Mary Kennedy

teaches: educational programming

experience: 10 years

Through this program, I hope to learn instructional strategies to help my urban students think about the factors that influence food production. In Cleveland, there is a small urban ag presence but most of my students are very disconnected from food production and the environmental stressors that can adversely affect it. Furthermore, they really don't have an understanding of healthy interconnectedness between agriculture, native ecology, watersheds, and urban development. I aim to change this for them. We are located at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, one of Lake Erie's largest subwatersheds, draining into the largest collective freshwater resource in the world. Helping young Clevelanders to understand all of the factors that impact the Great Lakes, including agriculture, is paramount to ensure environmental best practice in the future.