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JUNE

NY Sun Works Teacher Conference

• Who: All NYSW Partner Teachers
• When: Thursday, June 4 | 9:30AM- 1:30AM | Register Here
• Where: Virtual/Zoom
• Overview: Current school partners – join us for our final full-day NY Sun Works professional learning session of the school year! We are rounding out the year with a round table discussion and share-outs of best practices from exemplary teachers. There will be opportunities to hear from veteran NYSW teachers, connect with one another, share ideas, and brainstorm for future activities and practices for your Hydroponic Classrooms.

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Parent Coordinator Information Session

Please join us for a tailored information session about our program and how we can support you in uplifting the fantastic work of your students in their Hydroponic Classroom and engaging families.

Check back later for upcoming sessions.

(ONLY OPEN TO PARTNER SCHOOL PARENT COORDINATORS)

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CBS42: New Initiative Brings Hydroponic Farming to 8 Birmingham chools

A first-of-its-kind program in the nation is introducing hydroponic farming technology to eight schools across the district, giving nearly 4,000 students a hands-on way to learn science.

The initiative is a partnership between Birmingham City Schools, Jones Valley Teaching Farm and New York Sun Works. They’ve created classroom greenhouses where students can grow plants and harvest vegetables.

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Where Can a Degree in Indoor Agriculture Get You?

Sage Cormier was finishing her junior year of college in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Almost overnight, the supply chains stalled, putting a great strain on food access for Sage’s community. For Sage, this crisis revealed all too clearly the risks of relying on outsourced food production and served as a wake up call that inspired her next move into indoor agriculture.

During the first phase of lockdown, Sage closely followed local media coverage of events as they unfolded, growing increasingly concerned about the situation in her surrounding communities in the Upper Peninsula. “With the growing social unrest during the pandemic and supply chain issues directly affecting our food access, I found myself thinking: How can I help my community?” 

Happily for Sage, in 2020, with the support of NY Sun Works, Marquette’s NMU launched its inaugural indoor agriculture associate’s degree. This was the first associate’s degree of its type in the country, providing education and certification for people wanting to enter the burgeoning world of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). Branching out from its K-12 specialization, NY Sun Works helped launch the program, providing the curriculum, teacher training, and hydroponic and aquaponic systems. 

Around that time, Sage received an email from NMU notifying her about the new associates degree, and ideas started forming. “I began having a lot of crazy ideas to bring people together by providing food through hydroponic installations in abandoned buildings in Marquette.” The degree seemed like a great opportunity to turn her food justice ambitions into concrete and meaningful work. Sage decided to enroll.

Initial impressions were fantastic. “I really loved the program from the start. The work I was doing and the information I was learning felt rigorous – I felt like a scientist.” More importantly, Sage felt the course nurtured and supported her passion for food justice. 

NYSW welcomed representatives from Northern Michigan University at a networking side event during our 14th Annual Youth Conference at the Javits Center

When Sage graduated in 2021, she knew she wanted tactile work with plants, especially as a means to tackle issues around food equity. Naturally, through an interest both in hydroponics and education, NYSW began to feel like a good fit. At NYSW, Sage could work physically with hydroponics but also help develop an indoor agriculture curriculum that benefited student development and contributed to various food justice-related issues.

Thanks in part to her experiences at NMU, it wasn’t long before Sage stepped  into the role of instructor on the NYSW Urban Agriculture Workforce Development Program. NYSW launched this workforce readiness training in 2022 with the support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In brief, the program equips high school students with technical skills and environmental science knowledge to help streamline them into green jobs upon certification. Sage’s role is to train teachers, maintain systems and supervise the rigorous theoretical and practical tests which students must complete before graduating.  

“It’s funny, because a lot of the work I do now feels directly related to the work I did at NMU.  My degree prepared me really well.” For Sage, the transition into the professional world from the associate’s degree was seamless. It provided her with foundational skills and paired well with other interests, like education, to work in more specialized sectors of the indoor agriculture world.

Sage gives resumé writing advice to two students during the CEA Networking Fair at the 14th Annual Youth Conference

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THE KELLY CLARKSON SHOW: Kelly Clarkson Loves DIY Urban Gardening In Schools

New York Sun Works is a nonprofit bringing sustainable urban farming to underserved classrooms by building hydroponic gardens! Executive director and mother of two Manuela shares how the gardens are teaching students about the future of farming, while also helping feed the community. Kelly also meets fifth graders Zoe and Giovanni, who demonstrate how a hydroponic garden works. Watch till the end for a huge surprise for New York Sun Works!

