A Fresh Take on Summer Camps: One-Day Workshops & Mentorship in Action
At Mezzacello Urban Farm, I’ve always taught summer camps using a mix of the design cycle, systems thinking, and mentorship. But this year, a small shift sparked a big idea: what if one-day workshops could deepen and extend the impact of our week-long camps?
Language and the Power of Reframing
This lesson started out as a lesson in learning how to look at data and systems from new perspectives and turned into a mad lib of data synthesis. This was actually a great deal of fun and it is a new tool I will be using with students. The game is called “Coin Purse” for maximum absurdity and permission to be creative with language and the power of reframing.
Energy: From Stars to Stomachs
This is me and my intern, Marcus, teaching a classroom full of 6th and 7th graders the basics of Gravity, The Weak and Strong Atomic Forces, and the relationship between electricity and magnetism. We started with Google Maps to get kids to think about zooming in and looking at relevant and relative things with more thought. Then we zoomed in to the basics of our lesson.
Winter Programming: Physical Electricity
Today in late November it was 0C here at Mezzacello Urban Farm. The construction of the kitchen and classroom has slowed, so since we won’t have a classroom ready this year, we built wind turbine wires in the kitchen!
What Confidence Looks and Feels Like
A quick blogpost about a moment in time in my 2024 BioEngineering Camp. Four interns - students trained to teach STEM subjects to other kids - but also learning new ideas from other interns.