When | Summer 2017
Objectives | 1) to facilitate the creation of a small-space salad garden with a strong emphasis on high-level youth decision making; 2) to engage youth in activities in nutrition, physical activity, and problem solving
Outcomes | 1) Youth planned, planted, maintained, and harvested a salad garden of microgreens and lettuce; 2) youth explored the East Meadow Farm demonstration gardens; 3) youth engaged in several hands-on activities to learn about ecology
Highlights | Experience teaching young children
My Role | Curriculum adaptation and implementation
My Story | I led this program for several weeks my first summer at CCE Nassau. When I began working on this project, I was unusually confident and equally excited about teaching for the first time. I was most nervous about having any students at all as I worked quickly to finish the advertisement materials and waited patiently for them to be distributed. It was only after I knew that I would teach four children ages four to six that I became anxious about the opportunity.
When the day to start the program arrived, I perfectly organized every document and tool that I planned to use. I tried to remember being comfortable with ambiguity, something I practiced during my two semesters engaged in Seed to Supper. It worked… the first day. The next few sessions when two more children arrived. Those days I became very aware of the difficulty of leading more than four young children alone and very thankful of the volunteer who joined me to help. The remaining sessions went much smoother as I had only four students to teach and they became invested in watching their little seedlings grow. At the program’s close, I breathed a deep sigh of relieve– I had succeed!– and developed a new joy–teaching youth.
Photo Description | Microgreens grown by the Seed to Salad Group
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