Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students,
leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration,
we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools.
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
All right, welcome back to the podcast, everyone, and I'm so excited for those who are here today to join us for a very special segment.
Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Mr. Kyle Jeter, an astronomy teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
and the visionary behind Marjory's Garden, and this incredible green space and living classroom not only honors the legacy
of environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, but it also serves as a beacon of hands-on learning, sustainability, and community healing.
So join us as we delve into the story of Marjory's Garden and its impact on students and educators in fostering both education and solace while in the wake of tragedy.
Mr. Jeter, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today.
Oh, thanks so much, Joey. Thanks for having me on.
Such a pleasure. Now, I also had to mention to our guests that Mr. Jeter and I go way, way back. We're practically family at this point.
You were my senior year astronomy teacher in 2012-2013.
I sit there and I think, "wow, the students who you're teaching now were in kindergarten when I had you, and you're teaching seniors now", of course.
So it's crazy how much time has elapsed, and you have always been someone who has been at the forefront of our communities.
So now's our chance to celebrate you. So thank you again for all that you've done to make everything better and come together for everyone else.
Well, thanks for saying that, buddy, and just part of a big garden team, but I appreciate that.
Well, we're all on the same team then. So my first question is to think about what Marjory's Garden is.
So this garden has become a cornerstone of learning and reflection at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
And this garden also came about after the 2018 tragedy.
And we wanted to begin our conversation today by hearing a little bit more about how you conceived this idea and how you allowed it to come to life.
Sure. Well, it actually started before that, before 2014. Back in 2016, they were removing some old, dilapidated portables.
And so this all just started so funny because the principal is standing there watching over the railing down from my classroom, watching these old portables be destroyed.
And I walked down and joined him. We're standing there watching this big excavator tear out and just suddenly on a whim, I think I just ask him, "hey, do you think maybe we could set aside some land for science purposes?"
That's it. Like I gave it was just no, it was just right off the cuff.
And the funny thing is, I mean, I kind of mentioned and he kind of looked like he was thinking about it for a second.
I didn't think much about it. And I wasn't thinking about me even participating in some kind of project, I was just throwing it out there like, hey, we're a school named after, you know, an environmentalist as somebody who wanted to conserve the Everglades.
And like, maybe we should have some.... And I mentioned a garden. I mean, that was the first thing that popped in my head. But of course, I didn't know anything about gardening.
Nothing at all. I never had a garden. So a few days go by and I kid you not, I think I'd forgotten about the whole conversation.
And I get this email and the principal says, Mr. Thompson, it's like, hey, you know what, there's this odd strip of land and we probably could never use it for anything else because there's a drainage thing there.
And it's awkwardly shaped. It's about 50 feet wide, but one hundred and seventy five feet long.
And if you guys wanted to take that and do something with it, you could. And that was it. Let me tell you, I was stunned because when I first asked about that, I said, set aside a little bit for land.
I'm thinking of like a couple raised garden beds or something like another school would do. And I start thinking about those dimensions. I'm like, that is a huge plot of land.
So I kid you not like that weekend, I go home and all of a sudden, I mean, I'm getting just fired up with ideas and I start this power, still have this original PowerPoint I made of all of this stuff.
Right. I just kept getting more and more into it and thinking about how you could integrate different things. Right.
And so at some point I ended up sharing some of the administrators at the time back in like 2016 and they literally laughed because it was so sort of aggressive and grandiose.
And they're kind of like, OK, do you like this would take years to do all this? And I'm kind of thinking, well, guys, I've got at that point, I'm thinking I've got another eight to ten years of my career.
Like, what else am I going to do? Like, maybe it will take years, you know, but like whatever it's then it takes years.
And so that's how I got started. But by the time 2018 rolled around, it was good that we had that foothold.
I mean, the garden was going to change wildly after 2-14, but it was good that we had that foundation going.
We had just enough of a foundation. We've been working on it for a couple of years that it gave us a space that we could work in and that kids could come to.
And it wasn't anything like it is now, but it was just enough that we did have a green space started and it sort of gave us a way to get other people into that vision of what we were trying to do.
And so in a weird way, I mean, the timing was good in that respect that we had. If we'd had anything less, it really wouldn't have been too useful at the time.
