Progress 06/15/23 to 06/14/24

Outputs
Target Audience:Edible Schoolyard NYC (ESYNYC) works in school communities across NYC that experience poverty, diet-related diseases, and other disproportionate effects of systemic inequities in education, food, and health access. The same criteria apply to our fellowship. We advertised our fellowship in a variety of ways to be equitable and to receive a diversified pool of applicants. We sent an email out to ESYNYC's network, posted on social media and LinkedIn, posted on an NYC school garden listserv, and sent emails to various committees we participate in. We created an application for interested participants that gauged the level of interest and school administration's support in implementing edible education by having each applicant answer a series of questions and specify their vision for edible education programming. We received 27 applications and created a committee, which included ESYNYC teachers, our Director of Horticulture and Operations, and our Director of Education and Quality to review and select the participants. All of the schools we selected are Title 1 schools in disinvested neighborhoods. The ten schools selected for the Fellowship's first cohort are located throughout the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and East Harlem. Changes/Problems:There have been no major changes thus far. We did have some schools that were unable to attend a workshop but we asked them to complete the missed assignment and sent them the PowerPoint presentation. We have also reduced the stipend for schools that missed multiple workshops and will reallocate funds to next year's schools. Next year, we plan to have clearer expectations and explicitly say there will be a financial reduction for missing multiple workshops. We encouraged each school to have more than one person in the event someone cannot attend a workshop another individual can come on behalf of the school. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?So far we have shared a list of relevant grant opportunities that our participating schools can apply for to receive additional funding for cooking and gardening with students. Further, we provided each school with a list of supplies they would need to have a functioning kitchen and garden space. We have also shared our edible education curriculum for educators to reference and adapt for their students and school communities. Lastly, we continue to share relevant workshops they can attend provided by other organizations. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results will be disseminated in late summer. At the end of the school year, we will conduct the post-surveys. After examining our pre and post-surveys, our evaluation consultant will then sort through and analyze the data to share with our participants. We will use these findings to make recommendations and adjustments for the second year of our project. In addition to sharing our findings with our fellowship participants, Edible Schoolyard NYC will include our findings in our annual impact report which is sent to our broad base of supporters. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?By the end of the next reporting period, we will have collected and analyzed data from the first year of our program. The results will have been disseminated to our participants and shared publicly with our broad base of supporters to demonstrate the impact. We will use these findings to make any needed modifications for the second year of our program. We will also receive information on the committees each school created to ensure the edible education programming is sustained. Lastly, the second set of schools will have been selected and the workshops will have begun.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1: To date, we have conducted six workshops that have increased NYC educator's knowledge of the NYC food system, food justice, and urban agriculture enabling them to implement edible education in their respective schools. For example, one of our workshops, which was led by two of our educators, focused on collaboration and celebrating the varying cultures of NYC in an urban school garden. Every participant was assigned a garden job in which they had to work together, showcasing social-emotional learning in the garden. Then, we modeled two lessons: how rice is grown in different parts of the world and companion planting through The Three Sisters. Another workshop focused on how to create an urban school garden while making it inclusive to one's school community. Our Director of Horticulture and Operations spoke about how ESYNYC makes its gardens accessible to the community through initiatives such as open gardens and how we engage with the community and school-based staff to ensure our crops are culturally relevant to the communities we serve. Participants then engaged in various garden jobs such as potting basil that they were able to take home. Lastly, we have shared our edible education curriculum with each of the schools to either use or adapt to fit their specific schools' needs. For each workshop, we require each school to send at least one representative. Goal 2 In addition to the workshops, each school has received three site visits to date, with a fourth scheduled for the end of June. Our Director of Horticulture and Operations conducted one of the site visits, where he examined the growing spaces and gave technical support on how participants could start a garden or improve their existing one. Our Director of Education and Quality has observed lessons and given guidance on lesson instruction. We have noticed improvements since our first site visit. For example, one of the schools had garden beds that were falling apart, since they have built new beds and are full of plants. Both our Director of Horticulture and Operations and Director of Education and Quality are available via email should anyone have any questions or need support. Furthermore, we conducted a pre-survey and will conduct a post-survey at the end of the school year. In our pre-survey, we assessed various categories, such as whether the school already had an established garden, whether there was a garden committee, and whether they had any experience cooking and gardening with students. Goal 3 Through the mandatory attendance of our workshops, educators learn about and participate in our interactive edible education curriculum. The goal is that they will use our scope and sequence to adapt our lessons and create new lessons that meet the needs of their students while also making connections to the core academic curriculum. Our scope and sequence include five bands that touch upon our core competencies and themes, such as Environmental and Community Stewardship and Social-Emotional Learning. Our scope and sequence are also broken into two age groups (i.e., 3-k and pre-k), and to avoid redundancy, we have created an A/B year rotation. Additionally, our Director of Education and Quality has observed each educator teach a lesson and has provided constructive feedback. At the end of the school year, each school will have to submit three lesson plans. Goal 4 Our Director of Education and Quality has observed each school teach one lesson to see how each site is implementing edible education in a way that works best for them. For example, one educator conducted a lesson with various ingredients ranging from black beans to grapes. Students were broken into groups to pick toppings to make and write out a recipe for nachos. After creating a recipe with ingredients that might not typically go together students then had to write a paragraph on what they would change and why they thought the recipe did not work. Additionally, at the end of the year, we will receive three written lessons from each school that will also demonstrate how they plan to implement edible education programming in their own schools. Lastly, through our site visits, we are able to observe whether the gardens are being used and maintained--which they have been! Lastly, at the end of our workshops we ask participants to provide us with feedback that helps us to gauge any potential implementation barriers and if they found the workshop to be useful for how they would be implementing programming. Goal 5 In one of our workshops and during our site visits we have spoken to our participants about the importance of creating a committee of members that are dedicated to edible education to help ensure its sustainability. Having a variety of backgrounds on a school committee has proven to be beneficial for the ESYNYC team and we have advised each site on the variety of roles that could be helpful such as a teacher, custodian, parent etc. We also shared examples of the types of activities and policies a committee could accomplish such as ensuring proper recycling in school cafeterias. At the end of the school year each site will have to show us their plan for the committee and who will be on it.

Publications