Maple at Main Street Middle School

For four years now, Vermont Evaporator Company has been helping teachers and kids make maple syrup at Main Street Middle School (MSMS) in Montpelier, Vermont. We sat down recently with the faculty involved and learned that MSMS was doing much more than just producing maple syrup. MSMS_Sustain is so impressive that we decided to profile this awesome customer for the blog. Meet MSMS_Sustain!

What is MSMS_Sustain?

MSMS_Sustain is a program predicated on the belief that today’s students must know and understand issues related to climate change, sustainability and social justice. The program began when the last MSMS Family and Consumer Science (aka, “Home Economics,” Gen-Xers!) teacher retired. Veteran MSMS educators Don Taylor and Drew McNaughten saw an opportunity to repurpose the class’s space and budget with an eye toward making a 21st Century curricular upgrade for middle-school kids learning their way through a pandemic. Due to Don and Drew’s success, for the last four years, MSMS_Sustain has been on the specials rotation along with Health, Art and Innovation Lab. Each year, MSMS students spend at least a quarter in MSMS_Sustain. Students in 7th and 8th grades have the opportunity to grow and lead MSMS_Sustain programs inside and outside the classroom.

The development of the program originated with a collaboration of  Shelburn Farms’ Cultivating Pathways to Sustainability program, and in conjunction with Up For Learning. With youth partners, these programs helped Don develop the broad outlines for the sustainability class. Key frameworks are the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) and personalized learning. In combination, these support a curriculum that gives students the opportunity to explore sustainability challenges of interest, connect with others working to solve common sustainability problems, and to communicate their findings to the school community. MSMS_Sustain is based on the belief that students and adults should be partners. Therefore, the program focuses as much as possible on student voice, student-led action and collaboration with the learning community. In addition to the MSMS_Sustain class, there is an additional MSMS_Sustain Leadership program that is designed to help build student management, leadership and organizational skills.

What Happens in MSMS_Sustain During A Typical School Year?

MSMS_Sustain students learn about and take action on a range of local and community-based issues, many of which are linked to climate change and social justice. Examples of current curricular focus include food insecurity and agriculture, impacts of climate change on the local environment, waste management, consumption and decreasing pollinator habitat.  Curriculum is organized seasonally and includes providing home-cooked meals and financial support to local hunger-relief nonprofits, tracking changes in the climate through recording weather data and documenting bird migration and pollinator activity, planting gardens and implementing sustainability initiatives at MSMS.

During their time in MSMS_Sustain, students are also required to pursue self-designed projects related to these, or other, sustainability interests. Each part of these curricula require students to educate, act, connect and communicate with respect to the sustainability challenge in question. Under the guidance of Don and Drew, students educate themselves about each sustainability challenge, act to meet the challenge on a local level, and connect with local, regional, national, and international organizations battling the same challenge. Students communicate their work to each other, to the school community and—through a student-written, student-published sustainability newsletter, a vlog, and social media—to the community-at-large.

Where Does Maple Syrup Fit In?

In our humble opinion, this is the coolest part!

As you might imagine, maple syrup fits into the seasonal calendar starting in January and running through the end of March. During this time, students learn about Vermont maple—the culture, the industry, and the effect of climate change on both. They learn how to identify and tap maples and, just before winter break every year, tap 50-100 trees in a sugarbush within walking distance of MSMS and safely accessible by sidewalk and gravel roads! (You’ve got to love being the smallest state capital!) They document the beginning and end dates of the season and record weather and production data to compare year-over-year with an eye toward understanding first-hand the effects of climate change on maple.

When the sap begins to run, students who sign up for Drew’s after-school enrichment program collect sap for transportation to a local sugarhouse for concentration, and finish the concentrate after school on school grounds on a Sapling Evaporator. For the last few years, we’ve been concentrating sap for MSMS in the same sugarhouse where we test our products and make our own maple!

Back in the MSMS_Sustain classroom, students then filter, bottle, and label the syrup to be sold online and at school events. Under an MOU reached with MSMS, one third of the profits are rolled back into the program, one third support the annual 8th grade trip to Boston, and one third is donated to local hunger-relief nonprofits like Just Basics, Inc. and Community Harvest of Central Vermont.

What Do MSMS_Sustain Students Do in Fall, Early Winter and Late Spring?

In fall, MSMS_Sustain students glean foods in cooperation with Community Harvest of Central Vermont and process the harvest into single-serving meals for donation to Just Basic, Inc. They document bird migration and record weather data. And they run food drives and personal-items drives in advance of the holiday season.

In early winter, MSMS_Sustain students engage in a fiber arts curriculum that teaches the environmental issues connected to fast fashion, supports student acquisition of stitching, mending and darning techniques and encourages the mending of clothing in order to avoid discarding it. Sustain leadership educates the broader student audience about MSMS_Sustain programs focused on reducing and reusing lost-and-found items (e.g., lost-and-found management, clothing labeling, and the free water bottle program).

After the maple syrup season is over, MSMS_Sustain students plant and tend a garden and study pollinator behavior. Parents from the community tend and harvest the garden while school is not in session.

Not All Benefits of MSMS_ Sustain are Academic

Perhaps the most impressive part of the MSMS_Sustain program isn’t about what the students learn, but about how they learn it, and what benefits they gain besides academic knowledge from the curriculum.

According to Don and Drew, students thrive when working with their hands, when incorporating movement into their days, and when they know they are contributing to their community in a positive way. Young people, they say, want to contribute and deserve to be taken seriously; they are “100 % capable of doing great things.” We couldn’t agree more with that or with Don and Drew’s assessment that it’s never been more important for us to set high expectations for young people and to actively involve them in co-creation of the future. The kinds of structured learning experiences that Don and Drew provide through the MSMS-Sustain program build upon one another so that we are educating functional citizens, not just people with knowledge, upon graduation.

Another benefit of MSMS_Sustain is mental health, say Don and Drew. Coming out of the isolation of the pandemic, students, like the rest of us, were isolated and disconnected. Resources abound standing for the proposition that helping others is a great way to improve your own mental health. Don and Drew believe student mental health has improved as a result of the MSMS_Sustain program, and we don’t doubt them!

Who Can you Contact if You Want More Information about MSMS_Sustain?

Are you an educator or caregiver who would like to see a sustainability program in a school near you? Don and Drew are happy to talk. Here’s a little bit about Don and Drew and how to contact them.

Don Taylor

Don Taylor, Co-Director of MSMS_Sustain, is a middle school educator at Main Street Middle School in Montpelier, VT. After 17 years of teaching humanities, he has shifted to the development of a sustainability program serving all MSMS students. Taylor is working hard to create great relationships and an innovative, integrated, and dynamic learning environment for all students. When not working on his craft, Don can be found spending time with his family enjoying Vermont’s outdoor, cultural, and community offerings. He is an avid angler, reader, and runner who believes that, “It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.” Don can be reached at dont@mpsvt.org.

Drew McNaughton

Drew McNaughton, Co-Director of MSMS_Sustain and MSMS Enrichment Coordinator, has been working with Main Street Middle Students since the Fall of 2004. He’s found a niche in the field of experiential education through a diverse and varied set of afterschool and school day programming that feeds his roving passions and attentions. He is most at home outdoors, and in environments with engaged students making internal and external discoveries of themselves and the world. He’s excited to focus attention on the growth of the MSMS_Sustain Program as a way to engage learners. Drew can be reached at drewm@mpsvt.org.