And if it had all been built, then it wouldn't have been as useful. But at that point, we had so much to do.
And so it allowed us to give students and staff an opportunity to do things and to do hands on things.
And especially in that spring of 2018, I mean, that's just such a terrible time.
And it was, I think, meaningful, I know it was to me and my colleagues that work in the garden to have something positive to do.
That's kind of how it got started and sort of tied in with what would happen later on.
So how would you say that the meaning of your original query to have that space, how did that meaning change after the events of spring 2018?
Yeah, that was that was pretty immediate.
I'll tell you a story that not many people know, maybe nobody, but for the first few days after 2-14, I mean, it was it was just so terrible and heartbreaking.
And one of the things I mean, I was so fortunate. I mean, I was as far away on campus as you can be.
And it left me wondering what my role should be moving forward, because I felt a certain responsibility that I was so fortunate, so lucky.
Both of my children went to the school, for example, but one of them went before that time and one of them went after that time.
So I didn't have that weighing on me to know that they were on campus and things like that.
So the question is like, what am I going to do?
And so about three days afterwards, I just had this thought, I hadn't done anything productive whatsoever.
And like everybody else, I was just crushed. And so I'm like, what can I do?
And so I thought, you know what, I need to get to the garden like nobody's watered anything in days.
I know it's like a silly minor thing, but I thought, you know what, that gives me a purpose.
Like I should just go and try to water the garden. So here's the story.
So I get up like I'm not sleeping well at all. Right.
And so it's like five, five thirty in the morning.
And I just like, well, I'm just going to go to the garden.
Now is a good time to try to go over there, because, you know, the whole school is just a completely crazy zone of security and everything.
So I live less than 100 yards from the school.
And so I walk over and I walk past all like media trucks and stuff like that.
And everybody sound asleep. It's so early in the morning.
And so I'm kind of walking past where different security zones are.
And I finally run into some, I think, local officers or somebody.
And I explain who I am. And I know a lot of the officers over the years and have had former students.
Anyway, long story short, you know, they're like, "OK, Mr. Jeter, you can go on through".
And so it's like going past these different zones. And I finally get to the final security zone, which is the FBI.
And I'm trying to explain to the FBI like why I want to go into the school, because like nobody's allowed in.
I'm like, guys, I'm going like on the exact opposite side of the thirteen hundred building, nowhere near that.
And so in the end, of course, at first they're like, oh, you can't go in there.
And so finally, I'm like, look, you know, if like we're working on this stuff out there and at some point in the next couple of weeks,
if we're going to go back to school and I want us to have a space that still looks nice and beautiful in the space that the students have been working on,
I don't want them to go back and find everything dead that we've been growing because it all didn't get the water.
And I think that finally sold them on it. I'm like, look, I'm not going anywhere near that building.
You can send an agent with me. I'll just walk back, water everything and leave.
And they did it first. They sent somebody back with me and I walked back to the garden and then I get to watering and it's boring.
And so they finally took off. And then I was out there by myself.
And, you know, it became this really powerful moment because I'm out there.
I kind of take a break and I'm sitting on this little stage we built that would become our outdoor classroom and the sun was rising.
And it just hit me like what my purpose should be, because I knew I wasn't going to be like a political activist or something like that's just not my thing, not my nature or whatever.
And I'm like, well, that's what I can do. That's my one small part.
Like I can try to use this garden as something positive moving forward.
And that's when it hit me. I mean, that's when I really became completely committed to the project in a deeper way than I ever had before.
And I mean, I didn't know if that was a good idea, but I felt it. You know, I mean, I felt like, hey, that's something that could be positive.
And if it helps one person, if one student or one colleague of mine feels better about life for being out there and working on this project, then it's worth doing.
And so it became, like I said, just a really deep thing inside of me of like, hey, we're going to make this happen.
That's going to be my part, whether it's a good idea or not.
Before that, I want to give full credit here to Mr. Simpson, my best friend on the staff.
When I started that project, it was he and I starting the project.
You know, I always call him the co-founder because I don't do any projects usually without him.
I mean, the guy's a wonderful engineer, so fun to work with.
And he and I are a team. So I want to say that right off the bat that he was with me from the beginning.
And we're both science teachers. So we're thinking of it from 2016 and 2017 as purely really a STEM project or a STEAM project.