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STEM Hydroponic Kit Info Sessions

STEM Kits are BACK IN STOCK! Please complete this form if you are interested in STEM Kits for the 2025-26 school year. 

The education team will be hosting several virtual information sessions to share with teachers the goals of our STEM kits as well as ideas for how to utilize them and the associated curriculum in the classroom.

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NY Sun Works Partnership Info Sessions

Are you interested in bringing a NY Sun Works Hydroponic Classroom to your school? Join us for an information session to learn more about our program, hear about grants available for Hydroponic Classrooms including capital funding, and ask our team any questions you may have. Registration is now available for Zoom information sessions, please spread the word!

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FEBRUARY

Youth Conference Info Sessions

Who: All NYSW Partner Teachers interested in attending or participating in this year’s 14th annual Youth Conference

When: 

Monday, February 24 | 3pm-4pm | Register Here

Wednesday, February 26 | 3pm-4pm | Register Here

Where: Virtual/Zoom

Overview: If you are interested in learning more about our 14th annual NY Sun Works Discovering Sustainability Science Youth Conference, please join us at one of our information sessions. Our annual conference brings together students from hundreds of partner classrooms across the five boroughs of NYC to share students’ own investigations and action projects through student-led presentations!

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VERTICAL FARM DAILY: Rep. Hakeem Jeffries Partners with NY Sun Works to Bring Climate Education to Coney Island Schools

Brooklyn students at select schools will be seeing a lot more green on their campuses, as one congressman joined kids at a Coney Island school to present funds for teaching students about urban farming and planting. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries was at Rachel Carson High School to present $500,000 in federal money to New York Sun Works, the organization providing the hydroponic farms to the schools.  

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How to take care of your new plant in a passive hydroponic mason jar system!

• When you get home, fill up your mason jar halfway with water. 
• The plant wicks water up through the cotton string so always make sure the end reaches the water.
• If you need to refill the water, don’t dump out the leftover water – that’s where the nutrients are! Just add water on top. 
• Place it on a nice sunny window and watch it grow!

Image of mason jar system?

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Our Youth Press Teams Chronicle the Latest Discoveries at the 15th Youth Conference

On April 30, our Youth Press Teams fanned out across the Javits Center to uncover the motivations, challenges and discoveries laying behind the 28 projects on show at our 15th Annual Discovering Sustainability Science Youth Conference. 

This year, 11 students ranging from 8 to 18 years old took on the role of junior reporters, interviewing both their student peers and guest speakers. As each team of student presenters trundled off stage to raucous applause and cries of ‘Encore!’, our Youth Press Team was there ready to delve deeper into the topics of climate education and sustainability science.

Those interviewed included: Patricia Lombardi, Senior Vice President, Project Delivery at New York Power Authority, Eli Dryer, Events Sustainability Lead at the Javits Center.

You can read each Youth Press Team member’s articles here: Abigail Castillo, Andrew Vaca, August Miller, Baxter Bell, Emmanuella Nkansah, and Poppy Sachens.

A special thank you to DuJuan Robinson, Hanaa Butcher, Neril Sandeep, Jesse John, John Killigrew, Laura Karlen, Kimberly Nazario Markus for supporting our Youth Press Teams this year!

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LEARNING ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY AT THE JAVITS CENTER BY POPPY SACHENS

The NY Sun Works event, which took place at the Javits Center in Manhattan on April 30, was an opportunity for students ranging from 3rd to 12th grade to share their ideas and studies related to sustainability science. 

Students created presentations about their experiments focused on a range of topics and ideas to benefit the environment. In this report, I will be sharing a summary of the event, and examples of information given from presentations and interviews.

At the event, the Harbor Middle School had a presentation titled, “How Does the Age of Swiss Chard Plants Affect Their Salt Tolerance?”, shared by students Levi and Hadley. This presentation shared an experiment they did on Swiss Chard, with the goal of filtering the New York Harbor by growing it in a floating water system in the Gowanus Bay. 

The students found the roots of the plant work to filter contaminants in water by using the Nitrogen cycle to travel into local bodies of water, such as the New York Harbor and Gowanus Bay.

Additionally, the CEO of Javits Center, Joyce Leveston, announced the Opening Remarks of the event. In her speech, she highlighted that there was a hydroponics-like farm on the roof with greenhouses growing vegetables, harvesting honey with beehives, and 30 apple trees! 

She shared that she wants children to have access to healthy food, and be able to grow that food. In other words: food justice. The organization also captures rainfall and reuses it for farm use. 

