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Specialized Professional Development Opportunities in the New Year
The NY Sun Works Education Team is honored to provide partner schools and teachers with resources to support learning about sustainability science, urban agriculture, and hydroponics year-round. With the start of 2023, we are excited to share our NY Sun Works Professional Learning Programming opportunities for the second half of this school year!
Kicking off the spring semester of professional learning opportunities, we will be hosting three separate but specialized professional development events January 30th. Our middle school educators will have the opportunity to join our “Climate Change and Ecojustice for the Middle Grades’‘ virtual PDs at 11 am or 2 pm where they will hear from two climate education experts and will workshop how to effectively implement environmental justice and advocacy in greenhouse classrooms, call students to action, and incorporate climate education into middle school science standards. In addition, high school partner teachers can attend “Fishing for Knowledge – High School Professional Learning,” our in-person PD event at the NY Harbor School on Governors Island to learn about advanced aquaponic & hydroponic techniques, as well as how to address social justice issues like food insecurity. Further, special education teachers are invited to join our “Hydroponics in Special Education Settings Round Table” PD where teachers from D75 schools and other special education settings will collaborate and discuss best practices for integrating hydroponics and NY Sun Works curriculum into their classrooms. These opportunities are just the events for January – we have many more professional learning opportunities planned for the rest of the semester! Teachers will continue to receive information about these events via email and can also check the upcoming events page on our website.
We’ve significantly expanded our professional learning offerings for this Spring, with new professional learning sessions, workshops, and events on topics including: classroom management in the greenhouse classroom, incorporating environmental justice and advocacy into curriculum, engaging diverse learners in the greenhouse classroom, supporting students in designing and implementing their own scientific investigations, and more! We look forward to seeing our amazing partner teachers at these sessions and to continuing to support the incredible work teachers are doing in their hydroponic classrooms
Please visit the upcoming events page on our website to see the most immediate events or use the registration links sent in our “PD Newsletter” email to sign up for all upcoming professional learning events! We will continue to send out these updates. Feel free to email Becky Higgins, Professional Learning Manager, at becky@nysunworks.org with any questions or registration needs. Thank you!
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Crop Calendar Contest Now Accepting Submissions!
We have loved seeing teachers across our partner schools using their Class Crop Calendars to keep track of their harvest cycles and engage students in learning in farm classrooms across the NY metro area. Starting January 4th, we are launching our first Crop Calendar Contest where teachers in NY Sun Works partner farm classrooms can use their Class Crop Calendars to win fabulous prizes including an entire classroom’s worth of our acclaimed STEM Hydroponic Kits!
Submissions should include: 1) One, clear photo of your Crop Calendar by itself, 2) Two to three photos or one video of students utilizing their calendar as part of classroom studies, which could include anything from data collection to harvest day! As we’d love to shout out more than just our winners on social media, each student featured in these photos and videos should have either a DOE or NY Sun Works media release form signed and submitted as part of their class’ entry. This contest will run until the end of February, with prizes being awarded soon thereafter!
To enter our Crop Calendar Contest, you must be a NY Sun Works Partner Teacher and email your class’ entry to jake@nysunworks.org with the subject line “Crop Calendar Contest”. Submissions should include all of the above requirements (1 clear crop calendar photo, 2-3 photos or 1 video of the calendar in action, and signed media release forms for all participating students) to be considered. We look forward to seeing all your hard work and are excited to share it with our community!
You can download our NY Sun Works media release forms using the link below.
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Dialogo Abierto: Horticultura Hidropónica en El Bronx y Nueva York, Manuela Zamora
En esta edición de Diálogo Abierto hablamos con Manuel Zamora directora ejecutiva de NY Sun Works sobre horticultura hidropónica en las escuelas en El Bronx y Nueva York.
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CaribbeanLife: Rep. Clarke Includes Funding for Hydroponic Farming in Schools in Federal Budget
Caribbean American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke said on Friday that she voted in favor of the bipartisan $1.7 trillion spending bill for fiscal year 2023 that passed in the United States House of Representatives.
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Teachers in STEM: Full-Time Heroes & an Endangered Species
Sustainability and climate education have needed substantial, systemic improvement for some time now. But without teachers with feet on the ground (and sometimes, with smiling faces on Zoom calls), classroom studies would grind to a halt. Looking back over the past few years, it’s no secret that the U.S. is facing a shortage of STEM teachers, with schools nationwide reporting a continuous struggle to find and maintain qualified STEM professionals. With test scores in the realms of math and science on the decline and jobs in tech and medicine growing faster than ever, it’s critical that we address the dire need for more STEM educators.
