Description:

I want to gain a greater understanding of how and why the process of commodification appears to turn everything into objects of economic value. I’m looking to expand on my knowledge of the taste of specific foods and processes of, and alternatives to, the commodification of eating by participating in weekly critical eating studies. To accomplish this I will participate in weekly check ins regarding the progress of my independent work, seminars, writing activities, discussions, and tasting labs that will be focused on these required texts: Who Really Feeds the World? (Vandana Shiva): The Lives of Animals (J. M. Coetzee)Dismantling Racism in the Food System (online 8-part series at Food First!), Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Barry Estabrook), and Vibration Cooking: or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl(Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor). Optional text: Eating Words (Sandra Gilbert and Roger Porter). I also want to gain a practical knowledge of the inner workings of a farm by interning on TESC Organic Farm. Working on the farm will allow me to address commodification issues, food systems, 3rd party certifiers, and  educational models surrounding agriculture and its therapeutic benefits due to direct contact the 2017 POF class, as well as working with a student once a week from a local high school whose experiencing a developmental delay. I will accomplish this by interning on TESC Organic Farm under direct supervision of the Farm Manager. I will examine different mediums of work that address these topics, such as literature, podcasts, news articles, and films. I will document everything through pictures accompanied by detailed descriptions. One book I will read independently from the required seminar readings is Compact Farms: 15 Proven Plans for Market Farms on 5 Acres or Less (Josh Volk). My professor will evaluate my eportfolio, weekly seminar writings, two presentations throughout spring quarter, a final presentation, and receive a written evaluation from my field supervisor.

Learning Objectives Student will gain a greater understanding of how and why the process of commodification appears to turn everything into objects of economic value. Student will expand on their knowledge of the taste of specific foods and processes of, and alternatives to, the commodification of eating by participating in weekly critical eating studies.	Activities Student will participate in weekly check ins regarding the progress of their independent work, seminars, writing activities, discussions, and tasting labs that will be focused on these required texts: Who Really Feeds the World? (Vandana Shiva): The Lives of Animals (J. M. Coetzee)Dismantling Racism in the Food System (online 8-part series at Food First!), Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Barry Estabrook), and Vibration Cooking: or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl(Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor). Optional text: Eating Words (Sandra Gilbert and Roger Porter).	Evaluation Students sponsor will evaluate their eportfolio, weekly seminar writings, two presentations throughout the spring quarter, as well as a final presentation.
Student will gain a practical knowledge of the inner workings of a farm by interning on TESC Organic Farm. Working on the farm will allow the student to address commodification issues, food systems, 3rd party certifiers, and  educational models surrounding agriculture and its therapeutic benefits due to direct contact the 2017 POF class, as well as working with a student from a local high school whose experiencing a developmental delay once a week.	Student will intern on TESC Organic Farm under direct supervision of the Farm Manager. Student will examining different mediums of work, such as literature, pod casts, news articles, and films. Student will document everything through pictures accompanied by detailed descriptions. One book student will definitely read is Compact Farms: 15 Proven Plans for Market Farms on 5 Acres or Less (Josh Volk)	Students sponsor will evaluate their eportfolio, two presentations throughout spring quarter, a final presentation, and receive a written evaluation from students field supervisor.

Evaluation of Work

• Narrative evaluation from sponsor
• Narrative self-evaluation from student
• The student will complete all assignments as described on the syllabus, including weekly documentation on the Project pages of the SOS program website. Because the student’s in-program ILC project requires–or would benefit from–a field supervisor (required for internships), subcontractor (required for upper division science credit), or mentor, the student will provide the faculty with a field supervisor, subcontractor, or mentor’s descriptive assessment of in-program ILC work completed with their guidance, expertise, or supervision by Thursday noon of week 10. This assessment should be discussed between the student and the field supervisor, subcontractor, or mentor, then provided on profession letterhead or email with current contact information directly to the faculty through email( williasa@evergreen.edu ). The student will complete comprehensive mid-quarter and final narrative self-evaluations and submit them to faculty prior to mid-quarter and final end of quarter student-faculty conferences.  For the final documentation on Project pages, each student will post, and present in class on Tuesday or Wednesday of week 10, a 10-minute PowerPoint Presentation of 10-15 slides with text that demonstrates the highlights of the student’s in-program ILC Project.  As a “best of the student’s Project pages,” this presentation will not be about the creation of new material, but rather the final PPT-based presentation will assemble and tell the story of existing material regarding the student’s SOS in-program ILC project.Faculty Support

Weekly winter and spring program sessions will include circle check-ins regarding student projects. Mid-quarter self-evaluations and final presentations will be required of all students winter and spring quarters.

