 |
| This poster advertised during WWI and WWI and the integration or urban farming into societal needs is the equivalent sort of enlightenment I hoped to impart on the active minds of my audience... |
1. What are you most proud of in your lesson, and why?
- I am most proud of the inquisitive approach I took when tackling my first lesson of senior project. Throughout my presentation, my goal did not lie in educating the listener to the fullest extent but rather to be give an introduction to my exploration into urban farming as a whole. This goal of mine I hope helped to clarify the audience’s perception of what it is my essential question is hoping to answer, and hoping to educate in regards to community engagement and enhancement, as well as food security and environmental stewardship. Now that I have established a platform consisting of my primary studies, I have a pier from which to leap off into the abyss of my topic in all of its complexity - developing a solid essential question along the way so that I don’t enter a state of limbo.
2. What assessment would you give yourself on your lesson? Explain why you earned that grade using evidence from the component contract.
- I humbly believe that I deserve an AE on my presentation, simply due to the fact that chose to view this component as a means of briefly covering all aspects of urban farming - relying on the audience to discriminate between the pieces of information thrown out on the stage as to how the topic is relevant to their livelihoods and beyond. Through breaking down my essential question, defining key terms like those of food system and the definition of urban farming as seen through the lens of real life scenarios I have either researched or heard about from my mentors, I intended for my audience to have experienced excitement rather than confusion as to where my focus lay within the project - especially since my focus was analyzing the topic from all aspects and uses it has to many up and coming issues. In explaining the background history predating my definition of urban farming, and then relating how I defined the term to be as learnt from my interview with Joy Lam in how she works with MuirRanch, I presented a well-rounded sum of both research and first hand experience. In this sense, I explored with the reader what it meant to plant a farm in an urban environment, and allowed my lesson plan to develop this curiosity by presenting it with the P requirements of good volume and clear enunciation of approachable wording, confident body language, and constant engagement with the audience by making my information clear and concise. Based on the feedback I received from the abundance of ‘review’ slips of paper given to me after presenting, my content did prove to be worthwhile in what it taught, going above and beyond merely covering the concept I thought up of when I first chose urban farming to be the focus of my senior project. In having gone through 3 mentorships thus far, my research was wide reaching as I hoped it would be, stemming from the the history of urban farming throughout American history as cited in “Farm City” and “Grass, Soil, Hope” (two published works I brought up with me) to its “wide reaching social and environmental benefits”, including that of carbon trapping as a means of combatting climate change - excess of carbon in the atmosphere. Indeed, the research presented heavily relied on the picture slideshow I relied my spoken word upon, wherein there lay multiple printed pieces, most of which I snapped myself. The real life scenarios in which urban farming was applied followed a similar evolution as my presentation progressed, including but not limited to examples during WWI and WWII, my mentorship at the Arroyo Food Co-op, my current mentorship at Pomona College’s Organic Farm, and the questionable regulations provided on commercially tilled soil in contrast to those on privately-owned urban farms. To this end, I enforced both breadth and depth throughout my lesson, and do hope my goal was fully realized so that it may achieve a higher grade.
3. If you could go back, what would you change about your lesson? How can you use that knowledge to give a better Lesson 2?
- I would definitely have practiced my presentation bunches of more times. This time around, I ran through a mock version of my lesson in front of my mom and dad, who then supplied me with advice and pointers for future reference. This run-through though came the night before my presentation was due to commence, and was reserved to that time frame only. If I would have invested more time into rehearsing, I may have developed my conclusion a tad bit more adequately. Although, I hope the open-ended nature of my exit off stage left the audience wanting more as is the atmosphere compatible with my goal for this first sneak peek into what I am laboring towards. The second lesson will be a continuation to where I left off in my presentation of urban farming as a process imparting sustainability and activism to city environments.