The Javits Center demonstrates how event spaces can put sustainability at the heart of both their architecture and programming, making the world a better place.

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GRASS-ROOTS BY EMMANUELLA NKANSAH

For many, making waves in society begins with change. But for these students, contributions to society began with a platform, namely NY Sun Works, which hosted a youth conference at the Javits Center that highlighted students of many ages. As a member of the Youth Press Team, I had the pleasure of interviewing exceptional people whose work stirred a buzz in their communities. Here are the stories of a few remarkable individuals who used their love for agriculture to make change within their communities:

Yash exercised his love for problem-solving with his website Agrihealth, which served as an “Urban Farming Assistant.” Hailing from Union City, New Jersey, Yash’s project tackles gaps in knowledge and access to proper agricultural practices in urban neighborhoods like his by combining technology and an AI chatbox to help consumers. When asked about challenges he encountered during the process, I learned he faced them with grit, using his school’s hydroponics lab and his teachers to help him pave the way. Soaring to new heights through his innovative work, Agrihealth provides consumers with an environmentally friendly and convenient way to preserve their crops.

Our next notable interviewees were Nikolai, Nikoloz, and Arnold, who focused on “Fresh, Flavorful, Local” approaches to “Starting a School Farmer’s Market.” Like Yosh, their projects began at school, where they worked alongside their peers and educators through a series of taste tests, flavor experimentation, and overall trial and error. Their work teaches audiences the value of perseverance, as they exclaimed how their faith in their classmates and project helped them overcome setbacks. Prioritizing passion over profit, their main goal was finding a new niche for students and faculty to invest in as they sold seasonings and crops through their school’s farmers’ market. 

With each interaction with a new group of students, I could feel myself, as well as my other interviewers, gaining a clearer understanding of the world of agriculture. Not only did their projects communicate the extensive sweat and hard work that went into making their final products, but they also showcased how their projects reflected their communities, as they merged their interests and used them to make waves in their societies.

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CELEBRATING FARMER SCIENTISTS BY BAXTER BELL

At the Jacob Javits Center, I was part of the NY Sun Works press team, and I interviewed five speakers. The speakers I will be focusing on are Yosh, who created an agricultural urban farming assistant, and Aria, Ryan, Dylan, and Irfan who focused on finding the optimal growth environment. 

The first presenter, Yash Gupta from Jose Marti STEM Academy, created an app that helps the health of agricultural farming and it helps keep your farm growing well. Also, the app gives statistics on how well your farm is doing and includes AI to give you feedback. It also has an image reader that sees if your plants are thriving. I think he did really well, and I remember he’s been working on this for over two years. He didn’t do this by himself, he had teachers help. I think it’s a very useful app that can help a lot. I noticed he put in all different types of pipes, lighting, and urban farming layouts, which can help you plan out a new farm or hydroponics lab. The AI helps you figure out how to make changes to your lab so the plants can grow better and more efficient.

The four people Aria, Ryan, Dylan, and Irfan from PS 214, conducted many experiments. Their main focus was to discover how crowding more plants into a smaller space impacts growth. Their method was as follows: They took three identical cups, and they put the exact same amount of water in each of them. The independent variable is that each cup had a different number of clippings of basil. The one with 10 clippings only had a few that grew well; the one with five had similar outcomes; the one with just one clipping had lots of space for the roots to grow and didn’t have to share any of its nutrients so it grew strong and large. 

The optimal growth environment and urban farming assistant will be important for people to know about because lots of hydroponics labs and urban farms have not been doing well. These can help them reboot and do better and grow more efficiently.

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WHAT I LEARNED AT THE NY SUN WORKS YOUTH CONFERENCE BY AUGUST MILLER

Have you ever been to the NY Sunworks Youth Conference? If so, what did you learn there? NY Sunworks is a non-profit business that holds a Youth Conference at the Javits Center in West Manhattan every year. For the 15th annual Youth Conference, I attended and learned a lot about many schools doing different experiments for the past year. This article will cover three of these amazing presentations. So let’s plunge into the world of hydroponics!

For the first presentation, I will be covering the Harbor Middle School (HMS) about their idea of how the age of swiss chard plants affects their salt tolerance. HMS students Levi and Hadley attempted to answer this question by using baby swiss chard and adult swiss chard in their experiment, putting them in salt water for 6-7 weeks (they meant the 67 joke for younger audiences) to see which grows better. After 6-7 weeks passed, the results were clear: adult swiss chard grew significantly better than baby swiss chard did, to the point where the baby swiss chard started to wither and die. HMS’s experiment was a complete success. Based on this knowledge, future plans are to create little floating gardens on the Hudson River filled with adult swiss chard. All in all, this was one of the most successful experiments that I saw at the conference.