Related Experience

I have previously taken an SOS which has proven that I am capable of self direction, my ability to stay on task in a less structured learning environment, and that I’m able to budget my time accordingly. I spent two quarters in a class titled Terroir: Chocolate, Oysters, and Other Place-Flavored Foods. Throughout the terroir program we not only learned about what influences the flavor of food and the way individuals process flavors, but we also critically examined the many working parts of these food systems everything from the people who bring the food from field to table, all the way to the institutions that dictate how these systems work. I also spent three quarters in the class Practice of Organic Farming. The time spent in the POF class gave me a behind the scenes look at what exactly goes into producing the food that eventually ends up on our plates. It gave me an opportunity to meet and learn from many farmers, processors, and field workers all of whom gave us an inside look at food systems that the general public rarely gets to see, or even know about.

Mid Quarter Self Eval:

Glenn Tippy               

Mid Quarter Self Eval SOS: Commodification                                  

5/1/17

   What events throughout his life had lead him to where he is now… contemplating the direction that his life had taken? He’s sitting on the train with a colleague he had just met that night. They met at a work Christmas party for the school he had only started working at that September. She had seen him socializing with someone she obviously knew more about than him. “I saved you that night.” she would say months later. “It turns out you saved me that night.” she would say years later. They both didn’t know it at the time, but as they sat on that LIRR train heading out of Penn Station, merry, stomachs full of good drinks, and even better food, that they were forging a relationship that far exceeded a friendship, one in which would enter the realm of siblings. The daily train ride in and out of NYC would be one he would look forward to all day, he wasn’t sure if she felt the same way, he could only hope. But on those daily commutes, they would talk about life, they would talk about the past, and the future. See, while they worked in the same building, they held different positions, she was a head teacher, he, a teaching assistant who at times held the position of “floater”, while other times head adaptive physical education teacher, head art teacher, permanent teaching assistant in a classroom, and the list goes on. One night after an eventful week, and an even more eventful happy hour, they both found themselves frustrated on that fateful train. Luckily she was now his sister, he, her brother. No need for reservations with blood. They talked about their next move, stay in NY? It was hard for them to place a finger on it, but it seemed as if they had both had enough. Should he move across the country? Should she start a family with her partner in Colorado? All they knew was that they both recognized how special the school they were working at was. How nowhere else in the world had anything remotely close to it. They were disenfranchised by other models of working with children and adults who are experiencing neurodevelopmental delays that affect the areas of relating and communicating. But that city that never sleeps wasn’t providing them with what they needed, it didn’t fit into their future. They both knew that they would never find a school like the one they were already at, one in which respected kids and adults to the extent they felt okay working at. They both resented Applied Behavioral Analysis, to the point that it made them furious that such work was not only being done, but rather praised.  So that night they came up with a plan, they would start a community farm school for kids and adults with neurodevelopmental disorders, they would use the relationship based model DIR-Floortime, and have service providers onsite to help with continued development. The DIR Model is a comprehensive framework which enables clinicians, parents and educators to construct a program tailored to the child’s unique challenges and strengths. Central to the DIR Model is the role of the child’s natural emotions and interests which has been shown to be essential for learning interactions that enable the different parts of the mind and brain to work together and build successively higher levels of social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. It often includes various problem-solving exercises and typically involves a team approach with speech therapy, occupational therapy, educational programs, mental health  (developmental-psychological) intervention and, where appropriate, augmentative and biomedical intervention. The late great Stanley Greenspan (creator of the model) seems to beautifully explain this intervention model when he said, “The essence of motivation is finding out what the natural interest of the child is, what they like they do.  Don’t have any preconceived notions.  Don’t think in terms of “rewards.”  The stimulus/reward approach (ABA) is a very limited approach, which was based on research done with animal, not human, models and doesn’t encompass empathy and development of thought, etc.  The approach does work, to some degree, but it tends to keep the child in a rote, repetitive mode.  When a child is “stimming,” think of it as an opportunity to identify motivation to deepen his or her engagement.  Motivation is basically a good observer seeing what the child likes and building on this natural interest to help the child learn what he needs to learn.  Thus, motivation is finding out what the child naturally enjoys doing and then building on that interest and motivation”. (Stanley Greenspan, MD, August 2007). Upon re-reading that quote, he automatically began drawing comparisons to a book he had read titled The Lives of Animals by, J.M. Coetzee. After reading that book he had to ask himself, in regards to scientific understanding of human and non-human animals, how limited is the train of thought held by the people conducting these tests? He remembered Coetzee said, “Scientific behaviorism recoils from the complexity of life.”(Coetzee 63) And he found that to be true, it’s the idea, he thought, of belonging to a higher order that makes one think that because humans are self-conscious beings, and animals lack self-consciousness, that we can understand them as we understand manmade machines. He thought that’s the wrong way of thinking. Deep down he felt that it’s the questions being asked, and the concept of where we fall within the web of life that limits our understanding. He thought back to a discussion in the book that took place at a dinner table regarding a chimpanzee who insisted on placing its picture in a pile of human pictures. That conversation really sparked an idea within him. He thought, one could think that the chimp wants to please its captors, but a more critical question would be, does the chimp recognize humans are free to come and go as they please? By placing its picture with the humans, is it asking to be set free? He thought wow, now those are the questions that should be asked. He realized that yes, it is more philosophical, yes it is more of a moral/ethical question, but those are the types of questions that he felt would pave the way towards a greater understanding, rather than abstract models of experimentations that ultimately limit everyone’s perceptions. For many years he had advocated that behaviorism is an utterly inappropriate model for working with folks on the autism spectrum. He actually had gone so far as to compare Applied Behavioral Analysis to how people train animals. Him, and the people he had been surrounded by saw it as such an utterly limited and disrespectful approach, and that it failed to ask the most important questions. It asks how can we train individuals (whether human or non-human), to lose specific behaviors in attempt to adhere to the ones valued more in society, rather than asking what exactly are they trying to communicate? He felt that, only with the ability to place oneself into the shoes of another being, could the journey of understanding begin. Throughout their time at the school, he and his sister recognized a huge need for post 21 services once someone aged out of the public school system, and felt that