How We Build Ecology, Technology, and Confidence Through Curriculum
A few of our curriculum sources and certifications
At Mezzacello Urban Farm, a big component of our approach to building curriculum is NOT reinventing the wheel. Instead we invent new bases for the wheels using tested and trusted curriculum from respected and well-vetted partners like Ohio EPA, NASA, ODNR, and ODE. This is a blogpost about how we build ecology, technology, and confidence through curriculum.
Why Applied STEM? An Amish Man Walks Into a Bar…
An Amish man walks into a bar… Obviously this is the start of a joke. But it’s really not a joke at all. In fact, everything I have learned about basic strategic farming I have learned from the Amish — and YouTube. AKA an Amish Man and a Bar.
“Have you met Jim Bruner? He is our resident mad scientist/urban farmer. You are in his farm/STEM lab right now.”
The fact that you do not immediately see the logic of applying the robust and enduring skills and strategies of the Amish with cutting edge technology and science is EXACTLY why we focus on Applied STEM. When we think of “STEM” we don’t just see SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING MATH — we see the acronym reframed and expanded as both an Acronym AND the main leader of any plant. We want to nourish the plant to produce new fruits, right?
The art is in the reframing and the modeling of traditional learning and farming strategies while also aligning them to science, math, and ELA standards to create fun learning with applied STEM. The results speak for themselves.
Building Capacity
We started building Mezzacello Columbus, LLC (Our 501(c)3) in 2020 as a program of the PAST Foundation. Jim Bruner brought all the knowledge, experience, and exposure to applied STEM teaching and learning, design thinking, and hands-on learning from PAST to Mezzacello Urban Farm. The integration was effortless — AFTER the technology infrastructure was ready.
Being a Futurist Farmer is actually quite easy. The trick is not thinking about just food or just STEM. Instead imagine building a world where people were free to just ask questions and try to make something happen, but still playing by those Amish rules and thinking in that YouTube way.
That is what we have been building here at Mezzacello - a “Wonka Land” for understanding food, careers, nutrition, and renewable resources, water, and energy. We believe the world desperately needs these skills. We also know these lessons must be replicable — and so we align everything to standards and exiswting curriculum.
The PATH To Certification
Growing our certification and resources framework.
A Futurist Farmer must be willing to do the work, walk the walk, and talk the talk. This means training and practicing, applying, and trying again. At this point Mezzacello is using curriculum from multiple state and national curriculum channels and teaching them in scaffolded methodologies that with a bit of tweaking, could be taught anywhere!
The key to the success of Mezzacello Urban Farm is this scalability. To date, I have offered 36 summer camps to over 1000 campers, many workshops for kids and adults alike, and I have been building this website as a dedicated resource to share that learning. We’ve also added mobile units to teach four new workshops at any site which we are launching in January in partnership with Metro Schools.
A huge part of our mission (Grow, Maintain, Sustain, and Explain) is encapsulated in the skillful and rigorous application of standards to our learning labs and curriculum. We want these programs to be grow, we want them to be easily integrated and help others to maintain their interests in food, resources, and careers. They will want to master sustainability, and of course these camps, workshops, mobile platforms and bogs are ALWAYS in the service of explaining both the Amish practicality, and Career viability in STEM of all of it.
Collaboration and Curriculum
If you like the idea of working with students, schools, families, or communities and using our curriculum resources, let us know. We are an open-minded and open source Twenty-first Century Urban Farm and Learning Lab. Now that you know we exist, maybe we can help your dreams and aspirations exist as well?!
