... - there's kids everywhere. I could teach anywhere." And so, it was definitely meant to be a one-year adventure.
And back then, I couldn't interview with the public school systems. You had to be here in person. And so, I couldn't get a job and then come over here and see if it worked out. I just had to hope for the best. And so, I finished my school year in Kentucky, and I packed a couple suitcases, and I think I had $1,000 to my name. And I was like, "Worst case scenario, I'll just come back if I don't get a job."
And I came, I interviewed, and they hired me same day. Knowing what I know now, public schools always need teachers and it probably would've worked out. But I ended up in the public school systems for a couple years out here before I started this. But yeah, my one-year adventure has turned into like, this 16-year adventure so far and a whole lifestyle. So, I don't have any plans of leaving anytime soon.
Christa Hein: So where did your [00:04:00] interest in environmental and place-based education come from? Was that already part of who you were as a teacher, or did living in Hawaii change the way you thought about it?
Christina Zimmerman: I always loved, obviously, nature growing up, but no, it was all formed out here. I can remember just being in the public school system, and being inside all day from 7:00 AM until 4:00 PM, and going to work in the dark and leaving in the dark, just like a lot of public school teachers have to do.
And then seeing everybody around me here. Obviously, most people around you are tourists, and they're here on vacation. And I remember just thinking, "Everybody's outside playing in waterfalls all day long, and I'm stuck in this classroom in these four walls basically full-time," 40, 50 hours a week.
And I was like, "God, there's got to be a different way." These kids are living here, and we're so fortunate for where we live and what we're surrounded by. Like, why are we just sitting inside all day long talking about the trees, or talking about a plant, or teaching science through this [00:05:00] textbook?
And I also remember thinking, "I'm not doing this for 30 years.” I don't want to be in this classroom for 30 years and be doing the same thing over and over again with this system that I slowly started realizing wasn't working for the children, but also myself. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm just…I have to figure something else out."
And so, I was just 100% motivated by my surroundings here. We live in a lush, tropical, the most beautiful island in the world with fruit trees at your doorstep and the most beautiful beaches and hikes and everything. And I was like, "I have to get outside. I have to learn more. I have to figure out where I am and get these kids involved." And it just evolved naturally from there.
Christa Hein: So, I read that a few families approached you and asked if you would homeschool their middle school-aged children. Can you take us back there? What exactly were they proposing, and what made you say yes?
Christina Zimmerman: Yeah. We're on a very small island, so we have a local elementary school. And then for middle school, they have to be bussed a good 45 [00:06:00] minutes away to the other side of the island, just because our numbers are so small here. And a lot of families don't want to do that, because they're putting their kids on that bus for hours a day or they're driving it themselves, and it's just a lot. So, a lot of families will homeschool or do some sort of alternative education for the middle school and high school years.
And I taught their kids in sixth grade at the public school, and they're like, "Would you just quit and homeschool our kids?" And I'm like, "Yes. Yes, I will. That sounds amazing. Sure." And so that was my out. I thank God every day I had that because I feel like I don't know if I would've just like, up and quit and been able to start this by myself. It definitely naturally evolved into the next step.
And then I had a group of middle school boys, just three of them for a year, and we would do project-based learning. I would take them surfing. We would be on hikes. People would just see us out, and they'd be like. “What are you doing? What is this?" I'm like, "We already did everything." We got through our academics in two or three hours. And they're surfers, and they were in a band, and I’d get them playing little gigs around the island and just… [00:07:00] alternative.
And people were kind of like, “That's cool. Can you take my fourth grader and my fifth grader, and my....how about a kindergartner? Can you do something like this?" And so, I guess I just saw a need. And I was like, "Oh, people like this alternative way of thinking? Okay. Sure.”
The next year I did a kindergarten group because there was a huge demand for kindergartners. And the year after, one of my best friends who has been teaching here for years and years, she happened to be off-island at that time, and I'm like, "Come back. I have a job for you." I was like, “Help me. We can do this together."
And then it just kind of kept going from there, but it was like the demand was so high, and it's really just… it grew super organically. There was no Instagram. There was no advertising. There was nothing. It was just word of mouth and parents seeing their kids out in nature and learning, and just something different. And the demand just grew fast and totally organically.
Christa Hein: So, I read that the first students were learning out of a bus. So, I need this [00:08:00] bus story. Was the bus your classroom, your transportation, or a little of both?
