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Author: Miranda Hamms

Miranda Hamms / Author

mhamms@antiochcollege.edu

My name is Miranda Hamms. I am a 28 year old, part time student at Antioch College, as well as a full time mom. I spend my free time enjoying learning, art therapy and diving into the world of philosophy. My passion and life force is one connected to the energy of the life force we reside on. A passion of mine is working to help create social justice in areas such as suicide awareness, BLM and indigenous people movements. Thanks for stopping by. Peace, Truth and Love

Mom, Manager and More: Hamms ’25 at Kismet and Homeschooling

18 February 2023

Education & Youth Empowerment (Pre-Education), Pre-Education, Social Enterprise & Social Innovation, The Work We Do

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Healing the earth, heals us in the process: Hamms ’25 at Agraria

28 June 2022

The Work We Do

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Find Me

SKILLS & INTERESTS

Interests in nature, animals, spirituality, philosophy and mental health awareness. Skills are able to work in fast paced environments, ability to understand communication effectively and thoroughly. An ability to read thoroughly and create alluring writing pieces. As well as time management, customer service, and problem solving.

My Work

updated reflection essay (1) The Kettle Is Calling- draft https://sites.google.com/antiochcollege.edu/skyeflowe-roots/home

Accomplishments

Gallery I

Gallery II

Mom, Manager and More: Hamms ’25 at Kismet and Homeschooling

Feb 18, 2023

This semester, I felt this once in a lifetime opportunity was proposing itself to me. I am a single mother, and my daughter is currently in pre-school. I’ve spent the past two years, preparing and planning for her first years in grade school. My hope was for her to have a nature-based education, where she would feel supported in finding her passions in life. It became a very difficult task to find something that I could afford and make work for the both of us. The idea that came to me was self-designing a co-op, where I would take the role as my daughter’s teacher and begin her in literacy lessons. I figured the beginning of the year would be the perfect time to engage her into a reading readiness project before she begins Kindergarten in the fall. With these thoughts and ideas, I began to design a curriculum. This included lots of research on teaching young children how to read, as it is something I have never done before. Creating the curriculum brought back memories of my own experience learning how to read. Through my own experience as a young girl, I felt guided with intuition into creating a curriculum that would be successful for my daughter. Our lessons are Monday through Thursdays from 9 am to 12 pm. I realized that this would only cover half of my hours for my self-designed co-op to be approved and as I already work in town at a local clothing store, my advisor and I decided that this would be a wonderful way to fill in the hours.

A week before co-op began, I was offered the opportunity to step into a manager position at Kismet. I gladly accepted that the raise and leadership role are things I need in my life to continue to grow. I am almost halfway through the semester and one thing I can say for sure is my plate is full! It has been a mind opening and empowering experience in both roles I am currently taking on.

As the manager of Kismet, it has become my responsibility to keep up with the image and appearance of the store, create displays, keep up with the store’s social media and assist and support sales associates. Overall, it is a very creative job that I thoroughly enjoy. I’ve had no challenge in stepping into a leadership role. I personally believe that if I come from a place of empathy and understanding, it builds a healthy relationship of respect and honesty. The positive side to my relationship with my employees, is they’re my friends and I have known them before becoming the manager. We work as a team, to take care of our store and each other. The feeling of having creative freedom within a store that is mine to care for, is exciting and inspiring. I have enjoyed creating displays, decorating our window display and styling the mannequins. Check out this link to Kismets instagram to get an idea of the store and the creative projects I have been designing! The role I take in my daughters reading readiness project, is that of a teacher and a mother. We begin our lessons after breakfast. I like to let her choose how she wants to begin class. Is she in the mood to stretch and use our bodies or start with a slow, mind game to ease our way into the lesson? I feel as teachers, it is vital to understand that each student has a different way of learning and the best way to teach them is usually the way they are wanting to learn, with guidance of course. This is how I have led my lessons with my daughter. It has been successful so far. She has already learned letter annunciations and can identify what any word starts with. We have now begun learning to pronounce three letter words. Our final project that we have started to plan out together is creating a book. Amelia is choosing her topic and will use the three letter words we have and will continue to learn in our classes. Our final goal is for her to be able to read her book. I realize that this may be too difficult of a goal for a three-month time period, but regardless of a time frame, I know it something she will achieve and a tangible memory for her to hold onto forever.