For the second presentation, yours truly will be covering PS.34’s experiment about loofahs possibly having the ability to be used as a growing substrate. PS.34’s students Isla, Grayson, and Blake tested this theory by planting basil into a loofah for several weeks. After the time had completely passed, the basil grew big and strong and got to fulfill its potential. They did this experiment because rockwool can’t be reused, but they wanted to know if a loofah can even grow plants and then later be reused to continue growing plants. If so, everyone across the globe should use a loofah instead of rockwool. However, if it does not work, they can just say that you can use a loofah in addition to rockwool to grow plants in a hydroponics lab.

For the final presentation, I shall be covering a special presentation made by the CEO of the Javits Center Joyce Leveston. Joyce covered all of the sustainable activities that they have at the Javits center, such as beehives, a green roof, and many more! They also talked about how when it rains, they capture the water to reuse for future needs. Their goal for the future of sustainability is spreading these ways to other parts of the NYC community so we can all be sustainable and combat the challenges ahead related to climate change.

In conclusion, the NY Sunworks conference showed me important sustainable ideas that we can make the world better and can combat climate change and other fossil fuel disasters. All in all, the most interesting presentation was from HMS since theirs was the most thoughtful and they sufficiently explained what their plans were for the future. So, what would you do for the future of sustainability? 

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THE SEEMINGLY INFINITE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL OF THE LOOFAH BY ANDREW VACA

April 30, 2026, marked NY Sunworks’ 15th Annual Discovering Sustainability Science Youth Conference. And yes, that was indeed a double-digit number; that’s how you know that NY Sun Works doesn’t play when it comes to showcasing the science of sustainability. 

Keeping up with the previous year, this year’s youth conference was held in the Javits Center in Manhattan. Being fortunate enough to attend the conference for the first time, as soon as I took my first step in the center, I was shocked by how futuristic the Javits Center looked. If AI and whatever your rendition of the future maybe had a baby, that’s exactly how I would describe the Javits Center, both inside and out. Moving to the main event —the student presentations—which were held in a large auditorium, let’s unpack what these students explored within the vast field of sustainability science. 

Coming first to the stage were Isla, Grayson, and Blake, an adorable group of practically Lego-sized students from Oliver H. Perry School. Don’t let their size fool you, as their project tackled a big question: Can a Loofah Be Used as a Growing Substrate? They focused on testing whether a loofah could be used as an alternative growing substrate in a hydroponic system. The issue that prompted them to investigate this question was that many growing substrates used in hydroponics are non-renewable, which led them to consider more sustainable options. 

In their experiment, basil seeds were planted into a loofah placed in an NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) hydroponic table with water to see if the basil would grow successfully. After the presentation, I asked what other plants could be tested besides basil. Isla remarked that lettuce could also potentially work in the system. The presenters explained that more research is still needed to better understand how effective loofah can be as a long-term growing substrate (in other words, these young scholars have laid the groundwork for future research to pick up on!).

Another insightful presentation was given by dynamic duo Levi and Hadley from The Harbor Middle School, who sought to answer the question: How does the Age of Swiss Chard Plants Affect Their Salt Tolerance? And to be honest, my brain processed the word ” Swiss ” and could not stop thinking about the turkey sandwiches that were to be served for lunch. Anywho, squaring back to this innovative topic, their goal was to examine ways to reduce water usage while also improving environmental sustainability. They also referenced the nitrogen cycle (very much caught that reference shout-out, my 5th-grade science teacher) as part of how nutrients are circulated within their system. The system they studied was modeled after the New York harbor environment. As part of their methodology, they utilized Swiss Chard plants, which are able to tolerate increased levels of salinity and nutrients. This made them suitable for testing how plants respond under different aquatic conditions. During our interview, I asked what other curiosities or questions they had after completing their experiment. Both of these bright minds wondered how their findings could be applied in real-world settings such as the harbor environment. I also inquired about how future researchers could expand on their work. In response, they mentioned the idea of a floating garden system, which could potentially extend their research into different areas of aquatic agriculture. 

These were just some of the many impressive presentations I was able to witness as part of the youth press team. It was inspiring to see students actively engaging with scientific questions and exploring gaps in hydroponic research. Ultimately, major environmental challenges, whether recurring or upcoming, don’t stand a chance against these students, who are actively contributing to solutions by exploring plant-based systems and broader environmental research.   