Recruitment and certification programs for teachers in STEM fields have long grappled with this issue. Teachers in public schools have continued to face mounting challenges as our public education system struggles to meet the complexity of our present moment. Broader issues like the pandemic have also demanded teachers rise to new challenges, which can be offputting to those considering a teaching career. However, working in such close proximity to STEM educators has given us a deeper insight into the struggles faced by those delivering quality sustainability education to students around our city, and how to solve them.
Our mission is to equip young people with the knowledge to create a sustainable future, but we also want to continuously elevate and support the classroom leaders who make that mission possible. The programming in our farm classrooms is designed from the ground up to ensure teachers have easy access to a variety of support resources, are connected with peers in the field of STEM education, and feel confident exploring sustainability science topics alongside their students. In this season of gratitude (and all year round), we want to shout from the rooftops about the extreme importance teachers play in shaping our society. Thank you for all you do every day for the students, children, and young professionals around the world staring down a climate-altered future.
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Teaching Sustainability Science in the Big City
Building state-of-the-art hydroponic farm classrooms in schools around NYC is a challenge, but ensuring the teachers therein feel continuously supported is equally important in delivering quality sustainability science & climate education. One of the ways we offer that support is through our NY Sun Works Education Team, which provides year-round curriculum training and support to teachers as they teach in their hydroponic classrooms. In addition, they also design and continue to expand upon our NY Sun Works curriculum, which is a standards-based, year-round curriculum designed to guide students through their exciting journey as farmer scientists. But how do we design learning materials suitable for a student population as richly diverse as that of New York City?
Inclusivity is among the most important pillars supporting our approach to climate education. A deep emphasis on everything from culture and language to learning styles and classroom needs underpins the teaching materials we provide, ensuring that students feel safe and seen while learning about hydroponics, both in the classroom and at home. Similarly, differentiating the curriculum helps to provide an accessible and hands-on learning experience to students of all ages and backgrounds. Students enter our classrooms with varying levels of familiarity with climate science concepts. Our curriculum is structured in a way that both students new to sustainability science and climate education pioneers alike can expand their knowledge, learn new skills, and lead experiments alongside their peers. Additionally, keeping learning materials accessible and inclusive is a top priority, to ensure that the content of those materials is truly relevant to students’ lives. Diving into global concepts (such as water management or food waste) on a local level helps students connect broader issues with their local communities. In this way, the curriculum drives home core sustainability and climate science concepts, which we believe is a crucial part of what makes our program such a success.
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QNS.com: Astoria Queens Energy Tech High School Welcomes New Hydroponic Classroom
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NY Sun Works Brings Learning & Leadership to the Museum of the City of New York
NY Sun Works was honored to join one of the city’s preeminent educational institutions, the Museum of the City of New York, for a day of food-centric professional learning inspired by their newest exhibition: Food in New York. Our Executive Director, Manuela Zamora, shared the success of our program with science educators from all five boroughs during the day’s keynote presentation, highlighting the over 230 schools with NY Sun Works farm classrooms of their own, all of which are now sharing fresh, healthy produce with thousands of students (and their families)! Fabio Parasecoli, Professor of Food Studies at NYU also took to the stage for a discussion-based panel to elucidate foodways, food systems, and other food-related topics all within the complex context of New York City.
Our Program Development team, Megan Nordgren and Madeline Turner, also led teachers through the basics of hydroponics in the classroom, diving into how our program can be adapted to meet a wide range of learning styles. From District 75 & Title 1 to Transfer schools, it’s vital to our mission that students’ backgrounds and circumstances do not obstruct them from the climate education they both need and deserve. After wrapping up a brief introduction to the science behind hydroponics, STEM educators K-12 dove into a hands-on workshop, constructing passive hydroponic systems using simple materials all within recycled plastic drinking bottles. By using these tiny but mighty systems to grow adorable baby kale and lettuce sprouts in their own homes, teachers gain a first-hand look at the relative ease of the hydroponic growing process, as well as share in the joys of caring for a living thing of their very own.
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BronxNews12: Bronx School Celebrates Thanksgiving with Hydroponic Harvest, Thanks to Sun Club Grant
News 12’s Kurt Semder sits down with Dr. Dia Bryant, the executive director of the Education Trust New York, about the latest state math and reading test results.
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BKReader: NY Sun Works Opens New Hydroponic Farm Classroom in East Flatbush
Students enrolled in the NY Sun Works program are more likely to score higher on the 4th grade science achievement test scores, according data acquired by the nonprofit.
