[Staff profile. Jessica Albright. Education coordinator, Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden at MSU]
Speaker is Jessica Albright: My story starts a long time ago, actually, when I was in middle school. My mom brought me to the children’s garden and I just fell in love. I loved it so much and I saw two interns working in the garden, just pulling weeds, and I told my mom, I’m like, “Some day I’m gonna do that.” So I decided to come to MSU because of the Children’s Garden and I interned here for three years. And then when I was getting ready to graduate, this job came open. And so it was like a miracle, a dream come true, to be able to work here at the Children’s Garden. And I’ve been a staff member here, this is actually, I’m going into my third year.
Well I’m the education coordinator for the children’s garden, mainly, so what that means is I set up all of the school field trips and experiences here at the garden.
The indoor Children’s Garden, we’re open 12 months a year, we’re open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and so really what the Indoor Children’s Garden is, is it’s kind of a mini replica of what we do outside. (image of a garden labeled “Habitat Garden”) So we have little theme gardens. We have our little Michigan garden and (image of Mackinaw Bridge) Mackinaw Bridge, and different themes like follow your nose (image of a sign that says “Butterfly Fact”) and butterfly habitat and those types of things. (Image of a butterfly fluttering around a leaf) So, this is open all year round, but the butterflies are only here for six weeks and we run from March until April, until the end of April. So we actually just kind of stopped our butterfly season, but as you can see, there’s still some butterflies flying around in here (giggles and motions with her hand that butterflies are still there and it’s after April). So we actually had butterflies flying until September last year, so you know, (image of a butterfly on a stone) just one or two here or there, but we let them do their lifecycle here in the garden. So we have eggs and caterpillars and then they just kind of continue to, you know, make their lifecycle until they’re all finished.
(image of a boy trying to catch a butterfly on his fingertip) To have a kid come into the butterfly house and get a butterfly on their finger, it’s such a privilege to be able to see that for the first time and how excited they are and they feel like they’re magic. You know, that they got to do that and you know, they’ve never, I’m sure they’ve never, done it anywhere else, especially in nature. So, to have them come into a place like the Indoor Children’s Garden and see butterflies and all the stages of the lifecycle it’s really excellent.
(image of the greenery and a pathway in the Garden and then a shot of a chalkboard labeled “Wonderwall”)I think the kids, you know, they’ll come and they know about college almost. They get to have a little glimpse of maybe them coming to college, a place like the Children’s Garden really opens that up to them, and opens them up to MSU. Because, I think a lot of kids, they see MSU through sports and things like that, but then when they get to come and they get to do experiment s and different science, they can actually see themselves here which is really cool for me.
[Produced by Jen Orlando. Michigan State University. University Relations. Media Communications. 2009].