Christina Zimmerman: I, actually at that time, was living out of a school bus in Haena. It was a renovated bus situation, and the family who I rented from had a kindergarten daughter, and they were like, "Can't we just do it at.... We'll do it in your home." And I was like, "Done."
Looking back at it, I love that I have grown over the years. I'm like, “Oh, but that would be so hard to do right now.” Because it was like, my home and a classroom. I had no kids at the time. I was younger, and it was just.... It worked. But it was out in Haena, and it was a school bus that I lived in. And I renovated the living room to a classroom, and I did it all out of there. It was next to this tree house. It was out of a fairy tale book.
It's funny to look back at now. But there was no budget then. I'm like, “How do I rent a space? Do I.... How do I even do this?” You know, because you really do need shelter. We're not outside 24/7. You need a classroom. You need a place to still educate. And so, yeah, I just basically did it out of my house.
And [00:09:00] then, the next year, I'm like, “I think I need a classroom.” This isn't going to work to have kindergartners in my house. That's actually where the name…originally was the name Homeschool Now. And so we were taking homeschooled students and creating this program for them. Obviously, we naturally evolved more to an earth school and environmental education. But at that time, we were in a tree house school bus in Hawaii.
Christa Hein: Fantastic. So, can you give us a sense of what Earth School is and looks like now? How many students are you serving? How are the ages grouped?
Christina Zimmerman: Yep. Fast-forward, I think we've been.... This might be our 10th year, ninth or 10th year. And now we rent facilities where we hold a real classroom. This year we have grades kindergarten through seventh, so it just depends on the demand. Usually we go through eighth, but we're always limited on classrooms.
I do small group education. So, I max out at 12 to 14 kids per class, and we do project-based learning. So, it looks like a lot of hands-on projects. We do a lot of entrepreneurship. Any way that [00:10:00] we can get the kids engaged in learning, child-interest learning.
It's really simple. I don't have this amazing philosophy that's New Age and this is how you do it. It's almost like the opposite, right? Like, we're going backwards. We're getting to know the kids. We're seeing what their interests are. We're creating lessons and projects based on what engages them at the time.
We're getting the kids outside a ton. The campuses that we rent right now are just beautiful, and have waterfalls in the background, and green grass. And if they're reading, we're like, "Go under the plumeria tree and go read." You know, you don't need to sit inside. If you're having a moment, go garden for a little while. Go take some laps outside.
It’s small group. It's flexibility. We try to keep the program in general just very well-rounded. They have a general ed teacher where they're separated by kindergarten, first, second, third. So, they have a general ed teacher in there doing their project-based learning with small group, but we have a lot of extracurricular teachers who push in. They have Spanish once a week, and they have ukulele once a week, and they have Hawaii Ana once a [00:11:00] week, and they have gardening once a week. All of these other music and art and fun teachers are kind of pushing in throughout.
And then usually a day or two a week we're just off campus. We're on a hike. We're learning in nature. We're working with all the other nonprofits on island. We're packing lunches for the elderly. We're just involved in the community in whatever way that looks that week. It truthfully changes all the time.
That's what's so amazing about being a private program, we have total flexibility. They're doing a science project and they're super engaged, there's no bell schedule. It's not like, "Oop, 12:05. Okay, switch to math." It's just like, "Wow, these kids are rocking it. Keep going." We really go with the kids' flow.
It's just a really well-rounded nurturing program. The goal is for your kids to want to come to school every day and be happy. And if we've done that then, we've done our job.
Christa Hein: I read on your website that you have an approach to learning called the three waves of learning: proficiency, [00:12:00] thematic learning, and creative expression. Rather than defining those, can you show us how one topic might move through all three waves?
Christina Zimmerman: That's a good question. So, most of those will focus on environmental education, because we spend so much time working with all these other nonprofits and other programs on island. We look at common core for language arts and math because it is transient here. People are on and off island every couple years. And so, we are like Waldorf inspired and Montessori inspired, but also we want the kids to be proficient in language arts and math if they move back to the mainland. They're not behind in whatever way that looks like for them.
So, we could have a topic of like, basically around the holidays, we always do a really fun entrepreneurship project where it's math based. You're going to make a product of anything. It can be sourdough bread, it can be bookmarks, it can be whatever your interest is. The boys usually build things. We do a lot of woodworking, so the boys love to do woodworking things. And then we do a [00:13:00] whole math unit on that, so that's going to handle the common core. That's going to be your proficiency we do.
Depending on what grade you're in, if you're younger, you're doing just adding and subtracting, and you're learning about what money looks like. If you're the older ones, you're going to do something a little bit harder, So we're going to give you a loan. How much money do you need? What's your startup going to look like? Do your budget. Okay, now you're going to make your product. You're going to sell your product.