My day-to-day experience begins with a slow morning of breakfast and tea. We begin our lessons that usually start with some annunciation yoga. My daughter, Amelia goes through the alphabet and acts out a word of each letter. She walks and roars like a lion would and so on. Her energy is up and excited after our morning letter yoga. We usually begin a card game that entails picking a card from our deck of letters and guessing the annunciation. Both games have helped Amelia tremendously in memorizing the sounds of letters. We usually end our sessions with sounding out three letter words and planning a little bit more of our final book. After morning lessons with Amelia, it is time for me to head into Kismet. My projects at Kismet vary from day to day. Some days I spend most of my time cleaning and helping customers. Other days, I am decorating the store and taking and uploading pictures for our Instagram. I believe this co-op is helping me step into a leadership role. Regardless of my major, being a leader is a helpful tool I would like to learn for any career that I pursue. As early childhood education is one of the options of my choice in a major, this test drive is a great way to see if this career path is something that works for me. I believe that upkeeping a local business is a wonderful way to support and create a community. I enjoy meeting locals and creating relationships. It’s a simple way of networking that not only benefits myself but allows communication and love to spread through a community.

Healing the earth, heals us in the process: Hamms ’25 at Agraria

Jun 28, 2022

Since the beginning of April, I’ve had the opportunity to be welcomed with open arms into Agraria’s regenerative land school in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I was nervous about meeting new people and creating something new within my life, but I was eager to see what Agraria was about. My nerves stayed with me within the first week, as it is always a nerve-wracking experience starting a new job. I met lots of kind people within my first week. I soon realized I was into something that I did not even know I needed.

My first day on the job, I toured through Agraria’s gardens, office areas, and my personal favorite, their land. Agraria’s mission is simply this: “To cultivate community resilience by modeling regenerative practices that restore ecosystem health, heal our relationship with the land, and grow just and equitable food systems.” Agraria lives by this each and every day with their goals, communication and the way they simply live on the land. I feel that their mission to restore their ecosystems health is starting to restore my own. This is what the family within Agraria is all about, restoring our earth within the community and bringing them together. It is what we should have been doing all along. Coexisting with the earth, instead of conquering it.

My job at Agraria is the assistant youth educator. My favorite part of Agraria is that it is shared with the community. They hold afterschool and homeschool programs for kids to come on to the land and engage, learn and connect to nature as well as themselves. It’s my job to help the educator and ensure the days group goes smooth. The activities for the day are usually planned out beforehand. My first week with the younger group of kids, we planted seeds and played in the dirt. I went home that evening and noticed I felt at ease; peaceful. Over the last month, we have foraged, made fires, searched through the creeks endlessly to find bugs, collected dandelions and violets to make tea, and much more. It has been a joy to experience the world through the eyes of children. The wonder and unrestricted authenticity help me stay in touch with my own inner child.

At Agraria, I have learned to identify certain plants and trees. I wasn’t even aware that I had edible plants growing in my own backyard. I have started to notice that I am becoming more mindful within nature. I observe bird calls and notice their behavior. When I’m alone on a trail or just sitting in my own backyard, my awareness takes over and stillness settles into my mind and body. I get to be a part of their mission and go home every day feeling happiness and relieved that I am not only learning but healing as well. The children’s excited curiosity has begun to fuel my energy and passion within my own day-to-day life. These experiences at Agraria are opening a path of healing that I have been looking for a while now. The kids, my coworkers, and the continuous learning of nature and regeneration will stay with me forever. Not just in my memories, but in how I move forward.