And then this changed a lot of things in terms of thinking of the mental health factor for everybody.
And I love that a lot of what we're doing here in the Classroom Narratives podcast is just celebrating efforts towards resilience and focusing on the MSD community.
For example, we already spoke last year in 2024 with Sarah Lerner and Parkland Speaks and thinking about from a language arts standpoint, how students can find recovery.
So I love that the work that Mr. Jeter is doing is through the STEM standpoint as well.
And in thinking about that, I wanted to think about how the garden itself has become this multifaceted educational space that works to integrate STEM and STEAM, as you mentioned,
which for our listeners is science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
It's also integrating sustainability as well.
And I wanted to think about how do you design projects and experiences in the garden that resonate with students across different disciplines and curriculums?
Sure. Great question. Well, that was the dream early on, is that it would be cross-curricular, that you would have teachers of all different types come in and work.
And again, it started with just Simpson and I, so it was a little limited in the focus.
But we start like, well, just the other day we had the art teacher, Ms. Lieberman, designed and created with her Girl Scout troop, actually.
They designed a new sign for a new area of the garden called the orchard, where we have a bunch of fruit trees that were donated by the Fruit Tree Foundation, a great guy named Jim.
And I was so excited that we had that because the team started growing a lot starting in like 2019.
Of all things, we had a PE coach, Miss Beatty comes in and it turns out that she can grow anything.
She's amazing. So she comes in and it was such a boost to the garden.
And immediately after getting her a few months later, we pick up two just absolute all stars, the two guys that really run the garden today.
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Anders, retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Army, who runs our JRTC program.
And Mr. Brandon Davis, right after him, was hired as a bio teacher in my department.
And those guys, I mean, my goodness, most of the stuff, almost everything out there growing now is from them.
And then a year or two after them, we picked up Mr. Walsh, who's an art teacher, but he's great at everything out there.
Mr. Garner, an old friend of mine, the TV production guy, they had always been helpful with my astronomy class, with the garden making videos for us and stuff.
Mr. Garner became greatly involved with the garden itself.
And he designed one of my favorite parts of the garden called the Everglades zone, which would be a more just natural.
Because when we started this again, there were many things, of course, I'd like to do again.
And so he got us back to that original foundation of, oh, this is if we're going to name this for a Marjory Stoneman Douglas,
I mean, why don't we have an area that is just purely natural sawgrass and stuff like that?
And so he designed a beautiful area there that's there.
And all of these guys, again, I'm just like a small part of the team now.
They're the ones that run it and come up with these great ideas.
And thanks to what they've built and what they've done, so many classes now can go out and enjoy it in different ways.
One of the original, original things that I worked on was the outdoor classroom.
And so I love it when I'll see Mr. Levine out there teaching poetry, you know, and he's got his whole class using the outdoor classroom.
I mean, I love that.
But even just when I see colleagues going out there at lunch or students, I mean, the lunches in the garden are hugely popular.
I mean, you're looking at well over 50 kids per lunch going out there and spread out and enjoy the garden.
That's why we keep making it bigger and keep making more and more seating and stuff like that.
I always want teachers to think about how they could get involved because I want it to be like a big blank space, a big blank canvas for anybody.
One of the social studies teachers, one of the great young teachers, Mr. Schaller, a few years ago, comes up with an idea for a time capsule.
Now, this was at the time of covid and he has his students, including, by the way, my son, who was in his class at the time, write about their experiences during covid.
This is when we came back after that, because remember we had we had the shooting and then a couple of years and we're trying to get back to normal and then boom, we get hit with covid.
And so the whole country is disrupted. Right. So it's just been a long time since, you know, we've had some some normalcy, but that was amazing.
And so he had his students, they write this, they make a time capsule and there's a plaque out there.
And that wasn't anything that I thought of or anybody on the sort of the main team thought of.
And that's what we want to encourage. We have this great relationship, for example, with drama.
That's not something I would have thought about at the beginning of the garden, that that would become an important part.
But like, first of all, they've donated to us, they've helped us out.
And then when they do, for example, their Halloween event, it's amazing and they utilize we're one small part of their giant operation that night.
But it's such a fun part of it. And working with them.
I love that that collaboration and so many things happen in life.