a farm setting with service providers present would aid in continued development, as well as provide the folks with the skills necessary to live the most independent and happy life possible. They had recognized this through simple observations of how kids and adults began to open up, and begin to lose observable anxiety linked mannerisms during community walks where they would take their classes to parks around the city, or field trips to camps with large open natural spaces. Fast forward a little, she moves to Colorado to start a beautiful family, he stayed working at the school for another two years. But the plan for the future they had concocted that night, years ago, persisted within the both of them. You see, teaching assistants make peanuts, most of his paycheck was going to a monthly train pass just to get to work, not to mention how expensive it is to live in NYC or Long Island. He recognized that to make enough money to fully support himself in life he would have to go back to school. But he was never a confident student. In fact he had been a super senior, not because he wasn’t capable of the school work, but because he skipped school every day. The future seemed so far away to him, he was so overwhelmed and disenfranchised by his experience, that the only logical thing to do was to walk out the high school doors every day and attempt to avoid it all through various self-destructive outlets. After a few dead end jobs, and countless people close to him dying as a result of their lifestyle, he caught a break by landing a job at that school, a break that would change his whole outlook on life. So off he went, as far away from NY as possible, partially to escape from the same old routine he recognized the people around him were getting stuck in (the last thing he wanted was for every bartender to know his name), and partially because the school he planned on going to was a complete 180 from traditional schooling (which he had struggled through, barely keeping his head afloat). Throughout his time in college, he never forgot the plans for the future he and his sister had made on the train all those years ago. They never lost contact, spent holidays together, spoke frequently as some siblings do. His interests had been shaped by his experiences, as well as the plans for the future that he held in such high regard. They had always told each other they were going to do good, meaningful, appropriate work, and that they would never compromise. He never lost sight of that goal, and to look back at the programs he had taken throughout his time in college would be to view the foundation for a life’s work. He took classes that focused on critical pedagogy, geology, soil science, critical thought and social consciousness, critical eating examinations. He took classes that would put him onto farms, so he could learn the basics, and classes that would put him into contact with farmers so he could build those relationships, classes that would require him to create business plans so he could gain feedback on his plans for the future. Throughout those agriculturally focused programs the observations he and his sister had made on those community walks and field trips all those years ago were validated. Throughout those programs he read, Last Child in The Woods by Richard Louv. The book concluded that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. He read The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry. The book talked about the institutions that estrange humans from the land, as well as how society continues to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economics dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profits. He read Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together. The anthology examined the growing number of environmentally minded parents, teachers, and other adults who are seeking to restore nature to its rightful place in children’s lives. It gathered personal essays recounting adventures great and small with children in the natural world. He also read a number of articles relating to sensory processing disorder and the growing amount of screen-time that children and adults encounter in their everyday lives, and how that screen time directly gets in the way of development as well as time spent outdoors. One such article was published by Psychology Today, titled, Autism & ScreenTime: special Brains, Special Risks. The article discussed how screen time replaces the very things known to be critical to brain development. Reading all those works provided him a sense of relief, knowing that other people were making the nature-development connection.  I almost forgot to mention that throughout his whole time in college he never missed a single class, never missed or handed in an assignment late. A fact which he felt proud of considering he was a super senior in high school due to his lack of attendance. Somehow, amongst all the hectic comings and goings of college life, he managed to play a role in the conception of a non-for profit that another previous colleague of his from that fateful school was wanting to start. It was literally the idea he and his sister had on that train all those years ago, but further along in the process. So  his old colleague and he would sit on the phone for hours talking about how this or that would work. They troubleshooted names and settled on Dirty Hands Developmental Alliance. As the stars aligned in that aspect, another door opened. His previous employer from, again, that fateful school, had just acquired a large piece of property and intended to start a boarding school for folks on the autism spectrum. And guess what? The old employer wanted a farm on the property. So he set up an interview with his old employer, and it turned out the employer was interested in hiring him on as a consultant to help with curriculum work, and potentially to run the whole farm program. He’s still waiting to hear back from the old employer, but obviously optimistic about the future. While all of this was going on, his sister had started a practice of her own in Colorado, got married, had two children, was asked to sit on the board of The Interdisciplinary Council on Development and Learning (ICDL), and asked to be a board member of an up and coming non-for profit called Dirty Hand Developmental Alliance (DHDA)!  That whole journey had led him to the last class of his college career. This class allowed him to gain a greater understanding of how and why the process of commodification appears to turn everything into objects of economic value. He planned to expand on his knowledge of the taste of specific foods and processes of, and alternatives to, the commodification of eating by participating in weekly critical eating studies . As well as gaining a practical knowledge of the inner workings of a farm by interning on the organic farm on his college campus. Working on the farm allowed him to address commodification issues, food systems, 3rd party certifiers, and educational models surrounding agriculture and its therapeutic benefits due to direct contact with other student farmers. He recognizes that all of the topics he has the opportunity to address in his last program will play a critical role in his life’s work, where it all fits in, he’s not entirely sure, but he knows an ah-hah moment is just around the corner.  Also, seemingly serendipitously, he began working on the farm with someone who had aged out of the public school system, who also happened to be experiencing developmental delays. He continued to adhere to his no absence, no missed assignments mantra that had gotten him this far in his college career. And as he sits in bed writing this paper he can’t help feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude in regards to the people he’s had the opportunity to be in contact with and learn from. He sits here feeling an incredible sense of accomplishment, knowing that he set a goal for himself and his future, and he’s done everything up to this point to keep that goal in sight. He never compromised himself or his ideas, while at the same time recognizing every situation he encounters is a learning opportunity. He can’t help but to think of the friendship that began that fateful Christmas party as the seed in which he has been watering ever since, in an attempt to bring that seed to fruition in the form of his life’s work.

