Experiential Learning
Integrative Field trip to Hilltop Hanover Farm
A sixth grader and a senior stand at one end of a spent squash field, pulling an irrigation line in hand over hand like two firefighters hauling in a firehose. Nearby, high school students laugh as they roll up a long plastic weed barrier while sixth graders harvest the last of the winter squash like they are on a scavenger hunt.
Learning by doing, together, was a hallmark of John Jay’s field trip to Hilltop Hanover Farm, a 180-acre organic farm in Yorktown Heights, NY. The experience brought together John Jay Middle School’s Green Team, an after-school club led by teacher Melissa Brady, John Jay High School’s Humanities Research 1 class taught by Therese Von Steenburg and Jill Hirshfeld, and the Senior Research Seminar in Environmental Studies, an interdisciplinary elective taught by Hirshfeld and social studies teacher Kaitlyn McCarthy.
Learning, Together
earth care, people care, fair share
The trip couldn’t have been more timely. It not only prepared students for classroom conversations on sustainability, it took place the day after President Biden’s Food Summit, a conference aimed at tackling hunger and diet-related disease. “We’ll donate the squash to a local food pantry,” Hilltop Hanover’s Education Programs Manager Jo Moore said to the students doing the final harvest.
Last Harvest
Regenerative Agriculture
Throughout the visit, Moore showed students how Hilltop Hanover makes decisions based on their impact on the ecosystem. From composting toilets which add nutrients to the soil to a green roof on the goat shed that filters rainwater and insulates the space, students saw practices that make a positive impact on the environment.
Even the size of the farm was connected to its environmental impact. As they stood in the strawberry field, tasting the sweet fall crop, Moore explained that bigger farms required farm machines which used fossil fuels and compacted the earth.
Awakening the Senses
Students basked in the sunshine and fresh air, eating lunch before heading back to school.
Tasting tomatoes and kale they’d picked themselves, smelling lavender and thyme and meeting the farm’s cows and goats was now part of the students’ shared experience, certain to inform coming discussions of the Green Team and the research directions of some of the older students.
