Elementary, secondary and adult learners will learn how to cultivate vegetables for home consumption and review how urban economics can be used to improve diets and urban economic development. All courses are intended for adaptation by the teacher for the preparation level of the students.

Advanced and professional learners will probe more deeply into cultivation, production and business aspect of hydroponic farming. Here are some goals for teachers, students, public, and institutions.

• Students will know about science themes and connect and integrate them into what they know about themselves and the world around them.
• Students will realize that scientific knowledge is public, replicable, and continually undergoing revision and refinement based on new experiments and data. It is not a search for metaphysical truth.
• Students will realize that science includes questioning, forming hypotheses, collecting and analyzing data, reaching conclusions, evaluating results, and communicating procedures and findings to others
• Students will use science to explain and predict changes that occur around them.
• Students will use their knowledge of science concepts and processes in making informed choices regarding their lifestyles and the impact they have on their environment, and enhance their natural curiosity about their environment.
• The school will establish one or more indoor gardens within its premises. Outdoor gardening can also be integrated into the curriculum. The gardening enhancement will add content to the established science goals by using the garden(s) as a laboratory, wherein students will observe, measure and hypothesize about how to grow and maintain their crops and improve productivity. Where possible, students may test their hypotheses and make recommendations to the gardener about possible improvements in the system.

We teach hydroponic gardening as part of a curriculum that considers diet, nutrition, food production and distribution, technology, business development, marketing and sales, all in the context of observed inequalities and how socio-economic development and status affect food distribution and well-being in a system. We work with individuals, entrepreneurs or non-profit organizations interested in addressing issues of food production and equitable distribution in the context of worldwide and localized hunger, sometimes called food deserts.

Students will come away with an understanding of possible solutions to problems in contemporary food systems and ways they might participate therein, as well as with some practical skills in gardening and food handling.

Our training program is "STEM" based, the usual STEM acronym* to which we add "(A)griculture" and by which we mean a broad array of communication skills that build awareness of our indoor urban gardening objectives. We have worked with both certified and uncertified non-profit partners and have concentrated in programs of re-engagement of disaffected students who are restarting their education or careers and on issues affecting immigrants. We also encourage teachers to include language arts by requiring peer and public reports on activities at "the farm." Our STEAM curriculum is unique in the industry.

Instruction

We operate on a mastery-learning model, and each student's activity will be tracked with respect to specific skills attempted and mastered.

We draw upon our own long experience and that of our sponsoring organizations, which are ethnically diverse and community based. We attempt to address several objectives.

• Academic Learning: We do this by requiring use of scientific method, technical evaluation, engineering (choosing) solutions, communication of results and applied mathematics.
• Social Emotional Learning and Enrichment: We do this by taking a team approach to laboratory and experimental tasks and reporting by consensus.
• College and Career Readiness (CCR): We do this by requiring students to maintain a journal of activities with regular entries pertaining to these very questions, identifying how they are progressing toward academic and career goals. These journals will be published on line as they occur and as part of a summary report.

Programs are designed to fit into traditional 10-15 week academic terms, or they can be configured for other time frames or self-paced learning. Equipment must be ordered and delivered with up to six weeks lead time.

Regarding stated specific goals, the project

• Utilizes culturally specific and responsive approaches.
• Collects daily attendance.
• Willing to administer an asset-based exit survey.
• Engaged in programming for a minimum of five to fifteen hours weekly.

Standard program plan: 8 weeks, 4 days per week, 4 hours per day. Adjustable. Online participation in some activities is possible by individual arrangement, except for laboratory activities.

The local program host must provide floorspace. The minimum configuration is 600 square feet.

Recruitment

Each of our partner organizations will distribute information about the program to its constituency. We anticipate this will reach several thousand households. We will request PSA time on local radio and publicize in neighborhood news organs and on affiliated websites.

Language

We currently provide curricular tools in English; we anticipate having a Spanish curriculum in 2023, and we can already supply Spanish interpretation. The presence of interpreters is encouraged—to the extent that floor space allows and does not impact the experience of other learners.

Benefits

We anticipate that participants will benefit in the following ways. By working in teams they will gain appreciation for skills of others. By having specific objectives they will learn future orientation. By having a reporting requirement they will acquire a sense of achievement. By earning a Certificate of Completion.

Budget

A budget can be developed quickly for any school or other group desiring to train others in this technology.

Multi-culturalism

The project team is culturally diverse and is drawn from a professional organization that has agreed to provide teaching and support for this project at discounted rates. We apply the principles of affirmative action in the selection of staff and management. Our principals worked together for decades and have strong personal commitments to fair and open hiring. Several past projects have been based in ethnic communities affected by food deficits, both economic and cultural. As a group we have individually or collectively worked with minority youth to teach work skills, adaptive and collaborative behavior, and intercultural understanding. The team brings decades of experience dealing with youth and education.

Programs led or managed by principals have included

• re-engagement of disaffected youth who have been subject to so-called zero-tolerance exclusion from schools and related family issues
• young adult leadership (in English and Spanish) for secondary and community college students social responsibility awareness training related to urban food supply and distribution
• adaptation of hydroponic growing to Asian-Pacific diet items
• introduction of hydroponics into dietary habits of immigrant cultures

Covid-19

We have and will continue to utilize applicable policies to prevent contagion, including masking and extra hygiene as required. We also note that due to the food-handling aspects of our activities, both required and voluntary, we are probably more attuned to these matters than most other projects.

Visitors see only sample course; registered users see full list. Contact Eduponics for access.