Joya Elmore - How a Childhood in a Geodesic Dome Led to the Classroom

[00:00:00] Dominique: Welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:12] Adam: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Dominique, the sustainability expert.

[00:00:20] Dominique: I'm so glad to be here alongside Adam, the social enterprise extraordinaire. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community and have done something pretty cool about it.

[00:00:30] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. 

[00:00:37] Dominique: Today we are joined by Joya Elmore. She is the Director of Environment-based Learning at the Wellington School. This is a school that spans all the way from Preschool to Grade 12. She's created such an impact with her student initiatives at the school. We're gonna talk about bees, gardens, waste initiatives, you name it.

And today we're chatting with Joya to basically dive into the topic of sustainability as it shows up in a traditional education environment. So what does it really mean for students and teachers to take part in climate change efforts. So thanks for joining us today, Joya. 

[00:01:07] Joya: Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:08] Dominique: Okay. So tell us just kind of right off the bat, what it is that you do in your role as director of environment-based learning?

[00:01:14] Joya: Oh my goodness. I don't really like to be put in a box, so it's hard for me to give you my elevator spiel here. But my focus is a couple folds. One, it is connecting kids back to their food source. We are so far removed from it, and I'm baffled every time I walk into a grocery store and we can get everything we need in one spot. So that's one part. 

Two, it's helping teachers learn how to use the outdoors, whether it's gardens or the woods or, a local park or the river as a teaching tool. So getting us outside to have authentic real learning experiences. And then the third fold is sustainability. I think sustainability is a really large topic to try to tackle, but I think that knowledge is power and establishing a knowledge base that everyone has makes us more conscientious consumers and environmental stewards for the world. 

[00:02:09] Dominique: You touched on a few things there that I think we all encounter every day, and I think your vantage point on it is obviously something worth teaching others about. So how you look at food, gardens, sustainability broadly, our consumption. But before getting into what you think about those things and how you've engaged others, how did you start taking notice of those things?

Like why does Joya walk in the grocery store and feel the way that you do, and your peers, or maybe your friends or your students haven't had those thoughts before?

[00:02:41] Joya: 

I have to give credit to my parents. They were far beyond their lifetime and what they were doing, they met in South America when my dad was a Peace Corps vet, building compostable latrines. They had their own vegan macro restaurant in the Netherlands before quinoa and veganism was even really thought of as sustainable, nutritious way of eating.

And I grew up with a garden and working in the garden with my parents. Did I enjoy that time? I mean, I would say in the moment, no. But in hindsight, yes, 100%. But I would say what really sparked all of this was when I started teaching. What I love about teaching is that students make me wanna be the best version of myself and putting my best foot forward, I can help others do the same. And I think the thing that I try to stay in is that mindset of being really present and not taking things for granted. 

We live in a very fast culture where you just expect the internet to work, right? You expect the stoplights to work, you expect your car to start. You expect to have electricity and running water and everything else. And I think that when we actually pause and take a moment to value those privileges, we understand a little bit more about the purpose that they serve and how we can show up in that world and still practice sustainable ways of living on earth.

[00:04:17] Adam: It sounds like you travel a lot as you're growing up.

[00:04:20] Joya: My mom was from the Netherlands. She was one of nine. And so she would go back often and either take me or my brother. My parents did a lot of traveling before I was born, but yeah, I, I caught the bug early. I was, I think my first time going overseas, I was three. That's my earliest memory. But yeah, I traveled all over.

I studied cultural anthropology for undergrad. Had no idea I wanted to be a teacher, even though all the signs were there. And yeah, I spent some time in Central America. I was in Nicaragua for a little while. This last spring, I took a group of students through the Wellington School to Zimbabwe, so it was my first time to Africa.

But yeah I do enjoy traveling for sure.

[00:04:59] Adam: What is it about going to different places that helps with sustainability?

