Happy National Agriculture Week!

By Emily Freund, Food and Farming Initiative Coordinator at P.S. 29

One of the many (in my opinion) pro’s to working in an elementary school is being able to celebrate all those seemingly unimportant “national this or that” weeks you find on the calendar as actual holidays. For example, World Food Day, National Breakfast Week, National Environmental Education Week, Recreational Water Illness Prevention Month (okay, so we don’t celebrate that one), but the list is truly never ending. Lucky for all those farming-enthusiasts out there, March 15-19 is National Agriculture Week! To celebrate, I was able to connect with Spoons Across America in order to receive apple-themed read-aloud books in exchange for taking the time to attend a training session.  

While I have attended my share of informational meetings, what made this one stand out for me was that it was led by two NYC Civic Corps members. While the rest of the various school representatives left with their supplies, I found myself drawn into a conversation comparing my experience with nutrition education from within a school as a VISTA versus their work with Spoons Across America as Civic Corps members. Forty-five minutes later, not only had we shared useful resources with one another, we also discovered that we work in adjacent neighborhoods - it's amazing how far-reaching the Americorps programs are in New York City.