Math, Science, English and Social Studies—they’re the usual subjects. But in classrooms across the country, many educators are going beyond basics and adding some interesting career-building and life-lesson skills into the mix.
Not only are these programs beneficial to students, but their teachers, parents, and communities as well.
Journalism for All
To support democracy among young people, the Youth Journalism Coalition (YJC), a non-profit organization that aims to nurture the next generation of journalists, created Journalism for All in 2024. The program is a private and public partnership initiative to bring journalism back to New York City public high schools.
The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, a partner of YJC, provides training to the partner schools’ teachers, preparing them to teach a journalism curriculum so that their schools can create their own publications.
Journalism for All selected 30 teachers from different NYC high schools who applied to be the first to be trained by the program. NEA member James Felder-Salvador, an English teacher at Gotham Tech High School in Queens, says the program is helping to bring journalism to all students.
“When I came across the opportunity for Journalism for All… I was very much attracted to fact that statistically, few than 25 percent of high schools in the City had some sort of publication, whether it be a newspaper or E magazine,” Felder-Salvador said. “Journalism for All was addressing that equity gap where if you look at a list of schools that have thriving journalism programs, they tend to be in affluent areas.”
According to the New York City Education Department, in the 2023-2024 school year, Gotham Tech High School was a majority minority school, and 78% of its students were economically disadvantaged.
The cohort of teachers have been learning the basics of Journalism in their professional development sessions since January 2025.
While Felder-Salvador has taught English classes, including research writing, the program was his first experience with journalism.
“Journalism seems like a whole different beast,” he explained. “Like I’m actually learning the building blocks of putting together a 500-word short article.”
Learning a new type of writing hasn’t been easy for Felder-Salvador, but in those moments, he reminds himself of something he always tells his students: “I’m a life-long learner. I don’t always have the answers.”
Felder-Salvador and the rest of his teacher cohort will bring all the knowledge they’ve learned over the past several months back to their respective schools for the 2025-2026 school year.
“In establishing a culture at a school, a newspaper is a good way for kids to feel like they have some sort of voice [or] some sort of power or control,” said Felder-Salvador.
Education Diversion Program (Touch-a-Truck)
Talking trash is usually discouraged at school because it could lead to issues amongst the students. However, in Denver Public Schools, trash talk is top of mind and encouraged as a means of education.
The Denver Solid Waste Management’s Education Diversion Program educates Denver Public Schools students on compost and sustainability practices.
The program’s concept is simple: solid waste management staff go into classrooms, using worksheets and games, to explain composting. But the impact of the lessons is far reaching. The program strives for students to pass on the sustainability education they learn to their parents and community.
One popular initiative, especially with the kindergarteners, the program has implemented is the Touch-a-Truck event. The interactive event gives students the opportunity to explore the trucks they often see around their neighborhoods, allowing them to understand how the trucks work and even pretend to be drivers themselves.
The Touch-a-Truck event recently made its way to Place Bridge Academy for the school’s career day.
“Our student population is majority language learners, so having in-person and hands-on experiences is very engaging for our students,” NEA member and English language development teacher Natalie Jacobs explained. “They are better able to understand and access the information in a real-world setting.”
Many students at Place Bridge Academy recently migrated to the US, so the event was an opportunity for them to engage with their new community.
“Families from other countries also might be used to other routines around solid waste disposal, so understanding how it works in our community, including the differences between trash, recycling, and compost, is helpful for them to understand how to help keep their community clean and reduce waste,” said Jacobs.
FoodPrints
“It's one thing to learn about food, but it's another thing to cultivate it,” said Caleb Voiers a 5th-6th grade teacher in Kentucky.
Voiers has a whole new perspective on the impact of school nutrition and school gardens since his Kentucky school partnered with FRESHFARM,a non-profit focused on creating a more equitable and sustainable food system. The organization created the FoodPrints program in 2005 to integrate skills such as gardening, cooking, and nutrition education into secondary schools’ curriculums.
While the non-profit is based in Washington DC, the FoodPrints program has recently expanded to Kentucky. During the 2024-2025 school year, the program made its way to Second Street School in Frankfurt, making the Kentucky school the 22nd partner school.
FoodPrints implements food education into public elementary schools by supplying its partner schools with food and garden educators, who provide a curriculum that teaches students gardening and cooking skills to help increase their food access. The program supplies 63 interdisciplinary lessons. Grades PreK-5 each have nine lessons customized to their learning levels. The lessons integrate math, science, social students, health and ELA into the material, including interactive videos.
Voiers, a science teacher at Second Street School, sees the impact the FoodPrints program has had on his students.
“The younger kids, they're more excited about science,” he said. “They're more excited about trying new things like new fruits and vegetables, [and] they bring us food. Like I got pizza today…and they made it themselves.”
While the Kentucky school already had a garden before becoming a FoodPrints partner school, the program has introduced even more fruits and vegetables to the students. Using the school’s cafeteria, FoodPrints food and garden educators teach the students how to produce food out of what they have grown. The non-profit supplies the school with any materials or ingredients needed for the lessons.
“When I was in school, we didn't have these types of things.” Voiers explained. “I remember, I think we planted something in 6th grade, but we never got to do hands on experiences like that."
FRESHFARM hopes that teachers, students and parents will put the free materials on their website to use. The non-profit is also hoping to expand the program to schools in other areas where food insecurity may be high or just to give students the chance to learn these necessary life skills.
“I hope that they will be able to try new things with this program, and I hope they will get more science skills that will help them later in life—throughout middle school, high school and college,” said Voiers.
