Hi all. I am involved with a group of rebel master gardeners who want higher standards for master gardeners
One annual class of between 20-40 students of which
on average 10% will fail to complete the class due to personal or family emergencies or because they can't make the time for it
Of the remainder anywhere from 20-40% of the people will fail to do the promised 50 hours of payback time in a year. Anywhere from 10-20% will not even do one hour because they lie to get in the class and have no intention of doing the volunteer service.
Of what remains. Only a handful of those who complete the 50 hours and become certified will continue on another year. On average of a class of 40 only 5-8 will continue in the program. In 2015 of a class of 38 about half the class did not do one day of volunteer hours and only 2 stayed on. In 2016 there wasn't even a class. Not because there weren't enough interested people, but because the classes were going to be on the other side of the island and the instructors did not want to go that far. The students receive 18 weeks (3 hours on a Friday) of basic training. No gardening experience is required. The thrust of the class is to train master gardeners to provide unbiased research based information to the gardening public.
Our gripes
1. Low retention rates.
2. People lying to take the class with no intention of becoming master gardener volunteers. We do not offer classes to the public.
3. Quality of the Master gardeners that graduate
a) 2 interns were granted certification for cleaning up the file system. They never did anything else, no helpline, or other outreach.
b) The coordinator is not concerned that the students don't have any real gardening acumen. All they have to do is pass an open book test and be able to look up information
c) an intern once told me that when she was training on the helpline, the clients often asked for a second opinion because they did not believe what she told them. I was not there so I don't know what she told them. She completed her hours and got certified.
d) a certified MG, not an intern, who does plant doctor booths and helpline
1 purchased an indeterminate tomato seedling in a f 4 inch pot at one of the monthly plant sales. I asked her a couple
months later how it was doing and she said not too good. She still had it in the same 4 inch starter pot.
2 I spent a morning with a certified master gardener. Very sweet older lady. She told EVERY caller to bring in a
a sample. She processed and labeled samples that were brought in but NEVER looked at any of them and told the
client someone would get back to them.
When I asked her if she had any clue to what the problem was, she said she thought it was aphids, but wasn't sure
and did not ask more questions or look at the sample to confirm because she diagnosis NOTHING.
What we want
1. Better selection of candidates. If we are going to have people take this class for their own benefit they need to pay for it up
front. Since the purpose of this class is to recruit more MG's as we are understaffed and they plan to expand to yet
location. Get people in the class who understand what a MG does and has the time and wants to volunteer. For this we
asked the students to tour the facility so we could orient them and weed them out.
2. We want a program we can be proud of
Master gardeners should be confident, trust what they have learned. Research more if they have not.
Mentoring of interns to get them through their first year to build on what they have learned and gain confidence
Master gardeners give real gardeners a bad name when they don't know basic gardening. And they are supposed to
educate who now?
The program does not value gardening experience, but we want real gardening opportunities offered to the students. We
have demonstration gardens, bee, grafting, pruning/fruit, rose, bonsai, herb, xeriscape, composting, propagation, and idea gardens
which need helpers and they can learn from these focus groups
3. The class does not prepare the students to understand or be able to garden. They are only expected to look up answers.
However, they can't look up answers if they do not understand the problems of real gardeners.
We want students to know gardening basics. Completing hours doing "filing" and office work is apparently ok with the program. But we think to be certified they need core MG skills of listening, diagnosing, researching, and giving people an appropriate answer, confidently or if they can't figure it out to get help. But they need to not use a formula of asking everyone for a sample, never looking or making a diagnosis and leaving it for someone else to take care of. Interns also get credited hours for signing up and showing up for a plant doctor booth and can sit in the back not engaging the public.
4. Before interns are certified, they need to complete their hours but also be evaluated as to the quality of information they are providing. The certification hours should be quality hours direct contact with the public either by computer, phone, or in person.
This has been a real uphill battle for us. We have made some changes
They agreed to a small increase in tuition, but it is not enough to make a difference and still does not provide incentive to complete the volunteer hours. We wanted to charge $300 more and refund a portion after the intern completed their first year requirements
They did agree to extended mentoring phase after the classroom phase
They did not require a garden tour but offered it to the next class and all but two of them accepted. We think those two will probably not complete the year. We have weeded out 3 more candidates. One because although her enthusiasm is there, she does not have the time, another because of his attitude, and the third we have redirected to be a garden volunteer because he said he was more interested in doing actual gardening.
Some of us could listen in on the interview, although we have no part in the final decision. The coordinator justified the low rates by saying for 10 years they ask every candidate if they understand the purpose of the class is to train them to do outreach and that they are expected to do the 50 hours payback and they all said yes.. I am thinking in 10 years you haven't figured out yet that people lie and maybe you should be asking something else.
We are working on incorporating hands on gardening as part of the class time. We cannot require it and we cannot take it from class time but can offer a hands on activity related to the class topic after the classroom time.
We are trying to get the students involved in volunteering in the garden before the class actually starts. Some of them sign up months before the class begins. We have run into issues with garden orientation requirements that make it hard to get people involved early.
Are we asking too much that they be more selective in who they let in the class and expecting the "master gardeners" to know more than how to look things up or make referrals. Are we asking too much that "master gardeners" have basic gardening skills?