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FINDING THE BEST TEMPERATURE TO PREPARE TEA LEAVES BY ABIGAIL CASTILLO

One of the four groups of presenters I got to interview were students: Sky, Ameerah, and Beatrix from the John D. Wells School in Brooklyn. The title of their presentation was “Tea Hydration Experiment” which focused on their experiment of growing chamomile tea in a hydroponic system before experimenting with a dehydrator to find out what temperature leads to the best results.

The team’s hypothesis was that the ideal drying temperature of chamomile tea leaves would be 115 degrees, whereas their experiment proved that the real ideal temperature is closer to 145 degrees. Through this experiment they also learned that making tea at home is easy and cheaper than buying it in a store.

After the presentation, the interviewers and I were allowed to ask 3-4 questions. My personal question was “Why did you choose tea as your experiment?” and they replied saying that tea in general comes from plants and that they wanted to experiment on different plants.

This experience taught me that precise record-keeping and collecting data from presentations are the backbone of any successful reporting. It showed me how to take complex scientific findings and communicate them effectively to a wide audience. Looking more ahead to college, although my goal is to major in a field like Criminal/Forensic Psychology and not working with plants, I can apply to my chosen field what I’ve learned from these students’ scientific rigor.

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The Mistake that Funneled Arnold Winsent-Glouchko into Teaching Agriculture

While picking out his sophomore year elective class at Brooklyn’s Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies, Arnold Winsent-Glouchko had but one goal in mind: to choose the easiest option. When his eyes fell upon an elective named ‘Agriculture,’ Arnold thought ‘Bingo!’ Yet, it wasn’t long before his choice came back to haunt him: he had fallen upon his calling. Today, as a senior at Rachel Carson, Arnold is a teaching assistant in Teacher Hannah O’Leary’s Hydroponic Classroom.

But Arnold’s passion did not blossom overnight: When he joined her class, O’Leary noticed that “(Arnold) struggled to connect with school. He wasn’t here very often, and when he was here, he was sleeping.” It got worse. Suspensions, trouble with other teachers, and frequent absences mired Arnold’s education. 

O’Leary, however, saw his potential. With her encouragement, Arnold began to take an interest in the Hydroponic Classroom and its accompanying aquaponic system — an enlarged fish tank, which supplies hydroponic systems with nutrients from fish waste. Bit by bit, Arnold began reengaging with school: “The hands-on learning was something that I missed a lot in other classes,” said Arnold. “Here, you see the results.”

For Arnold, NY Sun Works offered an elevated learning experience and a foundation for his post-high school ambitions. In 2022, O’Leary joined the first cohort of NY Sun Works’ Workforce Development Program, which equips students in 11th and 12th grade with a Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) certification. To attain the certification, students must acquire knowledge about technology-based farming, such as hydroponics or indoor garden systems, mastering everything from light and temperature regulation to pest control. 

When asked about his favorite aspect of hydroponics, Arnold struggled to provide only one answer. “Taking care of everything is probably the coolest thing. There are so many things that make you feel like an expert scientist,” said Arnold. “Even cleaning, carrying buckets, dumping it out, testing with the little tubes, is pretty cool.” 

At the same time as Arnold was finding his feet in class, his teacher O’Leary was feeling overstretched and overwhelmed, especially after seeing dozens of students each day. The school’s three-year long agricultural program also meant that O’Leary had to monitor and remember her students’ progress as they advanced from year to year. While looking for an ideal teaching assistant, O’Leary realized that one of her most troubled students now appeared to be the strongest candidate: “Arnold had changed enough to be able to see those struggling behaviors in other kids, and work with them; to help them grow out of it.”

Beyond his role as teaching assistant, Arnold became Vice-President of the school’s Future Farmers of America chapter and was also pivotal in the creation of a farmer’s market at Rachel Carson, a project he presented with his colleagues at the NY Sun Works Youth Conference in April 2026.

As he looks beyond high school, Arnold keeps many options open, among them being a teacher. After seeing O’Leary’s impact on him and the students he now helps, he remains interested in returning the favor for students with similar potential.

AUTHOR: Anna Lee

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QNS: NY Sun Works Opens Hydroponic Classroom in Elmhurst with Support from BP Richards

NY Sun Works announced the opening of a new hydroponic classroom at P.S. 7Q Louis F. Simeone in Elmhurst during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, May 15th. 

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