Applications Open for the Agricultural Literacy Grant

The Agricultural Literacy Grant was created to help fund your most creative ideas to teach through a lens of agriculture. Submit your great idea to enhance your classroom learning and let New York Agriculture in the Classroom support your endeavor to include agriculture as a context for learning!

An Agricultural Literacy Grant proposal can be anywhere between $10 to a maximum of $1,200. Proposals for the Agricultural Literacy Grant can include, but are not limited to: funding for farm field trips, purchasing agriculturally accurate books, materials for classroom projects, starting a courtyard chicken coop, expanding your school garden project, and more. 

Grant proposals will be reviewed bi-weekly until March 29, 2024, or until funding is exhausted. It is suggested to submit your application early!

Maple Virtual Field Trip

To learn how sugar makers use and depend on many of concepts that are taught in the classroom, join us for a virtual field trip to Cornell Maple Research Facility at Arnot Forest. In this 40-minute experience, Director of Cornell Maple Program and maple researcher, Aaron Wightman will share the process of maple syrup production, the latest maple research, careers within the maple industry, and how scientists at Cornell's maple program help producers develop new maple-based products.

Inquiry boxes will be provided to the first 100 classrooms to register.

Schoolyard Sugaring Maple Contest

From tree to bottle, help your students experience the sweet scientific phenomena of making maple syrup in the Schoolyard Sugaring contest, a cross-curricular project based learning opportunity. Registration for this contest is free to New York educators.

Classrooms can choose to participate in syrup production and/or a maple-focused photography contest. Any New York K-12 classrooms can participate and earn up to $250 in prize money. Eligible schools will receive a Maple Starter Kit, with a value of $120, to start tapping right away.

NEW! Spring Top Cut Beef Experience  

The Top Cut: Beef Contest is an engaging cross-curricular educational and culinary experience for grades 6-12. Participating students will design a beef recipe focused on the theme of school lunch and then develop a creative marketing strategy for their product. New York Agriculture in the Classroom and New York Beef Council are excited to offer this experience for the seventh year. 

NEW! New this year is an updated format. The Top Cut Beef Experience will be offered in both the fall and spring so that teachers with classes that switch out each semester may participate with all of their classes. The experience will no longer require pre-registration to participate and each teacher that has students submit a completed entry will receive a prize for their classroom.

National Agriculture in the Classroom Scholarship Application Open

To provide an opportunity for educators from across the country to come together to not only experience agriculture within the host state, but to learn more about how to integrate agriculture into the core curriculum of their classroom, National Agriculture in the Classroom is offering scholarships to pre-kindergarten-12th grade teachers to attend the 2024 National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference.

This year's scholarships (valued at $1300) will provide one Early Bird Registration ($485) and up to 4 nights lodging at conference location (Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City). The 2024 NAITC Conference Scholarship applications are now open.

New School Teams Encouraged to Apply for New York Farm to School Institute   

The New York Farm to School Institute is a year-long professional development opportunity for food service staff, educators, administrators, and community partners in New York schools to develop and refine their Farm to School programs and to help bring more New York grown food into the cafeteria and classroom. Led by the Farm to Institution New York State (FINYS) team at American Farmland Trust, this ongoing training and educational program will assist participating schools in creating successful Farm to School programs and connecting with farmers.

The program kicks off with a two-day Summer Retreat at Mabee Farm Historic Site on August 13-14, 2024, offers coaching support for the entire school year, and provides a $5,000 stipend to school teams to facilitate successful implementation of a farm to school action plan!