Bridgehampton Teacher Receives National Award For Incorporating Agriculture Into Curriculum

When Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz started teaching at the Bridgehampton School in 2006, she noted a stark contrast from what she had seen at the private Ross School. Most notably, she said last week, many more Bridgehampton students were obese.So she began a campaign to change that. She introduced agricultural concepts into her classroom, which ultimately led her to apply for—and win—a prestigious national award last week.

“It was incredible—I was thrilled,” Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz said of receiving the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2016 Excellence in Teaching About Agriculture award.

Asked on her application to showcase several accomplishments, Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz included the Bridgehampton School’s Edible School Garden, which she founded in 2009. The garden functions as an outdoor classroom where students grow vegetables and learn about healthy eating and sustainable agriculture.

“Basically, we started the garden to teach kids where food came from, and we realized that we were teaching them, and their parents or guardians didn’t necessarily have that same education,” she said. This was important, she said, because many students had been diagnosed with Type II diabetes, which often results from being overweight and from poor eating habits.

Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz, who teaches environmental design, nutrition and culinary arts, botany, technology, and robotics, noted that the garden helped students to make healthier choices during the day. When they went home for dinner, however, they often had no access to healthy options.

So, in 2014, Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz and the Edible School Garden Group authored the “Delicious Nutritious FoodBook,” a book of tips about how to stock a pantry, how to grow vegetables, and how to have a wholesome diet in general. The book also includes recipes, of course.

“I think that is really what we have been doing on the East End … how to demystify all of this information that comes through in terms of what we should eat, what’s good, what’s bad,” Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz said, adding that description of these initiatives made up the bulk of her extensive application for the award.

“When reading through your portfolio of accomplishments, it was clear you are a true friend of New York agriculture and dedicated to integrating agriculture into your classroom,” said Katie Bigness, the coordinator of New York Agriculture in the Classroom, in a letter congratulating Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz for the award. “The ways in which you weave agricultural concepts into opportunities for teaching and learning inspires students, teachers, and families.”

Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz also had to create a lesson plan for the application. “I wanted to do something a little different,” she said.

The 45-minute winning lesson, intended to teach students about sustainability for a world population expected to reach nine billion by the year 2050, has students reproduce plants asexually and grow them in a hydroponic medium. In other words, plants with desired traits would be cultivated in nutrient-rich water.

“At the end of this unit, students will understand that they have an important role in determining the future quality of life on our planet—if not by the use of science and engineering to provide solutions, then by an appreciation for environmentally respectful methods of food production that could ultimately sustain the needs of a growing world population,” the lesson states.

Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz also received the State Agriculture in the Classroom Teacher of the Year award in December, which is a prerequisite for the national award and is sponsored by the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University.

She will receive the national award at the National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference in Arizona this June.