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Seeds of Tomorrow: Imagining a Community Garden's Future
Seeds of Tomorrow: Imagining a Community Garden's Future
In a vibrant middle school classroom, students engaged in a school gardening project framed by Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP). Teacher Mia De La Rosa positioned her students as agentic actors engaged in real work with real consequences.
Mia initiated the AOP cycle by inviting students to imagine preferred futures. Rather than starting with abstract global issues, she anchored their imagination in something tangible – the future of the school garden they had just built. Through whiteboarding and storytelling, students imagined scenarios such as having a lunch table to share vegetables or hosting a farmer's market.
Photo: Mia De La Rosa
Mia intentionally made herself a quiet observer during brainstorming sessions, getting "out of the kids' way" to allow ideas to flourish. She facilitated discussions where students shared their "naive notions," sometimes allowing initial ideas to take flight, while other times gently guiding them toward practical realities. This wasn't just a creative exercise; it was structured futures thinking, disrupting assumptions and envisioning possibilities by coupling knowledge of present conditions with ideas for a better future.
By localizing imagination around their garden and community, students drew upon personal experiences, family assets, and local perspectives as knowledge sources. The goal was inspiring visions, generating hope, and fostering dialogue that would propel present action, countering hopelessness often associated with complex sustainability issues. Students explored diverse perspectives through gallery walks and Socratic seminars, considering input from community partners like the City of Phoenix.
These envisioned futures directly informed planning for co-produced impact. Students' shared stories helped them negotiate ideas and reach consensus, such as inviting parents to see their work rather than immediately launching a full-scale market. Imagining also sowed seeds beyond the current project. Students began asking questions about future projects, such as a garden club, showing how futures thinking fosters long-term engagement.
Photo: AdobeStock
Beyond the garden, Mia employed solar futures narratives as another method for imagining preferred futures. After students designed and installed solar energy innovation on campus, Mia presented a scenario 20 years in the future set in their neighborhood, asking them to create narratives based on that scenario. This exercise helped students see the significance of their efforts within a holistic context, linking present actions to potential future outcomes and positioning them as shapers of the future. Imagining the future can be used concurrently with taking action to contextualize and amplify the importance of students’ work.
"Real Work, Real Consequences" Stories feature real-world examples of Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP) in practice. Each story illustrates how students—across grade levels and contexts—engage in meaningful work that addresses pressing sustainability challenges with tangible outcomes. These stories exemplify the AOP framework’s core commitments to Imagining Preferred Futures, Planning for Co-Produced Impact, Taking Agentive Action, and Leaving a Legacy.
By sharing these stories, we aim to spark ideas, foster collective inspiration, and demonstrate the varied roles students take—from innovators and artists to scientists, stewards, and advocates—in shaping a more sustainable and just world.
This "Real Work, Real Consequences" Story was written by Nicole Oster
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