Curriculum

Welcome to Morris Campus Educational Farm
(MCEF) Curriculum Toolshed!

As part of our ongoing efforts to create student-centered engagement through farming and educate students on critical issues in our global and local food systems, we have created this toolshed.

Our curriculum highlights the farm’s educational core values of mindfulness, literacy, and the arts, emphasizing the goals of:

Amplifying local food traditions and urban agriculture efforts where students live and go to school.
Creating opportunities for cross-curricular investigations among subjects and teachers.
Increasing the use of school gardens and farms as outdoor classrooms.
Increasing standards-aligned content focused on school gardens and farms.
Establishing urban farming as an integral High School learning experience.

Our curriculum includes formatted lessons with a template, worksheets, and teacher lesson outlines. All curriculum is available for any educator to use. We however do request that if you alter any materials, you site Morris Campus Educational Farm in your written materials.

All curriculum is Common Core aligned, with a focus on NY Regents preparation, literacy, and NGSS.

We continue to partner with educators through the 2019-2020 school year and in the coming years. In particular, we partnered with Raquel Vigil a former teacher, farmer and curriculum designer to create lessons that investigate a range of topics from a participatory government to soil sampling. Ms.Vigil’s experience as an educator and urban farmer adds authenticity to her perspective as a cross interdisciplinary curriculum developer.

Thank you so much and we hope our lessons inspire the next generation of sustainable food advocates. Stay tuned for curriculum updates.

2019-2020 Teacher Collaborators

Ivan Rozon, School For Excellence
Kimberly Cai High School of Violin and Dance
Jordan Chermoff Morris Academy of Academic Studies
Ansah Owusu School For Excellence
Jal Raval, Bronx International High School
Anthony Rau, High School of Violin and Dance
Carl Nigro, School For Excellence
Ivan Rozon, School For Excellence
Adisa Zahir School For Excellence

Collaborations

In the Spring of 2019, we partnered with teachers across all four Morris campus schools to design cross-curricular lessons that utilize MCEF and the South Bronx community. Over the course of four months, we met regularly with a small group of teachers to discuss themes and topics. To stimulate ideas, the group toured local urban farms in the South Bronx. Participants had inspiring visits to Jackson Forest Garden, Brook Park Community Garden, and New Roots Farm. We want to thank all of our South Bronx garden hosts for their hospitality and, in particular, we thank Ursula Chance Director of Bronx Green-Up NYBG for the connections. In the end, teachers chose the theme The Green Revolution and designed lessons that aligned the topic to their class content. Attached are the lessons they created.