And we have a big holiday, entrepreneurship. All the parents come and community members come to go shopping for the holidays per se. And the older ones, they do more like, profit loss. They do a real budget. We give them real money. They have to go and make this product. They have to sell it. What did you learn?
The little ones are usually selling cookies or something, but still equally cute. They learn to add and subtract numbers. But so, there's the math that's in there, the common core that we had to reach for the year, there's the project based… and it usually takes a month or so to get this through.
And then we have a real show. Like, we'll rent out one of the classroom spaces. We advertise to the community. [00:14:00] Our older ones will do all the marketing, make flyers, put them around town. The parents share it on social media. It would be like, a whole six-week unit on some sort of project that takes place.
Which kind of works with like, transient families who are here. I'm like, "If you want to come for six weeks, this is what your kid is going to learn for these six weeks. If you're going to come for a whole year, it's going to look like this." We're able to do these like, units that take them through certain standards they have to have regardless in a project-based learning way, and then obviously, a delivery of some sort.
Christa Hein: That sounds amazing. So, I'm curious, with so many different ages and interests, how does your teaching team plan together? Is each educator creating their own curriculum, or are you working on shared themes or dividing subjects? How does it look?
Christina Zimmerman: We do a lot of teamwork, only because we like to share resources and it's nice to have other thoughts. We do a lot of child interest learning. So, every year it does switch up. [00:15:00] I have really, really good teachers who've worked for me for a really, really long time, and so it really depends.
Like, third grade last year, these kids were so into Pokémon. We made so many math units on Pokémon. And this year I'm like, "Ready," you know? And they're like, "Ew, Pokémon." I'm like, "Oh, okay. What, what's cool this year?" You know? So, we switch it up.
So, we do work together. We do a lot of cross grades. We do the kindergarten and first are together a lot, second and third are together a lot. The older ones are together a lot. And then we always plan weekly, doing projects or an art project collaborative something. Even the lunches and recesses, and when they're around, two grades are usually together multiple times a day. So, it's kind of nice when it's academic time, it's like smaller group, 12 to 14 kids. Then when it's social time, there's like 24 to 30 kids per location to help with the social skills.
They do reading buddies. They do projects together. We always go really big for holidays. I just love holidays like, Halloween and Christmas and all of them. So, we get everybody together for those ones. We do [00:16:00] music shows for the parents, and plays and such. So, those are always done together with multiple kids. I love the olders learning from the little and the littles learning from the olders. So important for their growth. We try to keep them together as much as we can.
And then educators, when they work so close together anyways, they're always sharing what they're doing. But we don't have a set curriculum every year. We have a lot that I will eventually put out there to share because we've learned, and definitely have some blueprints of how we've been doing things over the years, but it just changes every year. But we still do the same, bigger projects, but it really just depends on the kids.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So, I want to ask about some specific programs that you have. So, you have a weekly program called Herbal Explorers. Can you tell me about how that program works, what children might do, and what you hope students gain by learning about medicinal plants and herbal traditions?
Christina Zimmerman: Yeah. That's just one after school program that we have that's open [00:17:00] to all community members. And we take a plant per week, usually, maybe every couple weeks, depending on how in-depth we can get. And it's an after school class on a said plant. And then the kids will learn all of the medicinal values of the plant, where the plant comes from, maybe what it tastes like. Obviously, if it's edible. If it's not edible, we talk about why it's not edible, what we can't do with it. But every plant that we bring in has a purpose for the kids mostly.
And so, we either do an art project with it or we do a cooking project with it. What nutrition it brings to us, we make a lot of salves with the kids with it. They learn, how it heals wounds or whatever that looks like. But we do a lot of that besides just that one course. We do a lot of that just throughout the year in general.
I have a first grader in the program, my own child, and when we are at the beaches or we're hiking, he will point these plants out to me, and be like, "Mom, don't you know what this does?" And I'm like, "No, I don't know that. How do you know that?" You know, and it's like he really knows. He's six. He knows more than I do about certain plants on this island. I'm like, boom, [00:18:00] that's why we're doing what we're doing. Like, okay, it's working cause you're six and you know more than me.
