Adjunct instructor Karrin Peterson and students in her English classes grow lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, radishes and peas. Planter boxes form a row behind the greenhouse on the west side of campus where the students maintain and harvest their food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back in the classroom, Karrin teaches English 101, 201 and 235 and has done since 1999.\u00a0 She teaches research and writing; students are asked to choose two topics to write from and she assigns two topics that are related to sustainability.\u00a0 Though she admits she rarely uses the term \u201csustainability \u201c in her classroom discussions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI teach research and writing, the process is always the same, the topic is irrelevant\u201d says Karrin.\u00a0 \u201cNo matter the subject, my students must research and question both sides of an argument.\u201d\u00a0 Research resources include CQ Researcher at the LMC, books by Michael Pollen, a required textbook that is available for rent each quarter, and the BC Reads selection for 2012-13, Deep Economy<\/em> by Bill McKibben.<\/p>\n The unique perspective Karrin brings to the classroom is her passion for the environment and her love of gardening.\u00a0 She grew up in Ogden, Utah, the granddaughter of a farmer who lived during both world wars and the Great Depression.\u00a0 Her father was a professor and an environmentalist so her love of nature and the earth is \u201cintuitive\u201d she says.<\/p>\n This quarter the English 101 class is researching and writing about the economical component of food.\u00a0 They have had lively classroom discussions about the pros and cons of using artificial versus organic fertilizers.\u00a0 They discuss food as an equity issue and question why our society\u2019s obesity rate has increased.\u00a0 Karrin urges her students to consider how this happened and she asks her students if they think we can maintain this lifestyle.\u00a0 She may even ask the question \u201cDo you think this is sustainable?\u201d<\/p>\n An avid gardener at home, Karrin says \u201cmy whole yard is organic except that I use a tiny bit of Sluggo on my gravel walkway, slugs are pesky… I rotate my crops on about 400 square feet of terraced garden beds using the square foot gardening method.\u201d\u00a0 One of her favorite books is Square Foot Gardening<\/em> by Mel Bartholomew, which is on reserve at BC\u2019s LMC.<\/p>\n As BC\u2019s Student Garden Counselor, Karrin believes that one way in we can get back to social equity is to be more connected to our food.\u00a0 \u201cOne way we can regain control of our food is to grow our own in our gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adjunct instructor Karrin Peterson and students in her English classes grow lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, radishes and peas. Planter boxes form a row behind the greenhouse on the west side of campus where the students maintain and harvest their food.\u00a0 Back in the classroom, Karrin teaches English 101, 201 and 235 and has done since ...more about Staff Spotlight: Karrin Peterson<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7452,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions\/7452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}