Amy Sidran loves mucking around in the dirt. More specifically, she loves digging into the rich loamy soil that grows plants. And, as the School’s Farm Education Coordinator, she has no shortage of opportunities.

Every day is Earth Day for Sidran. She spoke to the Hotchkiss community about her own passion for sustainable agriculture as the latest presenter in the Science Connections speaker series hosted by the Science Department on April 8. (Watch a replay of the presentation below.)

Several Earth Day activities are planned in the coming days, including a virtual All-School Meeting on Arctic climate change on April 19 featuring speakers Dr. Dalee Sambo Dorough, International Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and Dr. Gary Kofinas, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. On April 24, students and community members will join forces to work on range of service projects from trail maintenance to roadside trash pickup. 

Sidran arrived at Hotchkiss last fall, replacing art instructor Charles Noyes ’78 P’03,’07, who launched the Fairfield Farm Ecosystem and Adventure Team (FFEAT) in 2009 and served as farm curriculum coordinator from 2013 until his retirement in 2019. 

She hails from Miami, FL, where her mother, an internationally renowned orchid grower, started her own nursery on a one-acre backyard lot. Sidran says her wanderlust (she has visited 32 countries) stems from her childhood adventures with her mother, who traveled worldwide giving lectures and collecting orchids. Sidran herself did not become passionate about science until her senior year in high school, when she took a chemistry class and “it just clicked,” she said.

At UMASS - Amherst she studied wildlife and fisheries biology and played Division One tennis. After spending a semester in Costa Rica through the university’s study abroad program, she found her focus shifting to sustainable development and social justice. 

“We lived at the old chalk plantation surrounded by farms. We visited villages, farms, and eco-lodges, and I started to care more about the world and what was happening with farming and social justice issues,” she said.

She developed a keen interest in soil science after she learned how conventional large-scale farming methods were damaging the ecosystems and taking advantage of workers. 

“In Costa Rica and other developing countries they pay workers very low wages and rarely offer insurance, health care, etc. They can be fired at any time. This is very normal in the production of coffee, chocolate, bananas, sugar. etc.,” she said.

Now, decades later, the trend in agriculture has shifted away from huge farms to focusing on how much can be grown on one acre instead of 20 acres and how to engage the community in the process, she said. 

She worked at several organic farms on Martha’s Vineyard, and after graduating she did a stint with the Peace Corps in Bolivia as an agriculture extension volunteer. After that, she lived in northern California, where she had an internship on a one-acre, bio-intensive farm; then, she hopped to another small farm in the Catskills, a nonprofit that engaged adults with complex disabilities. There, she started thinking critically about the value of experiential learning and how she could teach more people about agriculture through growing food.

After earning her M.A. in teaching from Pacific University, she began teaching general science at a large public high school outside Portland, OR, where she launched a horticultural science program, and used the greenhouse to start a student-run business selling plants.

She discovered quickly that students who had previously hated school or who had emotional issues had changed after a few weeks in the program. “I became more aware of how important experiential learning is, especially for students who are struggling. For them, growing food was an active way of learning about science that was more effective than sitting in a classroom,” she said.

She also engaged the surrounding community through donating produce students had grown to the local food bank and by initiating cultural food festivals. She and her husband, Greg Bender, who teaches economics at Hotchkiss, eventually bought a farm in Washington state, where they grew vegetables and fruit, raised animals, and started a community-supported agriculture (CSA). They both missed traveling and experiencing new cultures; so they moved with their five-year-old daughter, Sadie, to the Dominican Republic to teach at the Carol Morgan School in Santo Domingo. Sidran taught middle school science with a strong focus on experiential learning, and she started a native-plant garden at the school. The experience further reinforced her belief that she was not made to teach inside of the classroom. She earned her master’s in sustainable agriculture online from Washington State University-Pullman, where her graduate work concentrated on growing successful school gardens and creating an effective and sustainable classroom in the natural world.

In coming months, Sidran plans to continue student-led longitudinal soil studies, increase curriculum integration, foster community volunteer opportunities, and apply her vast knowledge of farming through teaching. She also wants to further connect the farm to the School’s dining experience by providing more culturally-appropriate produce for affinity groups.

This fall, Sidran will be teaching a Sustainable Food Systems class that will highlight how the farm supplies food to the Dining Hall. Students will also research local farms from which the School purchases food and how the process helps sustain the economy of the surrounding communities.

FFEAT is building a portable chicken tractor, re-skinning the high tunnel (plastic greenhouse), and seeding most of the plants that will be harvesting for the Dining Hall.“This May we will welcome 80 chicks that are laying hens and 10 piglets,” Sidran said.

In her role as farm education coordinator, Sidran has enjoyed getting to know students and watching their enthusiasm toward agriculture blossom. On the farm, “students are learning how to not only grow food, but to connect with each other and the land, and that is an empowering process,” she said.