I have certified nature teachers who teach their nature days, and they're out with him a lot. And they obviously know more…they're learning. I mean, they're learning from such a young age on what these plants can do, and they know what they can eat, and what they can't eat when they're out. They know the nutritional values of things, even like the big things, like the coconuts obviously, and the big things that we have here. But it'll be like a tiny plant that's on a trail to the beach I've never even noticed before, and they point that out to me. I'm like, "Oh, okay. So you know.” We really want the kids to be aware of what herbs and plants in general are around us.
We have a gardening class and we plant our herbs, the big ones like basil, and we make pesto with it, and little stuff like that. But even so, the wild plants that are around here that they will go to the beaches or they'll go on a hike, and they'll pick this plant that we know is somewhere along the trail or the trees. And we bring it back into the classroom and we study it and [00:19:00] talk about what it can do for our bodies. And they are so well aware, more than I ever would have thought to be at that age. And they love it.
Christa Hein: Yeah, it's incredible. So, I also want to ask about beekeeping because the pictures that you have on Instagram are so fantastic. So, I see students suited up, I’m imagining they're learning about pollination, looking at the hive up close. So, what does that experience actually look like with a group of kids? Is it a one-time trip into the hive, or are they actually working in the hives throughout the season?
Christina Zimmerman: Yeah, we work with another nonprofit here. It's called Stellar Gardens. They're incredible. They are beekeeping pros and the best teachers on island. We love them. One day, once we have our campus open, we'll have our own bees, but we do go there to learn with them multiple times.
But the kids love it. They love putting the bee suits on. They study the same hives. They make their own honey. The whole process is [00:20:00] so adorable. Obviously, the cute little bee suits help, all the.... It makes for really cute pictures. But they know so much about bees, even when they're not at Stellar Gardens working with Jackson and Melissa with the beekeeping.
We have our own gardens at school, and our gardening teacher, she's also a beekeeper. She's, oh my gosh, Jasmine's incredible. She's been working for a nonprofit in O'ahu. She has her own nonprofit here. So, she teaches the kids about it all the time. So, we have a whole pollinator garden that she does a unit on for pretty much half the year.
And so, they learn about pollinator plants. We learn about what pollinator plants are and why they're here and why we need them. And so, even though they're not working with bees directly every day, they are working with pollinator plants for the entire school year to learn about beekeeping, essentially.
And then we go over there and work with them to kind of close the units. But, yeah, it's pretty cute.
Christa Hein: So, you've also taken students to Kauai Animal Education Farm, where they're meeting rescued farm [00:21:00] animals, and to the Community Agriculture Center, where they're getting into the fields and harvesting food. So, how do you decide which experiences belong out in the community rather than trying to recreate them yourselves?
Christina Zimmerman: That's a great question. Because our campus isn't built yet, like, I have this vision, obviously, of having my own farm, my own garden, and my bee, all of it will be there eventually, right? But what's so great about what I do is it's all here. And we have incredible other nonprofits who are already doing this work, and very important work.
And this community is so incredible. I call everybody, I'm like, "I have kids. Can I bring them? What can you teach this class of 20 kids? How can I..." And very rarely is somebody like, "Oh, no, like, I don't, I don't want kids here." I mean, it's like, what better way to give back in the world than to educate children, right? That is why we're here. We have to keep this next generation educated on these things, or we're going to have a hard time surviving without nature.
So, Kauai Animal Rescue [00:22:00] Center, they're amazing over there. They get all the local animals who need rescuing, and they have a whole nonprofit, and they always need support. We work with the Hui at the end of the road. We work with Kilauea Ag Center. Basically, all the other nonprofits here, we work alongside them. So, it's not like we're there once a year, and we go see them. Sometimes we're at these places once a month.
A lot of them are stewardship projects. So, we work with the taro farmers and we help weed their gardens. We help get the slugs off of their taro. So, there's things that we're going back for monthly or even more frequently. With the Hui at the end of the road, the kids have planted their own gardens. They have such ownership of a lot of these places, that it's like that is their classroom.
We don't go there one time and say, "Oh, teach us about this one thing. Okay, see you next year." It's more like partnerships with a lot of these places. And they're all doing such incredible work, and our goal of coming there is to not just, [00:23:00] yes, we learn from them, but also to give back wherever we go.
So, our kids work. They get their hands dirty, and they plant trees, and they take out the taro, and they're knee-deep in the lo'i. And they're learning. But they're also learning that we are guests here, and we're super fortunate to be here. And part of being here, and part of being on a small island and working with all these people, is to give back and to love where we live.