[00:05:03] Joya: I think one thing that I would consider is water. Water is such a precious resource and I think it's something that we often take for granted depending on where you live. And I think that when we consider other places and we go there we as Americans are drinking, you know, bottled water versus what the locals are drinking, it's always a little jarring to me to consider that type of consumption as well. But I think that's one thing that always comes back to me is,not just clean water, but access to running water, right? To be able to turn on a faucet and you can brush your teeth or flush a toilet and it works, right. I think that being conscientious about those things of how long you take a shower even, you know, or always trying to tell my kids, " Make sure you turn off the water in between brushing your teeth." Right. Or my dad, I always remember this when I was little. One of the first chores that I was taught how to do was to do the dishes 'cause we didn't have a dishwasher. And he wouldn't let me turn the faucet on all the way. He said, "You don't need a full faucet of water to wash the dishes." And so even at a young age, I was taught to just be very aware of overconsumption of something or wasting a resource.

[00:06:18] Adam: So it sounds like growing up, this was just part of your life of paying attention to.

[00:06:22] Joya: Adam, I grew up in geodesic domes. I did not feel like a cool kid at all. In hindsight I'm like, "Gosh, I wish I could relive that experience because it was really cool." But yeah, no, my parents were quite the hippies. Yeah, I was born at home. We grew most of our own food. Growing up in, the way I describe it to people is 3 igloos on a L-shaped frame was my house.

[00:06:46] Adam: Really? So you were really in a geodesic.

[00:06:49] Joya: I lived in 3 geodesic domes. Yeah. Our walls were all slanted. My dad built shelves to hold the books on the walls 'cause you know, otherwise they're gonna fall off. And anytime someone came into the domes for the first time, they would always comment on that. They're like, "Whoa, look at those bookshelves."

We had one woodburning stove in the basement and the stove pipe went through the main dome, which was our living room and kitchen. And we had one window AC unit. We didn't have central air, we didn't have the comforts modern life.

[00:07:22] Adam: And that's interesting to see how just that experience kind of stayed with you for your life. 

[00:07:27] Joya: I think the thing that I try to focus on is how can I live in nature and not live around it? Does that make sense? How am I impacting my surroundings? 

[00:07:37] Dominique: You mentioned being an educator there, there were signs at a period where you weren't seeing them, but looking back, "You're like, oh, the signs were there." So what was the turning point to seeing yourself as an educator?

[00:07:49] Joya: Well, I had just graduated from college with a BA in cultural anthropology and a minor in studio art, and I was living on a horse farm taking care of horses to pay for like an exchange for rent. So it was kind of like a barter system and then I was bartending to pay off my undergraduate loans 'cause I didn't know what I was wanted to do. I didn't have a lot of guidance. 

So my parents did a lot of things really, really incredibly. And then, you know, we all have our moments where we wish we could do better. But I didn't have a lot of guidance. And yeah, it was a Sunday night, it was raining and I was bartending. And it was very slow in the restaurant that I worked at. And these two young women were sitting at the bar and so I was just chatting with them. And they were first year teachers and so they were talking about their, their jobs. 

And so they asked me what I did and I said, "Well, you're kind of looking at it, just talking about bartending." But then I started listing all the things that I did for fun and I, I grew up riding horses and my riding instructor hurt her knee really badly when I was in high school. And so I took over teaching her her lessons. So I was teaching horseback riding to kids to younger kids. And then I loved photography in high school, and so by my senior year, I had taken all the photo classes I could take and I had a ton of study halls and so my photo teacher, let me help teach Photo 101. So, you know, talking about dark rooms, right? We didn't have digital photography at that time.

And then I had more study halls and so I started volunteering at our local elementary school. But again, like nobody told me, " Hey, maybe you should think about education." And then I was a TA for every one of my favorite professors in college. And so it was this moment where I'm listing all these things off to these young women and I'm like, light bulb goes off. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh. It's like pasted on my forehead and nobody could tell me."