And you see that throughout history. Right.
When you have different ideas and different groups coming together and that's when you get that spark of creativity, spark of learning and you push things forward.
So any teachers, any students that come up with great ideas come to us and our job is to help make it happen.
I think the coolest thing that you're talking about when it comes to others who have participated, not one of those names that you mentioned.
Is a science teacher. And I think that happens to be so cool.
You're talking about Devin Schaller, who is our AP World's teacher and what he's done with the time capsules.
You talked about Darren Levine's poetry readings.
He is an English two honors and I believe Holocaust Studies educator who has also done his own activism after the tragedy as well.
And we'd love to have him speak at a different time.
You're also talking about Melody Hertzfeld in the drama department, who, again,
I always go back to how she progressed music and theater after the tragedy as a way to allow her own students to have their weekend again.
You mentioned in Diana Haneski, our school librarian, who has done her own efforts with the school library and making that as an area.
And when all those forces come together in one space created out of science.
I think that's a great demonstration to show how cross curricular your project has served this entire school community.
And I wanted to also think about that in terms of the role that the garden has played.
How do you see that it's also contributed to the emotional well-being of our students, our staff and the community as you've seen it?
And what does this mean for the ongoing development of projects you may be currently working on?
I want to mention something before I forget.
Very early on, like in that spring, Mrs. Reoven and a student came up with an idea to have a garden at the front of the school.
And that became what is called Project Grow Love.
And I just want to give a shout out to them and what they've done with that, because very early on, we decided that Marjory's Garden, which pre-existed this,
we wanted Marjory's Garden to be a place that was still very much in terms of STEM, a very positive place.
We wanted to be always super respectful of everything that happened, but we didn't want it to be entirely about that.
And so when they started Project Grow Love, it was a way to memorialize and then it was also accessible to the public at all times.
And then our garden, we didn't want to kind of walk in a line at the time.
I wanted to be very much a positive place where you go and you feel good about what you're doing.
And at that time, it was, I hate to say an escape from things, but it was just so heavy and everything was so tragic and sad as much as possible.
And it was pretty almost impossible to do.
But we wanted a place where you're going and you kind of get your mind because you're working on stuff and you're planting stuff and you're watching stuff grow.
And of course, that's, I'm not a mental health expert or anything, but I knew that was helping people.
I mean, I know that for me and for my friends, like it was just it's a positive experience anytime.
I was hoping, obviously, that other people would share in that and help them get through that time.
I mean, right off the bat, like I think the first time we came back, they had something I didn't think about at the time, the service dogs, the service dogs.
Everybody will tell you was a huge thing for the school in terms of the mental health.
I mean, wow, that was tremendously huge for the kids.
Well, guess what? I mean, that was a great space for them to take the dogs out in the garden.
So I have all these pictures from that time period where the kids are out there.
And again, they're kind of getting their minds off things for just a few minutes at least and be out there in nature.
And you're with these beautiful animals. And that was special.
Again, my field is not eco criticism, but I do know enough from my coursework that there is a true evidential entanglement that occurs when nature and culture come together with the arts.
So in sense that, yes, there is definitely a therapeutic element to using nature and gardening as a way for someone to find their resilience in the wake of a trauma or tragedy or the onset thereof.
And in thinking about that, I wanted to also look at the future of the garden and also celebrate its legacy.
So with the creation of the garden so far being a very deeply collaborative effort, which has involved students, teachers, local partners,
what does this collaboration mean to you? And in terms of what's next for the garden, what can you tell the community about that and how can we contribute and be part of that?
Well, again, I can't say enough about the community. I mean, I could sit here and list off dozens of people.
So if I have not mentioned your name, I mean, there are just dozens and dozens of people who have made beautiful contributions.
And that's what it's all about. What's great is I never know who's going to show up.
I mean, on any random Sunday, I could get somebody brand new who wants to get involved with the garden that brings something entirely different to the game.
And so we have that happen all the time. And that's a wonderful thing.
And for people who want to volunteer, we're out there almost every Sunday morning from nine to ten thirty a.m.
And the way you know, if we're going to be there, we have a remind.
So to join this remind, you just text at the symbol @MSDGarden to the number 81010.
So that's how people get involved.
