I had the most horrifying nightmare last week about WORMS. I was in San Francisco attending the annual joint meeting of the Society of Classical Studies and the Archaeological Institute of America to present as part of a panel on using experimental archaeology in the classroom. I had been invited to talk about using STEM challenges in the classics classroom. The night before the presentation, I went to sleep worrying myself over it for no good reason. I've given countless presentations to large and small audiences, teachers and the general public. I should NOT have been worried, but I was. (You can see my presentation here, and my scripted notes here, in case you're wondering.)
I woke up a few hours later in sheer terror. In the dream, I was talking to an old friend of mine when I casually nudged the bottom of my lip. When I looked down at my finger, there were worms all over it! I ran to a mirror and found a gaping hole right under my lower lip where worms had evidently been living for a quite a while because there were a lot of them. I gasped in horror wanting to look away when someone deep down inside me said, "You've GOT to do this." I reached into the hole and pulled out a gigantic worm and smushed it with my fingers. That's the moment I woke up, reeling from the ever-so-real feeling of worms living in my face. I couldn't go back to sleep so I looked up dream interpretations about worms. And judging from the search, a LOT of people are having this exact same dream, and I was shocked at the supposed meaning: worms in your skin or body represent worries eating away at you, and how you deal with them is significant. If you're pulling them out in the dream, that means you are taking control of your concerns and conquering them. In light of my worries about my presentation, I guess that makes sense.
But then I remembered another reason I have worms on my mind. My worm babies!!! The worms in my classroom decomposing our lunch waste! I was worried about them not getting enough food for the past week with my being in San Francisco for the conference. This past year, I've been teaching a class called Hands-On History, an outdoor learning class that has covered lots of random ancient wisdom including gardening. Through my National Geographic fellowship cohort, I learned of a granting opportunity in the fall with a small non-profit organization called Let's Go Compost. Led by Lauren Click who signs off on emails "wormly," they help classrooms and Girl Scout troops learn about vermicomposting and its benefits. The grant provides a vermicomposter, lessons on the benefits of composting, a book about vermicomposting, and a gift card to purchase worms from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. I signed up so quickly, thinking that my students would LOVE this opportunity. Well, forget my students - I don't care if they love the worms or not because I ABSOLUTELY AM IN LOVE WITH THESE WORMS. This project has been my absolute favorite this year for so many reasons.
1. Worms in the mail! As soon as our worms arrived in the mail, I had to put them into the vermicomposter to chill out. They were discumbobulated from being in the mail for 48 hours. The directions said that some of them would try to escape due to confusion. I also had to make sure that I darkened the room so they would feel at home in the dark dirt. I took them to school the next day and set them up there. Some of my students were absolutely horrified and refused to even look at the worms, much less hold one or sing to them (as I frequently do). Others were delighted and asked if we could name the worms. What a great idea!! Thus, the students filled out a Google form with names like "Mr. Beast," "Messi," "Phillip Raymond Carmichael, Jr.," "Sigma," "Drake," "Poseidon," "Cherry," and "Wormy Wormington III." And we frequently refer to our "soil mates" by their names: "Do you really think Chappel Roan, Dumbo, and Tha Destroyer are going to like that avocado?"
2. Worms are fascinating. They don't consume the food waste that we deposit in the composter because they don't have mandibles. They actually consume the bacteria that grow on the decomposing food, but they like certain food bacteria more than others. They LOVE pumpkin bacteria the most! When we discarded a small jack-o-lantern in the composter, it was like the worms had decided to have an all-night rager with free booze and a DJ. These worms were all OVER this pumpkin! We've also been finding worm eggs and pregnant worms, which means that our worms are happy and well-fed. Worms are mostly self-sufficient, and they won't overpopulate their space.
3. Food waste is a huge problem all over the world. My students and I have learned so much about food waste since we got our soil mates. Farmers and consumers throw away food for many reasons, sometimes just for cosmetic ones, like bruises on apples. I had watched my own students throw away cafeteria-prepared food by the plateful, and it disturbed me that all that potential and eventual dirt was being discarded in large plastic bags, slowing down the decomposition process. In addition to vermicomposting, we also used some of our grant money to purchase large compost tumblers to take care of our larger food waste. With just the kids I eat lunch with every day (about 30 per day), we've clocked anywhere from 2 to 5 lbs of food waste per day.
4. Greens and Browns For composting to work well, you need to even out the green (food scraps) and brown (plant matter like grass clippings and leaves) material that goes into the composter. I've learned so much from the Compost Coach, a wonderful book by Kate Flood, a compost enthusiast. Knowing how easy it is to do now has made me sad that not more people do it.
5. The Harvest After a couple of months of feasting, our soil mates had produced enough castings for us to harvest and use in our garden. And if you're thinking that castings are another way to say "worm poop," you would be correct. The students were not super interested in this aspect of the process, but it would have been hard for them to do in such a small space so I took the lead! I harvested about half a gallon of castings which, unlike traditional compost, needed no time to cure. In fact, the very next day, we used the castings to plant a winter crop of onions in our school garden. The kids are doing an experiment to see if the castings are actually more beneficial for the plants than regular potting soil.
I've enjoyed taking care of "my wormies" so much that I listed them as one of my inspirations on a "vision board." In early January, I was invited to an "Envisioning Party" at which we used old magazines to render some aspirations for 2026. I love the letter W so I tried to write goals that all started with W. Of course, worms start with W so I had to include them. They really are sooooo wonderful!!
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