I had good friends who in high school knew exactly what they wanted to do. Like they had their vision, they had their career path mapped out for them. And it was interesting 'cause one of them wanted to be a teacher and he ended up hating it. And so it was interesting just to kind of pause and think in what I was already helping to teach, it was a wide variety of things. And so I didn't really want to narrow down too much. 

So I started volunteering while I was bartending and working on this horse farm, I volunteered at local schools just to get a feel for what age group I'd wanna teach. And I fell in love with little kids because, you know, we'd sit down at a picnic table and like, they'd touch the table and I'd be like, "Yeah, that's wood from a tree."

And they, their mind was like, blown from this idea, right? These things, these basic things that we just take for granted that we have a table, right? And where does the table come from? Where does paper come from? All this kind of stuff. So I I got my license to teach early childhood through sixth grade.

And started working at a small little school in Virginia and then went back and decided I wanted get Master's in Education. And I found this incredible program that did a master's of education with a concentration in And I was in the first cohort for this degree. And so I was teaching during the day, bartending at night, like on the weekends and then taking night classes to get my master's. And it was great. 

[00:10:58] Adam: For somebody who's listening who's not familiar with Environment-based Learning, what is that? 

[00:11:02] Joya: So it's the idea that you could take any place outside of the four walls of a classroom and use that as your teaching tool. Maybe you go to the kitchen and you are baking with kids and teaching them about fractions, right? It's using hands-on learning. And a lot of it is kind of like backwards by design.

So I have two small boys and, I've found that there's so much that I couldn't quite comprehend for my friends who had kids before we had kids. And it was one of these things where it's like, until you do it, you can't fully comprehend something.

Right? It's like driving in a car, right? You can't fully comprehend it until you have done it. And so a lot of it is like getting the kids to do something, right? Giving them the experience, and then let's work back from that. 

"Okay, what did you learn here? What did you notice?" And then building on that so that they can say, "Oh yeah, I can see how that worked."

Right? So in instead of teaching them the importance of water quality or how to clean a river or a stream, let's go out and do it first, right? Let's go test the water, let's go see what's in that water, let's go clean it out, and then let's talk about why that'd be important. So having that real hands-on meaningful learning experience. But it doesn't have to be just outside. 

[00:12:20] Dominique: I was gonna say, is it, is it fair to think about Environment-based Learning as a subset of experiential learning? 

[00:12:28] Joya: Yeah, I think you could. You know, I think a lot of people hear environment and so they immediately think environmental, right? So they think that we're talking about being outside. I think a lot of people tend to use that. And in my early career I was working primarily with elementary age kids. And so I worked in schoolyard gardens. That was my focus for environment-based learning and connecting them to their food source. Understanding how long it takes to grow carrots, right? Or understanding seasonality of foods. So using that as the teaching tool.

[00:12:59] Adam: Very cool. So your teaching work in this area started in, in gardens and then it progressed into all these other areas. was that intentional? 

[00:13:07] Joya: Oh, it's been a little organic. I'm from Virginia and I taught there for seven, eight years. And then we moved to Alabama and I ended up working for a nonprofit in Tuscaloosa. It was called the Druid City Garden Project, and now it's called School Yard Roots. But we set up gardens at local elementary schools that were in a food apartheid areas. So it was a really, it was a big focus of connecting those kids to fresh food so that they understand what food should taste like because cafeteria food is not always the best, right, unfortunately. 

When I started doing that, my husband was teaching at the University of Alabama and I got connected with their Honors College, and so then I started teaching college students. So I was teaching elementary kids and then college students. And then we moved to Ohio in 2016. And I interviewed at a bunch of places and I got an email to interview with Wellington when I was in Alaska visiting my brother-in-Law. And I was like, "Wow, I don't know. Should I try this? Should I do this?" And I emailed them back and I said, "Look, I'm on a camping, like vacation. I have no professional clothes with me. I think my husband has his computer. I can probably set up at a coffee shop". And they're like, "Yeah, that sounds great. No problem." 