And they learn that it takes a lot of hard work to run these nonprofits as far as, like, the farms and all of it. There's so much dirty work that goes into maintaining, all of this, the land here. And so, I think that that's just a huge lesson like, we don't just get the mangoes, the avocados, right? We don't just get the poi. It doesn't just.... I know it shows up in a bag at your doorstep sometimes or at the grocery store, but, like, how does it get there? What does that look like along the way?
So, they put a lot of work in. And sometimes they complain, especially the older ones. They'll be like, "Ugh, it's hard. I don't want to." I'm like, "I know. [00:24:00] I hear you. This is hard and it is hard work, but this is also how we get our fruit at the end of the day, and this is how we get our vegetables. And this is where the hard work comes from, and you to reap the benefits.” We have to give back, and we have to contribute.
Especially my older ones. You know, obviously kindergartners and the younger ones, it's definitely minimal. But my older ones can do it, And it's good for them to get dirty and give back and learn about just taking care of the place that you live.
Christa Hein: So logistically, what does a relationship like that require from both sides? Who plans what the children will do, and how do you connect it back to what they're studying at school? And how far ahead are you planning all of it with the different organizations?
Christina Zimmerman: Totally. I mean, now we've had such a relationship with a lot of these non-profits, now that we've been doing this for so long. For years it's just kind of like, "Okay, beginning of the year again. Here we go. Let's get these dates set. Here's how we're doing it." We have the flow.
Obviously, the general ed teachers go to all these days with the teachers, so they're there and they [00:25:00] see what they're doing. And then they're taking a lot of that education and then taking it back into the classroom. Anything that they happen to be learning about from all these other non-profits and partnerships, they're journaling about it the next day. They're doing a math project with it. We do so much art with it. What did we learn about? Hey, let's create a story about it now.
So, we do a lot of cross-curricular between what we're learning when we're not in the classroom, and then when we're back in the classroom we do have to learn, to read and write and have math. Then we're taking that content and we're putting it into a kid-friendly way, but making it engaging and also, an interest. They've just learned something, and now we're going to put it into context to make sense.
It does take a lot of planning. That's primarily what I do for a living half the time is getting a schedule together and making everything work. And carpooling, and all the fun logistics behind it. But we just have really great community members on this island. We go everywhere. We really do. And it constantly changes.
I find a new farm that [00:26:00] just got bought or a new artist that just came here, and I call them up. I'm like, "Hi, can I bring some kids? Do you want to come in? How does this work?" So, I'm always trying to change it up and expose the kids to more. Or we have a lot of traveling people who come through. Like, we had an NBA basketball player come through last year. He was here for like a month, and I got wind he was here. I'm like, "Oh, I'm calling him. I'm going to get him to come do basketball with these kids."
They thought it was the coolest thing ever. Some 6'5" guy who comes and teaches them basketball a couple times. They thought it was the coolest thing ever. But it's little things like that, they'll remember that for a long time because a cool guy came to town and played basketball for a month. People are coming through here all the time, and I try to tap into what that looks like as much as I can.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So, agriculture shows up in another part of the school day too, and it's something that all the kids care about, lunch. So, you've partnered with the Time Culinary Market to provide fresh farm-to-table lunches using locally sourced ingredients. And I'm sure plenty of schools just find the simplest way to feed the kids. Why [00:27:00] did you decide that the food itself needed to reflect the values of Earth School? And then how does that partnership work in practice?
Christina Zimmerman: Yeah. So, we love them. Auntie Paulina is the mastermind behind this project. She's been a chef here forever. And we just started realizing, like we all have for so many years, like, "Wow, these kids are eating school lunches half the time, and it's not the best options for them."
So, she rents a kitchen, and she gets locally sourced everything essentially, and she has a whole team behind her. And she makes a menu every month, and it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And you can order lunch for the day. She has it delivered straight to the classroom, and it's all.... I mean, it's good stuff. I mean, like,, I order, fish and vegetables and rice and pizza or whatever.
And so, my older ones love it. Sometimes my little one, it's a little almost too healthy for them, you know? They like what they like in their homemade lunches from Mom and Dad. But it really reflects who we are [00:28:00] in the sense of, once our campus is open, we'll obviously have our own farm to table lunches that we make in our kitchen and go from there.
But we do a lot of cooking with the kids in general, we'll go to these farms, we'll get the food, and the next day we make a big project together. I don't just like, go to the grocery and bring a bag in and say, "Okay, now we're doing a project. Here's what we bought at Foodland today." It's very much like, "This is where it comes from. This is now how you cook it. This is how we eat together." So, they're used to that. We do a lot of it.
