Two New York City teachers talk about their experiences of working with Cafeteria Culture, a nonprofit environmental education and advocacy organization.
Cafeteria Culture teaches creative storytelling through the visual and performing arts, media production, citizen science, and civic engagement, giving voice to New York City's underserved youth on critical environmental issues.
Taught in partnership with classroom teachers, Cafeteria Culture's interdisciplinary curricula help students to develop 21st Century learning skills, including collaboration, problem solving, environmental literacy, critical thinking, media messaging, and creative ways of crafting communication to engage one's own community, as well as broader audiences via YouTube and Vimeo.
Students who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are empowered through our programs to debate, ask questions, and to tell their own stories about garbage, plastic marine pollution, food waste, and environmental justice, participating in the design of effective solutions to these critical environmental issues of our times.
Students actively engage in Civic Participation and Environmental Activism within their communities and bring a unique urban youth POV to current citywide issues (watch: “5th Grade Change-Makers Take Action on Bag Bill” vimeo.com/145349278)
