Growing Healthy Kids is proud to partner with the MDUSD Career Pathways program in Ygnacio Valley High School and Concord High School to offer high school students the opportunity to get involved in outdoor education! Working with Growing Healthy Kids team members, participating high school students made a direct impact on elementary schoolers in their district and expose elementary students to a variety of careers within their chosen career pathway.

In the 2022 – 2023 pilot year of this program, a cohort of 56 juniors in the YVHS Education Academy Program trained with three Growing Healthy Kids Garden Educators on the basics of outdoor education, including classroom management, equitable sharing approaches, and Next Generation Science Standards. Together, they prepared to lead a lesson outdoors. Then, they put their skills into practice working alongside Garden Educators to teach lessons at Bancroft Elementary, Valle Verde Elementary, and Rio Visa Elementary.

Meanwhile, at Concord High School, a cohort of students in the Construction Technology Pathway built 13 Root View Boxes for our elementary school garden classrooms to give students at those schools a "deeper" view of plant structures.