And so I, I interviewed with them and they immediately saw my background in Environment-based Learning and what I had been doing in the other states, and they said, "We want you to start our garden program." And at that time I was just working with our early childhood students. And so I was teaching kindergarten and then I started their garden program. And Wellington has been so amazing in the sense that, you know, I met with the head of the lower school at the time, and I said, "Well, what's your 1 year, 5 year, 10 year goals for this garden?" And she said, "Oh, well we've always had enthusiasm about gardening, but we have no idea how to get it started. So we'd let you kind of guide that." And they immediately just gave me a lot of autonomy to kind of drive my passion wherever it was going to lead me. 

[00:15:07] Adam: That's really exciting. 

[00:15:08] Joya: Yeah, it's been fun. So I was working just with Early Childhood and then the Upper School, 'cause again we are three year olds through 12th grade. The upper school wanted to have a garden club, which then became the green club so that we can encompass more things. And so I was working with them a little bit. And you know, schools that I've worked at in the past, I've really enjoyed the cross-divisional work because I think that students learn so much better from others, right? Not just from a teacher, but from their peers and older peers, your younger peers. It's always more exciting to be with them. And so it's been a lot of fun to be able to work with our lower school, our middle school, and our upper school. And so I'll do deep dives with our middle school students and I still am the faculty advisor for the Green Club and I teach hydroponics and botany for high school students. And I just started a Grower's Program. So this idea of growing food, but also growing your body, mind, and soul with kindergartners.

[00:16:06] Adam: Fun. That's amazing. We're gonna dive into the programs that you have in a lot more detail in the next podcast, but can you paint in a high picture of some of the different activities? 

[00:16:14] Joya: Today I took kindergartners to Price Farms Composting Facility. A couple years ago we started composting as a school which was a big initiative that I had been pushing for for a while. We have just over 700 students and about a hundred faculty and staff. So we have a good amount of people here. We're a small school in the sense that given the breadth that we serve. But we started composting and now it's much more of like, "Okay, we do this. It's not an initiative anymore, but why do we do it? 

 I had this one area that I really wanted to put in a rain garden. So we started learning about rain gardens through permaculture and what is native to Ohio. And so they worked on this project for the spring and they even presented it to our board committee that focuses on this, which is called the Learning Environments Committee. And so they got to present their findings to them of what it would cost, what plants we should use, where it should be, all this kind of stuff. And it's finally come to fruition. And so we finally broke ground on the rain garden at the beginning of the school year and then now we are finally planting in it. And so those students got to plant today and they'll finish up by Friday of this week with our rain garden. 

My biggest goal is for students to understand that plants are living things and just like us, they all have different needs and wants. And how does a plant thrive? 

So identifying what a plant needs to live and even being able to identify nutrient deficiencies or disease and learning about why hydroponics came to be. If traditional agriculture was so great, hydroponics would not have ever been invented, right? And so they have to plant one type of plant in four different systems. Three are hydroponic based and one is traditional ag. And so they're doing a, a project this fall on that. And so we're learning a little bit about sustainability there and how it comes into play when we think about our food systems and how we grow food. 

[00:18:11] Dominique: so literally so many amazing things, and I'm excited to dive more into them. 

Our next episode, before wrapping up this episode, I wanted to call out, you referenced just like Wellington's prioritization of sustainability which I think is amazing and I think that also wanted it brought up for me that I think another element of you as a champion is your education skills, but also like your advocacy. I think you advocate so well for the students and navigating leadership around like how to build these programs. 

Can you share a little bit about like what that journey's been like? Why does Wellington prioritize these things. And what are some ways you've had success in advocating for projects?

[00:18:56] Joya: It's really an honor to be called an advocate for this. I tend to be much more of a pessimist. And so for me, I think about future generations and what world we're leaving them with right? You think Native American cultures and how they think seven generations down the road. So what they are doing right now and how it impacts seven generations later. And I think we're really lazy in that. And I think it's really important for us to do better. And so the only way that I can get out of being a pessimist of where the world is headed is to, try to do better.