Self Eval:

Glenn Tippy             

SOS: Commodification Processes and Alternatives Self Eval                 

6/5/17

    This is the last class of my undergraduate college career. And as I reflect back on these past ten weeks, as well as my time spent at evergreen I’m left with a feeling of accomplishment. I can proudly say that I have never missed a class, never missed an assignment, or handed one in late. I’ve been an active member of every learning environment I have been a part of. I have respected all of my fellow students and professors, and appreciate the lessons learned from both. This last class of my undergraduate career has allowed me to gain a greater understanding of how and why the process of commodification appears to turn everything into objects of economic value. I expanded upon my knowledge of the taste of specific foods and processes of, and alternatives to, the commodification of eating by participating in weekly critical eating studies . As part of my in program independent learning contract I gaining a practical knowledge of the inner workings of a farm by interning on the organic farm on my college campus. Working on the farm allowed me to address commodification issues, food systems, 3rd party certifiers, and educational models surrounding agriculture and its therapeutic benefits due to direct contact with other student farmers.  I expanded my knowledge of bed preparation and amendment application, direct seeding, transplanting, trellising, irrigation installation, operation, and repair as well as Farmers’ Market prep, management, and display. I learned to use a four wheel tractors and two wheel tractors for spading, cultivating, mowing, bed shaping, and materials handling. I also proved to be the pivotal person in the farm I was interning on, in regards to their ability to collaborate, for the first time, with a school-to-work program for students with disabilities. I prepared the morning farm activities, accompanied and guided the student in the chosen activities to ensure success, and provided support and guidance as I saw appropriate. I recognize that all of the topics I’ve had the opportunity to address in this program will play a critical role in my life’s work. Whatever that may be. And as I sit down to write this evaluation, I can’t help but to feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude in regards to the people I’ve had the opportunity to be in contact with and learn from. I’m left feeling an incredible sense of accomplishment, knowing that I set a goal for myself and my future, and I’ve done everything up to this point to keep that goal in sight. I never compromised myself or my ideas, while at the same time recognizing every situation I encountered was a learning opportunity.