But to have access to a healthy lunch that comes delivered to your door every day is incredible, and we owe that all to Auntie Paulina. She's incredible, and she's the mastermind behind it all. And she has her team. And she just saw a need in the community. And she supports all the local farmers, and gardeners, and it's a lot of work. Because it'd be really easy just to go to Costco and grab all the lettuce and call it good, you know. She drives all over island to get what she needs for the week, and has people deliver it basically straight to the [00:29:00] classroom. And she's incredible.
And she keeps it affordable for the families. I mean, out here we go to the local health food store, it's like a $30 lunch. We're like, "Ugh." Like, it's like $10. Kids buy it, parents order it the night before. She has a whole system set up, and we're so fortunate to just reap her benefits.
Christa Hein: Well, you have so much going on there. You have a sizable group of educators, all these different partnerships. So, I'm curious, as the founder, how has your own job changed over the years? How much time are you actually teaching now versus managing staff, families, partnerships, fundraising, everything else that comes with running a nonprofit?
Christina Zimmerman: I taught the first couple of years. So, I ran this, started, made it into a nonprofit, started looking into fundraising, was teaching full-time. This is before I had my own kids, so I had a little bit more time on my hands. Now I couldn't ever do it.
But I now am the director. So I'm in the classroom three mornings a week from, like, 8:00 to 12:00, and I'm working directly with the kids, because that's [00:30:00] still....I didn't do that for, like, a year, and I felt like it started messing with my head. I'm like, “I got to get back in. I need to see why I'm doing what I'm doing,"
Because there's so much backend to this, the fundraising, the grant writing, I mean, it's never-ending work that needs to be done. And a lot of it, unfortunately, is on the computer or talking on the phone or something that's not my favorite thing to do. And so, I know in order to keep the balance for me to keep this going is I need to be with the kids as well. Because then I see. I'm like, "Oh, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. This works."
But yeah, I'd say I'm in there three mornings a week. I do cooking projects with the kids, or I'm doing small group or pulling one aside for reading who needs a little bit extra help or whatever that looks like. I do a lot of the field trips. And the rest of the time, I do the backend. I do a ton of grant writing. It feels like the majority of my job right now to keep this going. All the fundraising. We are a nonprofit, so keeping everything up to date with that.
We have a big project right now, obviously, to build our campus. I'm doing permitting. I'm doing architectural designs. I'm doing all the fun things that go into [00:31:00] growth, and it's super exciting. And when I have my days of, like, “This is insane”, but I'm like, "We're growing." It's growing pains. It's what's supposed to happen. If it were easy, everybody would do it. So, I'm busy. Very, very busy. It's a lot.
Christa Hein: So, I want to talk briefly about your marketing and outreach because I see you have an Instagram audience of around 20,000 people, which is much larger than most individual schools build. So was growing that audience something that you approached intentionally, or did it just happen as people started responding to what you were sharing?
Christina Zimmerman: That's a good question. I've actually.... I don't even think we had, I know we didn't have Instagram when we started this. So, it's probably only been, I don't know, maybe five years or so. And I started putting some effort into it, and then I got so burnt out. I'm like, "I can't. I don't want to spend my time doing this."
You have to keep up with the algorithms and see what people are doing. That was when Reels were coming out. I'm like, "Why do we have to have videos? I thought we just did pictures." I was like, “I'm not doing this," you know? [00:32:00] I don't have the time or energy, or I don't care, enough. I just was not into it.
And I really didn't use it for marketing, because I feel like we're on this small island. It's so little here. But then my sister-in-law was like, "Can I take it over?" I'm like, "Oh, yes. Yes, you can. If you want to do this, have at it." She's much better at it than me. So, I just give her all the content and she does the technology behind it. That's not really my forte. But I think we had one post that kind of went viral, and that just grew the following kind of naturally. And then it's been pretty consistent since then.
But I think that it's people are interested in Hawaii in general. Like, it's such a hip word. It's like, Hawaii, what do they do out there? What is it like? It's so different than the mainland or other places. And it is unique what we have going, the kids are playing in a waterfall on a Tuesday at 9:00. People are like, "How? What does this look like?"
But because we do have a following now, I get a lot of people from the mainland who are like, "We want to come over there. How do we make [00:33:00] this happen? What does it look like?" But it's super hard to come here. I mean, we have a huge housing crisis. We have tons of issues just like anywhere else in the world. And so, I think that it's like this dream, and some people can make it happen. But majority of people can't. We have limited jobs. It's limited options of being here.
