Educator Spotlight: Kelly Applegate

Kelly Applegate, the interim garden manager at Warren Wilson College’s garden, recently completed her NC Environmental Education Certification. Kelly leads 30 students in flower, vegetable and cover crop production from seed to harvest. “The garden has an industrial composting system and makes compost for the land operations creating a close looped farming system. I teach students how to operate tools, machinery, and tractors, we create systems and collect data, work in greenhouses growing seedlings, soil testing, and more! I also work with Bountiful Cities as the Asheville Edibles Coordinator and social media manager. In this role, I partner with the City of Asheville to run workdays at three edible parks in Asheville, maintain a map showing edibles on public lands in the area, and generally promote more access to food in public spaces. In my free time I do a lot of hiking, camping, and all things outdoors!”

Kelly says the classes, workshops and site visits were one of the highlights of the program for her. “I loved all the classes and workshops I attended! Connecting with other environmental educators and learning from one another was a big highlight. Visiting other parts of the state to complete the environmental education site visits gave me a chance to have a larger scope on the EE work happening all over North Carolina!”

For her community partnership project, Kelly connected her work with Bountiful Cities and teaching garden-based education with Asheville City Schools. “I helped to plan the Ecology Week event for 300 students at Lucy S. Herring Elementary. We brought in community partners from all over Asheville to speak with the students and teach them about the amazing work happening in our community! Students were able to connect with animals from the Nature Center, talk with local environmental nonprofits about their work, discuss strategies for invasive plant removal, and so much more. The students were able to have a fun learning experience that connected to environmental education.”

Kelly says the program changed her approach to teaching. “Completing the certification program helped me to see teaching and learning opportunities everywhere. Since I am a non-formal educator, I try to find unconventional teachable moments in my work. After finishing the certification program I feel even more confident in my abilities to connect information about the natural world to everyday life!" 

She says the program also changed the way she views environmental issues. “I think I am just more aware of the environmental issues that affect North Carolina as a whole. Connecting scientific research to adult workshops helps to ground the information and make people realize the implications of issues like climate change and conservation.”