And so our previous head of school, we have a new head of school this year, Eliza McLaren, she's wonderful. Our previous head of school, Jeff Gerwin, he was a huge proponent for sustainability and really kind of opened the door for me to get some more stuff done. Prior to COVID hitting, we had a sustainability committee which was a combination of faculty and staff. And that's where I had started pushing the composting. And I had gotten the green light for composting to happen, and then Covid hit and I was like, "Oh, come on." So I followed through. 

 So when I hear "No", I, I realize I need to educate a little bit more. I need to help build our baseline of our foundation of understanding of what's important and why this is important. And so that's what I work to do. And I've done that through just teaching gardening and nutrition to young children because I think I didn't learn what a calorie was until I went to college and took Health 101.

Now I don't know if it really like helped me or anything. But teaching kids how different fruits and vegetables fuel their body, I think is really important so that they can have the autonomy to make choices that are going to make them feel good in the short run and the long run. And so that's one thing that I really am passionate about is having them understand why your parents want you to eat a rainbow or a colorful plate, right? Not just do it, but let's, let's dive into that. And so I, I teach that I'm not a dietician, but I'm just passionate about helping students learn a little bit more. 

 I think that we hear so many guests on this podcast in particular, even beyond the podcast, that their passion for sustainability is hinged around like leaving the world better than they found it, caring for these next generations. And I just think you are not only at the heart of that with the work that you're doing, you're really engaging with the students who are the reason we care a lot of the time, but also I think it can be really heavy because there's so many things to teach them and to prepare them to understand that's going to be impacting their lives.

[00:21:31] Dominique: And I just think the energy you bring to these topics, your value for like deep understanding of the problem and the solutions. I think that's just, I think it's incredible. I think it shows in the way that you share how you approach these projects and the way you try to approach teaching these topics to students.

 I'm just grateful that you're in the community doing this. And I just wanted to call that out. I think I think your energy and the way that you approach teaching is really unique and I think it's such a superpower.

[00:22:03] Joya: Well, thank you. I do feel very fortunate that my passion is also my job, right? I don't wake up and say, oh, I have to go to work today. I wake up and I am excited about the different things that we are going to, to do. And I think that we all strive for connection in this world, right? And I think that the more I can help students develop the tools to connect, whether that is with nature and supporting sustainable efforts, or with a community and getting outside of your own little bubble, I think the better off we'll be.

[00:22:38] Adam: It's been very interesting just watching this whole journey of starting off growing up in geodesic domes and with parents that were just very immersed in the environment around them. Having that awareness of like what you take for granted and how that shaped your, your career. 

And then being able to weave that in all these different pieces of your upbringing together and almost this kind of chance for you to give that back to young minds. 

[00:23:02] Dominique: It kind of funnily echoes some advice we heard from a previous guest, Erin Schaffer in the podcast and she mentioned looking to your friends and family to help you find like commonalities in what you often talk about or participate in to find out like maybe where your magic spot is if you can't see it. So it's really cool that that's kind of what happened for you is you had someone asking you and then you were like, "Wait, these dots connect." So, that's great. Thank you Joya for joining us and we are excited for our next episode.

[00:23:32] Adam: How can people connect with you or be an advocate for what you're doing?

[00:23:35] Joya: My contact info is elmore@wellington.org. I will say one other thing, and this I think goes more into the programming. We just finished a really cool project called the Wonder Bus, and I am excited to have a mobile classroom to take places and would love to burst our bubbles and connect with other schools who want to get out in the community and create real authentic learning experiences.

[00:24:01] Dominique: That's awesome. I'm excited to ask you more about that next time. as always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We are here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:24:18] Adam: You can find our episodes at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. If you have questions about climate change or sustainability, you can reach us on our website, thegreenchampions.com. And our music is by Zane Dweik. Thanks for listening to green Champions.

We'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode. 

[00:24:36] Dominique: ​