A lot of times I question social media in general, like oversharing or what that looks like. But I think my purpose behind having a social media account in general is just sharing what we're doing and hopefully motivating other people to do what we do. So, I take a lot of calls, especially from California. They'll call, and be like, "How did you do this?" And I'll take any call for free. I'm like, "I'll tell you how to do this. It's not easy." And it's not like…you don't have to grow it to what I've grown it to.
But it's a lot of moms who are like, "I just want to like start a small pod, and how do, what does this look like on a day-to-day?" And so, I walk a lot of people through the process because anybody can do it. And it doesn't even have to be in Hawaii. It can be anywhere in the world. I don't feel like I have this [00:34:00] patent approach nobody else can take. I'm sharing to be like, there is alternative ways to educate, and it works, and it's not.... I'm not some $60,000 a year private school. I do everything so low budget. It's open to anybody. Anybody can do what I'm doing.
So, I feel like the point is to share it's working, and the kids are learning, and we're not behind. Our kids are, you know, advanced, and they're reading, and they're writing, and they're doing it all. We're not just like in the garden all day long, but we have a balance to it. And I feel like the goal is to be like, "Look what we're doing, and you can do it, too," is really why I have a.... sharing what we're doing in the first place.
Christa Hein: Yeah, it's so inspirational. And now you're working to make an even bigger leap with your first campus. So, as you're working to build the campus with these dedicated spaces for academics, art, movement, wellness, agriculture, and community programs, what problems will that [00:35:00] campus solve that your current setup can't?
Christina Zimmerman: Yeah, sustainability for the most part. I mean, we rent facilities right now, and as you can imagine, commercial facilities are very expensive in Hawaii. So, sustainability-wise, it would be huge for us.
So, we have land, and we have a capital campaign, and we're working on the permitting and such. But having our own campus, to not have the overhead of rent, is huge. And so, I've always kept this as affordable as I can for anybody in the community. We have a huge scholarship program. It's the lowest cost school on island in general. So, I'd never want this to be out of reach for anybody.
And so having that campus and sustainability will keep tuition super low. Our biggest overhead by far, 70% of our budget, is rent. So, we really just need to get this campus built to keep it affordable for everybody.
Christa Hein: And do you hope to be able to serve more students or offer more programs to the [00:36:00] community, or both?
Christina Zimmerman: Yeah. So, the goal is to be able to have more kids in general. To have more transient families. It's a very transient place. They come for six months, they come for three months, and I'm like, "Ugh, just, you know, we don't have the space for it.” But we want to.
So ideally, with our project-based learning, how we'll organize it with the new campus is like, if you want to come for six weeks, here's exactly how it's laid out. So you can choose when in the year you want to come. Because you don't want to miss the whale unit because it's really fun in the wintertime, and you don't want to miss the bees. So, I feel like people will be able to book their stay here based on what we're doing, and kids will be able to push in and out.
And then definitely more after-school stuff for the whole community. Again, we lack space. We have so many talented people here who have really cool things to offer. But a commercial space, if they can even find it, will be like, "You need to pay $125 an hour to rent this for an hour." And it's like, well, that doesn't make sense because then you have to get enough kids. You can't lose money.
The goal is we're going to have it paid off before we [00:37:00] open. And then it's a come rent it or come use it for free. And it has to all be kid-based and such. But, yeah, we just want anything, movement. We have so many cool movement people here. I feel like that's a huge part for what these kids need for after school.
And then workshops. I feel like for the tourism market, come learn about what we're doing here. Come make your leis. Come do a fun cooking class. Come all cultural-based and get people involved and motivated and see what we're doing. And hopefully, bring that back home to wherever they are.
And we're so unique here. People come from all over the world to this tiny little rock, so you don't know who you can meet that's going to motivate them to bring that back somewhere else in the world and change something of where they are. So, we have such a unique opportunity to meet more people.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So, you started with just three students and no grand plan to build any of this, and now you're working on building a campus that can serve children from around the world it sounds like. [00:38:00] So as you look back over your journey, is there any advice you'd share with others who are in the early stages of creating their own educational organizations?
Christina Zimmerman: Just do it. I tell people that all the time. Because I will have these meetings. I'm like, "We'll do this and this," and I give them like this whole checklist, and they're like, "Ooh," like, "That's a lot," you know? I'm like, “It is." I'm not saying this is an easy journey. There's nothing easy about it. But I will say my journey has flowed from day one.
