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B.E.E.S. (Brooklyn Environmental Exploration Scholars)

City Growers’ Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD)-funded after school program is part of the SONYC (School’s Out NYC) initiative, giving 30 middle school students at the Academy of Arts and Letters daily, full-year after school programming.

Throughout the school year, B.E.E.S. spend two days a week at Brooklyn Grange in the Navy Yard tending to crops, caring for the chickens they raised themselves, and participating in other seasonal farm-based activities. Two days a week, they participate in clubs that rotate every two weeks, such as cooking, natural dyeing, building Rube Goldberg machines, and all kinds of hands-on activities based on their interests; they also have time to work on and get help with their homework. Fridays are for “urban expeditions,” field trips to places where innovation, in many forms, is at work.

“My favorite part of City Growers is going to the farm because I get to see the chickens and it is fun taking care of them. I also enjoy harvesting the honey from the honey bee hives — it was way easier than I’d imagined, and lots of fun.” – Michelle, 6th Grader
Beansprouts

Beansprouts, City Growers’ twice-a-week after school program for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, based at Academy of Arts and Letters and PS 20, is part of the COMPASS initiative through DYCD. Using the same principles of hands-on exploration that permeate all of our programs, Beansprouts explores health and sustainability through project-based learning. Whether cooking healthy meals, making lip balm from beeswax, or digging for worms, this program allows kids to be kids, without the structure and stress of the school day.

“A decade of research and evaluation studies, as well as large-scale, rigorously conducted syntheses looking across many research and evaluation studies, confirms that children and youth who participate in after school programs can reap a host of positive benefits in a number of interrelated outcome areas—academic, social/emotional, prevention, and health and wellness.” – Little, Wimer, & Weiss, 2008

If you are interested in starting a City Growers after school program at your school, please email info@citygrowers.org.