After learning that over 83% of Jamaican students failed the National CXC Exams, US English Language Fellow Alumni, Karen Francis, a newly returning resident to Jamaica, leaped into action. A curriculum designer by profession, the 30 year veteran English teacher quickly began organizing members from the diaspora, social organizations, businesses to lend a helping hand to Jamaican teachers and students.
Having lead a 4 H club for over a decade with her 4 children as members, Karen is no stranger to 4-H. Not only is Karen a teacher, but Empress Zaria, as she is also known, is a US Navy veteran, and US English Language Fellow Alumni, so service is natural to her. In 2007, under the 4H theme “Join the Revolution of Responsibility”, Karen sponsored multiple school and community gardens in Florida. It was under this theme that her 4H Club, the Marion Oaks Odyssey 4H Club, led numerous community service projects, hosted annual summer science camps, and even organized a Community Pride Christmas Parade which won them the University of Florida’s 4H Community Pride Award.
It is under this same theme that the returning resident has established a Junior Master Gardener Community 4 H Club in the Lilliput Community. Karen established a “Back Yard, Demonstration Garden & Community Garden” on her grand parent’s property for her Junior Master Gardener 4H Community Club members. It is here where club members, 4H teachers and parents will receive hands on training in modern and ancient agricultural practices. 4Hers will also learn survival skills through primitive camping on the property.
Any 4H member between the ages 5-25 can access the many RADA and Ministry of Agriculture programs available to them through Jamaica 4 H school and 4H community clubs like the one Karen is forming.
The “Grow Where You’re Planted", School and Back Yard Garden program is a 5-year hybrid (virtual and hands on) agricultural training program Karen designed to equip Jamaican students, teachers, and parents with the skills and knowledge they need to become expert leaders in agriculture and herbal medicine. The program is specifically targeted at 4H members age 5-25 and will involve weekly online trainings, back yard garden projects, practical farm experiences, survival training, internships, and international exchange opportunities.
Forming community collaborations that eliminate redundancies in program cost are the hallmark of Karen’s youth programs. Her annual summer science camps in Marion Oaks Florida, brought together public and private partnership between local schools, government agencies, social organizations, and local businesses.
These partnerships along with volunteer support from the faith communities enabled Karen to provide fun, hands on, science based, 4H day camps and after school programs at minimal, to no, cost to children and families in her Central Florida community. “I see no reason why that model can’t work here in Jamaica,” said Karen during a tour of her back yard garden she calls the Children’s Agriculture & Sustainability Museum. “Using the Junior Master Gardener Curriculum to guide teacher instructions, supported by hands on experience provided by farmers, students and teachers will become experts in the field of organic agriculture and natural herbal medicines.
Karen has already begun forging relationships with members from the Rastafari community, the Jamaican and Haitian diaspora, faith communities, NGOs, government entities, political, local, and international businesses. The Grow Where You’re Planted JMG 4H School & Back Yard Garden project will create avenues for the broader community to contribute to, and participate in, the agricultural and historical education of Jamaica’s children.
The use of hands on, project-based activities like Jamaica’s 4H School Garden Program along with the Stock Market Game will quickly correct the language and math deficits in Jamaican students.
Karen’s Master's Degree in Education, with a specialization in Curriculum Development from the University of Florida, makes her uniquely qualified to lead the team of Jamaican farmers, agriculturists, and educators in re-designing Jamaica’s agriculture and history curriculum. She has facilitated teacher trainings in colleges and universities in North America, China, and most recently Cameroon, Africa where she trained Cameroonian English Teachers, Project Based Teaching strategies to improve their student’s English language acquisition.
The English Language Fellow Program is the premier opportunity for experienced Teachers of English Speaker of Other Languages (TESOL) to enact meaningful and sustainable changes in the way that English is taught around the world and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). Through projects developed by U.S. Embassies in more than 80 countries, Fellows work directly with local teachers, students, and educational professionals to improve the quality of English language instruction offered at teaching universities and other academic institutions.
While on assignment in Cameroon, Ms Francis facilitated professional development workshops that modeled the use of blended learning technologies in English Language Instruction. Ms Francis developed training resources, and organized a conference for Cameroon’s English Language & Literature Teachers Association, CAMELA.
As a part of the de-colonizing of Jamaica’s education system, Karen is working with the Rastafari community to remove Bustamante and Norman Manley as Jamaica’s National Heroes and elevating Leonard Howell as Jamaica’s 6th National Hero. Critical Race Theory supports her notion that it is the remnants of colonialism, still active within Jamaica’s Education system, further impeded by the use of an outdated teaching methodology, that is stifling Jamaica’s children and fueling the school to prison pipeline. To reverse that effect, Karen also recommends establishing prison gardens.
Speaking from her professional opinion, Karen recommends reforming Jamaica’s education system as the necessary ‘first step’ in eliminating crime and poverty in Jamaica. She reasons that by reconnecting Jamaican children and youth with the earth through agriculture, and to their African/Ethiopian Heritage through the studying and honoring of the true heroes of the struggle for freedom and equality, crime and poverty will end in Jamaica.
It is Karens aim to ensure history accurately documents Leonard Howell and other unsung heroes and heroines’ contribution to the establishment of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica. She encourages Jamaican’s to make a close examination of Bustamante’s contribution to Jamaicas and draw their own conclusion to the reason for crime and poverty among the descendants of enslaved Africans on an island rich in natural resources.
“Teaching and learning are sciences that must adapt to changing times and new information in order to remain relevant. Education systems world wide are having to make adjustments in their curricula and teaching modalities due to advances in Ai technology. Certainly Jamaican students’ poor performance on an irrelevant and outdated testing system is evidence that the education system needs upgrading,” -Karen Francis
Using her grand parents back yard as a community and demonstration garden, Karen call’s (Children’s Agricultural Sustainability & Heritage Museum) students will learn how to “Grow Where You’re Planted” At the end of the Junior Master Gardener training program, students will know how to turn the things around them into marketable products and or services.
Jamaican’s at home and in the diaspora interested in volunteering, interning, or supporting the JMG Project can do so in one or more of the following ways:
· Joining the Hero re-Naming Project Committee
· Serve as a School Garden Volunteer
· Donate gardening items tools, equipment
· Adopt a garden (sponsor school, backyard, or community garden development)
· Start a garden at your alma mater
· Provide online teaching to students (every Monday 6PM Jamaica time)
· Provide virtual teacher training (every Thursday 6PM Jamaica time via Zoom)
· Host a camp out at your farm
· Start a Garden Club in your community
· Host a community garden on your property, farm.
· Host an online cooking class
· Volunteer at a camp
· Host a 4Her
· Sponsor a 4Her
· Become a business sponsor of the Children’s CASH Museum ($99US)
· Become an individual sponsor ($25US monthly)
· Sponsor the Monthly 4H Farmers Market ($50 monthly)
· Sponsor a school’s media center (Computers, internet, equipment) $99 monthly
Keep updated on projects and Back Yard Garden Lessons by subscribing to Empress Zaria’s You Tube Channel.
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