The SFC’s Youth Education team was happy to participate in this year’s 27th annual Farming for the Future Conference, led by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA). Club members have been creating and teaching three days of children’s programming for the past few years, where we teach third through fifth graders about food systems and sustainability. This year, 14 Student Farm volunteers participated in all aspects of the project: from lesson planning to teaching and overseeing the program.
Some future farmers proudly displaying their model. Photo: Sienna McNett
Sienna McNett and Katie Leite, leaders of the Youth Education project team shared their thoughts about the program, “We love PASA and are so happy to continue our involvement each year, because we have the freedom to create our own immersive, interdisciplinary curriculum and see it implemented in a hands-on setting. This year, the team tied together three themes: Sustainability through Agroecology, Bringing Plants into Our Homes and Cities, and Farming Throughout Time and Place. These themes centered on introducing different perspectives to solving food-system related challenges sustainably and creatively, and topics and activities ranged from farming in outer space to a vertical farming themed engineering competition.”
“I think it’s really interesting to work and interact with kids from farming backgrounds, because they have a lot of prior knowledge about these topics, but are also always excited to learn more things. They loved learning about how people are trying to farm in space, and implementing different farming techniques in urban settings. It’s great to see kids get excited about things that are so important and relevant,” shared Katie.
Some of the many activities completed as part of the PASA programming. Photo: Sienna McNett
In addition to PASA, which took place earlier this month, the Youth Ed team has some other exciting projects coming up this semester. These include collaborating with a local after-school program called stEMPOWERed Girls, which empowers young women interested in science, technology, engineering, and or math, as well as more tours and guest speaking events in local schools.
For more information about the Student Farm Club’s Youth Education project team or to schedule a visit to your classroom, please contact Katie Leite at keleite@gmail.com.