The Edible Schoolyard Workplace Culture
Tags: 
Teamwork
Collaboration
Agreements
Contributor

ESY Berkeley Teaching Staff
Edible Schoolyard Project
Berkeley, CA

Summary: 
The Edible Schoolyard Workplace Culture describes our values as an organization. We treat this as a living document, periodically updating the language to reflect our shared learning and new perspectives on how to best engage with one another and create a professional, supportive, and welcoming environment to work and learn in.
Our Strategy

Through teamwork, experience, and innovation we develop, test, document, and evaluate lessons and best practices. We document and share everything we learn online and in our professional development trainings.

Culture Principles
  • Mission and Strategy is the metric: In every decision our mission and our specific objectives are our key consideration.
  • Professionalism: While our style as individuals and as team might be easy going, our attitude towards our work is extremely professional - we seek to maintain the highest standards of quality and depth delivery, productivity and effectiveness.
  • We have fun!: We positivity, joy and laughter to our work with each other. We get our jobs done and we do great work, and we have an incredible amount of fun doing it. We also respect the power of the reset button :). [KC5]
  • We work collaboratively: We aim to have transparency and openness. Every team member is able and encouraged to weigh in and contribute to ideas and decisions. The team respects decisions, regardless of initial personal views, and endeavors to implement them with excellence.
  • We are all students: We approach our work with humility and the recognition that sometimes failure is the best teacher. We value curiosity, experimentation, and messy thinking.
  • Cherish feedback and offer it responsibly: We believe in iterative learning and professional growth. When we give feedback, we do so constructively and kindly.
  • Respect and kindness: Our intention is to respect and to care for each other and our community. We are thoughtful and aware of how we impact others. We seek to avoid pretentiousness, meanness, pettiness and disrespect on our team.
  • We are committed to developing our cultural humility: Individually and organizationally, we explore the impact of culture and identity on the schooling experience, examine the influence of race, power, and privilege on the educational process, and seek culturally responsive pedagogy and practices to ensure access for all students, especially those historically underserved by the educational system. We engage families as collaborators in this process and aim to create physical and emotional spaces that reflect and celebrate the diversity of our community.
  • We celebrate the power of food: Food connects people, places, ideas, and the natural world. We recognize the richness of food in its complexity and seek to learn about our own and others’ relationships to food with curiosity and an open mind. We believe food sustains body and spirit. We champion food that supports the wellbeing of farmers, communities, and the planet.