Photo courtesy of the Sachem Central School District
Sachem High School East students taking Mr. Jannace’s AP human geography course visited FoodLab at Stony Brook University’s Southampton Campus for a hands-on review of their unit on agriculture and rural land-use.
This unit can be difficult for students to grasp yet is an integral part of understanding the course and succeeding on the upcoming AP exam. The full-day visit included lectures, field work and station activities. It was created by Mr. Jannace and FoodLab Director Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz over the course of the entire school year to bring the unit to life with a differentiated and immersive experience.
Twelfth generation farmer, Jenn Dupree Halsey of the Milk-Pail Farm, spoke with students and brought farm life home. She even pulled out her phone to read off precision climatic information in each of her planting fields to show just how far society has come in the field of agriculture. Despite all the advances in technology, she emphasized that one still needs to have “eyes on the farm,” proving that it is still necessary to have humans in the field. Additionally, Dr. Heather Lynch, the inaugural director of the Collaborative for the Earth, shared opening remarks at the beginning of the day.
This was the first time Stony Brook Southampton hosted such a large field trip group at FoodLab – 66 students, along with Mr. Jannace, Mrs. Melandro, Mrs. Gearns, Mr. Gallo, and the amazing FoodLab team were present. The group got their hands dirty as they worked to remove a mountain of mugwort, extract large stones from vegetable beds and plant a long row of greens protected by insect netting in about 45 minutes.
Recent Comments