Love of nature inspires teacher to become master gardener

A love of gardening, a love of science and nature, and a need to learn more about where the two intersect are what motivated teacher Rikki Schramm to become a master gardener.

Schramm, a teacher at the Environmental Education Center, already had a love of gardening, but when she was put in charge of the district’s gardening website and a newsletter—Garden Club Newsletter—open to anyone in the district, she wanted to learn the correct way to do things, she said. She applied to the Dallas County Master Gardeners program and completed it this spring. 

“It’s almost like a college level course that you take that’s all about growing plants,” she said. “You learn what’s native and what’s not native, how to grow food, how to grow fruit, and all this lovely stuff, and I was able to do that,” Schramm said. 

The program is also a volunteer organization, so in addition to attending all the classes and passing all the tests, participants must complete 50 hours of volunteerism during their first year of membership at master gardener approved events, according to Schramm. She was able to complete that and graduate.

Schramm—whose little duck Poppy won The Beat’s spring pet photo contest—has worked for the district for approximately 10 years, first at Leila P. Cowart, teaching first and second grades and gifted and talented. 

Schramm, who grew up in Illinois, knew she wanted to teach in a place with warmer temperatures like Texas and learned about the job opportunities with the district when she was visiting a friend who had already made the move. She checked out a job fair and “half an hour later, I had a new job offer and a new plan,” Schramm said. 

Growing up, she wanted to become an interior designer and attended summer camps in that field. After her freshman year of college, she went to her hometown for summer and taught tennis lessons to students of different age groups. She realized she loved working with students. 

“I changed my major that summer and didn’t look back,” she said.

Schramm said the favorite part of her current job is sharing her love of nature and animals with kids. Schramm gets to experience this journey through the eyes of the students. 

“With pre-K, you bring them into the forest, and they think it’s like a fairy tale, a magical place, so that’s really exciting,” she said. “I love getting to share that with them.” 

For the older students, Schramm said that they enjoy seeing things like the rings of Saturn with their big telescopes, as well as the Galilean moons around Jupiter when they are doing a lesson on astronomy. 

One of the unexpected joys of her job is that she’s learning a lot of Spanish just by practicing with bilingual students who visit EEC, she said. ECC does offer bilingual lessons by a teacher who is fully bilingual, and Schramm is motivated to get to that level of fluency someday. 

One of the things that Schramm has enjoyed most about her job is the memories that she has created with her students and former students. 

“When I was at Cowart, I had either taught everyone’s brother or cousin or little sister or best friend, so I really got involved in the community,” she said. Now she sees some of her former students that are now in middle school or high school go on field trips to EEC. 

“They look a little older,” she said. “But it’s so exciting when you see a kid that you remember when we do district outreach events, like school jams, and I run into former students. It’s super awesome.”