Feroce+Curriculum+Review+4

Emma Feroce Cities Curriculum

This curriculum that brings inner city students to Brooklyn where they can learn about nature was developed by a group called City Growers.  **What is the mission of the organization?** The mission of City Growers is stated as: City Growers connects urban communities with agriculture, food and environment through farm education and advocacy in order to foster a culture of health and sustainability. This organization carries out their mission through in school and afterschool programs and workshops.
 * What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating? **

City Growers ultimately wants to close the gap between an urban child and the natural world. They wish to provide a space where an inner city student has equal opportunity to learn about agriculture and the environment. they state in their vision- “We open children’s eyes to how food is grown, and empower them to grow it themselves, right here in the city”. Their idea is that if they educate these students on where their food comes from by seeing a rare site in the city of food growing, they will grasp a better understanding than a typical urban student would. City Growers finds this important because if they see the potential in the city they will be inspired to make a change.
 * What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization? **

This curriculum aims to have their students envision a healthier and greener future. By showing their students the natural world through the in school and after school programs and workshops, I do think this curriculum is appropriately designed to reach their goal. Having this curriculum be very hands on makes it more effective. They even make the in school programs effective, even though the students can’t be directly on the site, by having the students do hands on activities in the classroom such as composting. The most effective program is most likely the after school program since the students get to go to the rooftop garden and see it for themselves, so including this in the in school program curriculum would better help them reach their intended learning outcome.
 * What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be? Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes? **

EcoEd and City Growers both aim to educate students on their own health. EcoEd aims to do so at both a smaller and larger scale, while the City Growers do so at a small scale level. City Growers could model their curriculum more like Eco Ed’s if they told their students why growing their own food is better for them than buying food from a larger company, They could also layer in what this natural grown food is doing for the environment around them. Adding these points in would show a greater, more personal impact to the students which would make them care more about the importance of sustainable practices.
 * Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies the EcoEd Research Group advocates? What could be layered into this curriculum so that it address more of the learning outcomes that the EcoEd Group advocates? **


 * Link to Curriculum: ** [|__https://citygrowers.org/who-we-are/__]