For our service learning project to support local agriculture, we are going to reach out to the local community utilizing today’s technology, social networking. We have created a Facebook page, Supporting North Shore Agriculture. We envision this site to be a central information station for people who live on the North Shore and surrounding areas to find information on local agriculture, as well as share information and discussion. The information we hope to include consists of: locations of local farms; schedules of local farmer’s markets; crop schedules; economic issues associated with local agriculture; news on local agriculture; a comparison of two apples (The Tale of Two Apples); legislation concerning local agriculture and dialogue and discussion with local farmers.
Christine - After doing further research on Local Agriculture, I found some interesting information on a program offered by the state of Massachusetts. It is called The Massachusetts Farm to School Project. Legislation was passed to help connect local farmers with consumers in an effort to support and stimulate the local economy. The legislation, initially intended to prohibit junk food being sold in schools, has an amendment attached that allocates funds to support the Farm to School Project. This program attempts to facilitate better communication and cooperation between school districts and local farmers to get locally grown produce in school cafeterias, retain local jobs and help keep Massachusetts farms profitable.
I think it is important to include citizenship and community involvement in the curriculum. However, the logistics of accomplishing this are enormous. With an already comprehensive curriculum, the space is limited to accommodate more programming. Nevertheless, the task is not insurmountable. Currently, there are several school districts in the area that require varying number of hours of community service as a requirement for high school graduation. This is a start, but does not address the lower grades. In elementary grades, service learning should be incorporated in the social studies curriculum in tandem with academic lessons.
When considering the NCSS definition of social studies, I cannot say I have seen this practiced in my school placement. However, I have not seen any social studies teaching in the classroom nor have I seen it scheduled on the daily agenda. I think that getting involved helps reach the goal “to promote civic competence.” When I attended junior high school, we were required to take a civics class. In this class, we learned about the government, how it functions, as well as ideas such as democracy, foreign policy, involvement, community, etc. Today, students are no longer required to enroll in a civics class, and this is unfortunate. By teaching these ideas in the social studies curriculum throughout a student’s entire academic career, we can infuse the skills needed to be an involved citizen. Our service-learning project helps support community involvement on many levels. First, supporting local agriculture would teach the students the importance of supporting your local economy. Secondly, our service-learning project also connects students to their global community, as well as the local community, by highlighting the environmental impact of supporting local agriculture.
Leo – To take a deeper look into our topic of supporting local agriculture I was doing online research about the topic. I came across a website (Local Farms) that has different ideas on how to get involved in supporting your local farms. The site gave some good ideas on how to help farms stay afloat in this time of economic stress. Some of these ideas included “1. Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm. Buy a share of the harvest at the beginning of the season and pick up fresh food once a week at its peak harvest time. What could be easier? 2. Go meet a farmer. Farmers markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer. Buy at your local farmers market or farm stand, or pick-your-own farms. 3. Ask for locally grown food and/or plants wherever you eat or shop. Keep asking. Explain why locally grown is better for the community, better for the environment and better for you.” This website also had links about where to buy more healthy foods, recipe ideas and clubs to join.
When it comes to teaching what your students are interested in is extremely important. Of course you want to focus on things that you required to teach and what children really need to learn, but teaching to children’s interests can be beneficial not only to students but also to the teacher because it will further promote children’s thinking with something that they enjoy. Dealing with the curriculum it does not necessarily fit in the program but me personally would try my hardest to make it fit because of the potential positive outcomes. Finding out what children are interested in could be as simple as having a group discussion about their interests or filling out a survey. In my placement I would not necessarily say that I’ve seen the word for word definition that was stated on the website. Getting involved in this project, there is a connection between what we as teachers can teach in the classroom and the project itself. Before this project I did not necessarily know how you should teach social studies, it was such a confusing topic and how to present it to a class was beyond me. This project has opened up some new doors and ideas about how to actually teach the topic of social studies.
Erika - A new article about eating locally has caught my attention. It’s called “Eating local is more than healthy” and it’s about how purchasing and eating locally grown food and their benefits. It is a great article and I believe that everyone should take a look at it: lawrenceville . I believe that I can integrate this into my curriculum and make space so it will always be covered. I would try to do a brainstorming session and see what the students are interested in, which is going to depend from year to year. The frameworks should be rewritten so that there is space for these important issues.
NCSS defines social studies as ‘the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. I actually see this in my classroom in a few ways. One of the ways I see this is the 100 can challenge. The class tries to collect 100 can of food for the homeless shelter. Right now we have 219 cans, and they are all so excited that they surpassed their goal! They are now trying for 300 cans. The other way that the class is engaging in civic duties is by collecting some of their Halloween candy for the soldiers. I feel that in order to live by the NCSS definition, the only way to do that is by being active in the community; and in order to do that more citizens need to do something similar to our project that we are doing in our Social Studies class.
Eating Local is About More than Health
Farm-to-Kitchen expert to talk about the benefits of purchasing and eating locally grown food.