In the early stages I would be like, "If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't, we'll just keep this going as long as it's working." Now I feel like I have to keep it going because I have a whole school around it. But if it's supposed to be there, I do feel like it flows very naturally.
I had no intention of doing this. I had gotten my master's in public school education. I was by the books and in that box. This was not where I was going with it. I tell families you can start small. It doesn't have to be this big. But don't stop. But it, I [00:39:00] promise you it works.
I can remember the first couple years, probably two or three years, I can remember thinking like, "Gosh, am I doing the right thing? Is this right? Am I messing these kids up? I don't know.” It was just so much unknown, and definitely unwiring of my own brain. Because I was a public school kid. I did my master's. I did exactly as I was told to do to, follow the path. And alternative education definitely makes you question that.
Obviously 10 years in now, I'm like, "Thank God I did this, it is working.” I see it in my own school all the time. We get transient kids or a public school kid who it didn't work. And I can see such a difference in the kids that I've had from kindergarten when they're in middle school compared to getting a new middle school kid, say from the mainland, somewhere from a different situation. And not to that child's fault at all, but you can tell such a difference what their background was.
And it is working, and it does work. And I have had kids who I taught in elementary who are no off in college or doing even cooler things in the world, and [00:40:00] I'm like, "It worked.”
I also do preach, like I talk about public schools a lot, but obviously public schools are here for a reason. We need them. I'm a huge public school advocate. I'm a private school advocate. I'm a Waldorf, whatever works for your kids. I have three of my own children, and they could not all be more different. I don't know what they're all going to need, right?
So, I feel like we have a lot of families in our program that they have one child with us, and one child at a private Christian school, and one child who's homeschooled because they're just different.
I'm not saying my school is the right answer for every kid, but we do get a lot of kids from public schools who didn't fit that mold, right? It's hard for them to sit for six or seven hours a day. In general, we're really boy heavy. Shocking. Boys have a harder time to sit still for seven hours a day and do worksheets or whatever that looks like. So, to each their own.
We're so lucky that we have options living here. It's not the right answer for every child, but it helps a certain child who might not fit the mold of a certain school. And so, I feel like it's an option for somebody else, and it's [00:41:00] so beneficial to the kids.
My own child, he's my oldest, and he's in first grade now, and every day I'm like, "Oh, thank God I did this. Thank God I did this." But yeah, but I wouldn't do it now. I'm too busy. There's no way I could go through the startup stage with three kids, and I'm just like, "Oh, I'm so glad in my 20s I chose to do this." Now my own kids are reaping the benefits. I don't know what I would do without this.
And it's just, it just works. So I just tell people, like, A, call me, I can help you, and B, just keep going. Just keep going. Maybe it's five kids. Maybe it's 10 kids. You don't have to get to a massive school. It's a lot of homeschooling moms. I'm like, "Do a co-op." It can, it totally works. You just have to, like, stick with it and don't stop when you hit a road bump.
Christa Hein: Yeah. I love that Earth School is giving us this completely different way to think about farm and environmental education where you don't even necessarily have to own every animal or grow every crop or become the expert, that you're helping children build relationships with the people already growing food, already caring for [00:42:00] the animals and doing that work in their own community.
Christina, thank you so much for giving us such a good look behind the scenes at how you've built that at Earth School.
Christina Zimmerman: You're so welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. To our listeners, I hope this episode has you looking around your own community a little differently. There may already be farmers, gardeners, beekeepers, conservation groups, or other educators doing work that could become a part of what you offer.
If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure you're following The Farm Educator's Roadmap, both on your podcast player and on social media. And I'd really appreciate if you'd leave a rating or review. That's one of the simplest ways to help more farm educators find the show. And if you know someone who's trying to create more hands-on learning without owning a huge farm or doing everything themselves, send this episode their way.
Until next time, keep asking good questions, keep building good partnerships, and keep giving kids something real to learn from. [00:43:00]
Christa Hein: Hey farm educators, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Before you go, I have a question for you. If you could build your own version of farm education around the way that you want to teach work and live, what would that actually look like?
Because there are a whole lot of ways to do this work, and the version that sounds exciting for someone else, well, it might be completely wrong for you. Because your strengths are different, your resources are different, and the kind of life you want to create is all yours.
That's why I created the free Discover Your Farm Education Path Quiz. In just a few minutes, you'll get a result based on your strengths, your goals, and how you want to work. It might point you in a direction you hadn't considered, or maybe it'll confirm that you're on the right path.
So, before you move on to the next thing, open the show notes, click the link and take the quiz. I can't wait to see what you get.