And right now we need to concentrate on taking what we've built and really try to get back to some more of the steam aspects and just keep adding more of the science and more of the growing and more art and things like that.
So that's a way that people can always get involved.
Like I said, you come up with a good idea. Let's try to make it happen.
It's there. It's for the community. It's for the school.
It's for anybody that wants to utilize it. We'll try to help make that happen.
What is one thing that you'd want your listeners to take away from as it relates to how healing works through nature?
I think there are so many aspects to that, because it's tough being a teenager to begin with.
Right. I mean, even before twenty eighteen, we were thinking in terms of, hey, you know, what my generation I mean, this has been talked about a lot.
But when I was growing up, I lived in a small town in the Midwest.
And if let's say it's the summertime, I mean, my friends and I were out right until the streetlights came on.
We were out running around. We were out in the woods. I had a wooded area behind my house.
We were always in nature and always out getting exercise and fresh air.
And things really have changed a lot.
You have the trauma of what has happened in the school shootings, but you just have the everyday issues of kids not being outside in nature,
not getting the exercise and the fresh air and the sunshine. And they're online.
And I, you know, I'm not at all like I love using technology in the garden.
And I'm not opposed to that. I mean, I obviously I utilize social media all the time to promote the garden.
You know, that's part of the thing. But I also love the fact that the kids, when they're out there,
they don't have their phones in their hand because they're too busy shoveling and they're, you know, they're they're working together and they're they're planting something
or they're creating or they're painting something or whatever it is.
It's sort of going the gardens like the opposite of everything else now for this, especially for the younger generation that are always online and they're in their room.
They're on their phone and the phone's in the face. And it's kind of this isolated existence.
And I think that's a huge part of these mental health issues.
I mean, if you're just online all the time and you're you're comparing yourself to other, it's just there's so many.
I mean, I'm sure this is all well documented right about the mental health things that are negative.
And the garden to me is everything that's the opposite of that. It's collaborative.
It's working with people, actual people. You're next to other humans and you're communicating with these other humans and you're talking with each other.
And you're bouncing off ideas and you're working together. And I don't care if it's something just really menial.
Maybe you're just we just got just shoveling a bunch of mulch and putting it in a location.
At least you're doing something together. And by the way, when it's done, you can step back and you've created something new.
You've done something to improve the garden. And the next time you go out there and the next time after that, you're going to walk down that path.
And I don't care how minor of a thing it was that you did. You can feel that sense of pride and that you did that.
And I remind kids of that all the time, especially when like alumni visit.
Hey, remember, you you helped plant that tree. There's that beautiful tree now. You did that.
You know what I mean? That's something you added to the garden and for teachers as well. You know, whatever it is.
I like to try to remind people of what they've done. That's a big part of it. I'm just a small part of it now.
But when I see what the team is creating and what they're doing, oh, man, it just it feels great.
And so I want others to feel that same way when they go out, that they have a place to go and and kind of give them that boost for the day.
This is one of the few places you can do something at your school and you might come back in five years or come back in ten years.
And there's something there that you did that you can point to, that you can look at.
Like I said, you plant a tree, that tree could be there for a generation or more.
And that I mean, how often do you get to do that?
So that has its own positive mental health aspects for the people that are creating it at that time that they can think in terms of who they might help down the line.
One of my favorite things about the layout of our campus is that, well, the garden's in the very back, but in the very front, there is, I guess, a signage or a mural at the very top of the score that says, be the change you wish to see in the world.
And in a way, with the garden putting our students and our participants rather in the moment when they contribute to that garden, it's almost like they're taking that first step to leaving that footprint to that change that they can truly become.
Thank you again, Mr. Jeter, for sharing your incredible story of Marjory's Garden and the transformative work that you've been doing through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
And your dedication to education, sustainability and healing is truly inspiring to our listeners and the community.
So to our listeners, if you'd like to support Marjory's Garden or learn more about its initiatives, definitely check out Marjory's Garden on Facebook.
I'll put the remind in our show notes as well and check out our show notes for other ways to get involved with the work that Mr. Jeter is doing.
And remember that innovation and healing can bloom even in the most unexpected places.
So until next time, keep growing, keep sharing and keep creating spaces where students and communities can thrive.
Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast.
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Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars in education, one conversation at a time.